Thoughts on Creating Specific New Cards

Mill Effects

I've been thinking about these mill problems. I have a few questions. Can we adapt the ability to a token that will hold the ability and it only work with the specified card. Example: The Stinkweed Imp's token would be put into play when the Stinkweed Imp goes to the grave or whenever you think best (debugging if all else fails). It would have to be an existing card like an enchantment? At best I guess maybe give it shroud or something so people and the AI can't disenchant it but it would need removed if/when the triggering card is removed. It could hold the graveyard ability ex: sacrifice: skip drawing the card put Stinkweed Imp into your hand and the top 5 cards of library into graveyard. Can you target specific cards in your graveyard? Also it would be really cool if we could get something like this working on effect cards like the Nether Shadow effect display when it's in the graveyard (which doesn't work as it should). Couldn't we just add a script with hidden text on card that would make the token automatically without debugging? I wonder if we could make it invisible and only call up selection text for the appropriate condition at the right time to avoid it being a target of a spell or effect destroying it when it shouldn't if it's an enchantment token.

Counters

I was thinking of about the cards with fading or similar to an extent. Couldn't we just add artwork in for the cards with counters drawn on them and have the game update the art based on your counter script. By this I mean the alternative art. Example Blastoderm fading 3. It would need 4 pic files. One for each counter. Problems forseen: When counters get moved around and are outside pic parameters or we would need a lot of wasted space on if this happens pics. Also can we even have pic updates called up in the upkeep actions?

[ jatill edit - the game supports all kinds of counters already, no hacks are needed. Someone just needs to learn what code to call in order to make the counters work correctly ]

Cycling

Since we have Fire and Ice now is cycling possible? Have the normal spell cost the converted mana cost of the card and the alternative spell be something based on tidings where you pay x for a cycle cost and draw a card? If not is there a way to modify the ability Evoke and mixing it with a kicker cost? Example: Krosan Tusker Cycling 2G. 6/5. Have Evoke as the Cycling ability but have it sacrifice the card immediately hopefully before it comes into play. Then a little mix of kicker to enable the draw a card ability. It would have to be uncounterable as well. I can see this working on creatures but I don't know about ones that also have comes into play abilities. Another thing I thought of was a Debug alternative maybe. Place a cycling avatar into play with the ability: 2: Discard a card of "card name" draw a card this would require a debug token for each card with cycling but should work. Or even better would be to add a new creature type (cycling) and or card subtype (cycling). Then we could debug in a card that would be able to allow you to discard those card of that card subtype for a cost. How would costs be set up if they are variable? I know this is very limited and I don't know if you can ever get the AI to use these.

[ one of the main problems with cycling is the fact that it's not a spell (i.e. isn't counterable, doesn't trigger lucky charms, etc). I think the idea of a cycling avatar would work, and 1 avatar could handle all cyclers (and all other rules engine limitations. More on this later. ]

Game engine limitations

Above I talked about debugging in cards to enable Mill effects and Cycling. It would be nice if you could cram everything like that into one card. Call it the Manalink Enhancement card type (enchantment token) Function Enabler as the text of the card type. Maybe we could come up with all kinds of basically AI to put on the card. I'm sure there is a limit to how much a card can do or how big it's file size can be? It would take a lot of arrays or groups whatever you call them but I'm thinking like assign each card that would have an ability that would need to be used by this card a group and an ID#. Then when an event occurs check condition (group type); if/then/else (ID#, action). I don't know how the scripting of the cards go but I don't know what you are limited to using for group type and by this I mean like Storm, Cycling, TypeCycle ect. and by ID# I mean a reference definition (I usually do them in Integer Array formats). I will stop here in the case this isn't even possible and each card would have to make it's own individual function enabling card which would be kinda easier to allow multiple people to work on adding cards without having to go into a huge script.

[ Yes, this is totally doable. If we don't mind having to debug the card into play, we can have a single card that can handle cycling, dredge, flashback, incarnations, and many more of these rules exceptions. As far as I know, there is no limit to how big the code for a card can be, but the way I have envisioned implementing this card, it wouldn't actually require a lot of code, not any arrays. If someone joins the project that actually wants to make this happen, let me know. There are a lot of ideas to communicate about how to make this work. ]