Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Adding New Cards

MTG Forge and Magic both revolve around cards and more specifically, new cards. Magic is a great game but if the flow of new cards ever stops, most of Magic’s popularity would evaporate. Granted a small army of people would try to keep it alive but trading card games need new cards and so does MTG Forge.

I’m glad people are using these forums and creating new cards. The problem is that you can’t just download a card that someone else makes. A whole new version of MTG Forge has to be released in order to add a new card. (Granted you can add the card code and compile it yourself, but the average use can’t do this.) You can get the latest version of MTG Forge from here. Thanks for jpb for adding all the cards from the forums. It has around 90 new cards. There are still some errors, Will-o-wisp has two regenerate abilities, and not all of the new card pictures are downloaded.

Version 2 all cards should be just text files. So in order to add a new card, you just download the file and put it in the correct directory. Each card will has its own file and the card will be generated when the program first starts up. The cards will be created on the fly, at runtime which is better than hard coded Java cards. Programming Magic cards in Java is confusing and that is why other projects use other language, Firemox uses XML and Incantus uses Python. Next time I’ll show you the code for Royal Assassin from Firemox and Incantus.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

If there ever stops the flow of new cards, then I think it would be best to try to implement all ever released cards. For sure, that would take serveral more years. I admit that would be very sad but it would open the chance to create a perfect and overal complete software version. Don't you agree?

Gando the Wandering Fool said...

In my not so humble opinion there are enough magic players world wide that if Wizards stopped producing cards tommorow and shut down their online services completely the game would continue on of its own volition. As did D&D after TSR tanked before WOTC picked it up. And as did alot of other games as well. There is more to the game than simply discovering new mechanics and getting new cards. Alot of players enjoy the variability and skillsets of playing with what ALREADY exists. Anyway thats my 2.5 cents.

muebles ciudad real said...

This won't work in reality, that is what I suppose.