Monday, May 31, 2010

New Version

The easiest column to write each month is this one. I describe the great features of the latest version of Forge. This version has 259 new cards, which means that it supports a grand total of 3,220 cards. All of the credit goes to Dennis, Chris, Slapshot5, Jim, Snacko, and others who have contributed making Forge the outstanding program that it is today.

There is a lot of new stuff. Now the quest mode has another other option, you can either choose “Realistic” or “Fantasy”. Realistic is the old quest mode where you win cards and can buy cards from the card shop. The fantasy option is similar to an RPG because you build up your stats.

The fantasy mode features a “bazaar” where you can buy upgrades for your character including: buying various creatures that you have at the beginning of each game, buying more life (because you start out with 15 but you can have more than 20), or buying a free mulligan (you mulligan and you draw 7 cards). After 25 wins various other “quests” open up for you that feature harder AI opponents. For a taste of the new fantasy quest mode unzip Forge, click on the “Quest Mode” button, and then click on the “Continue Quest” button.

Another cool feature for both quest modes is that each computer opponent now has a small picture next to its life points. Even though this is just a small change, it really improves the “fun level” since the computer opponents vary from Abraham Lincoln to Lisa Simpson.


Forge is all about the cards, so let me list a few of the new ones. A few cards from Rise of the Eldrazi, like the huge artifacts Artisan of Kozilek and Ulamog's Crusher as well as the level up creature Kargan Dragonlord, Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle and the classic Mana Vault which helps you accelerate your mana.

05-16 Forge (9 MB) - Requires Java and runs on Windows, Mac, Linux, etc... This is the 05-16 version because that is when it was released on the forums.

Download Pictures (78 MB) - The card pictures can be downloaded by the Forge program or you can just grab this file. This includes most but not all of the pictures, it doesn't have the newest 259 card pictures.

Have a great Memorial Day! Cookouts for everybody!!

p.s.
The fantasy mode has one more rule that I want to explain. Usually there is a 500 credit limit for cards that you sell but that limit is removed after you win 50 games. (The correction is that you have to win 50 times, my mistake.)

14 comments:

Unknown said...

Looking forward to it!

gregK said...

hi, i just tried out your program. very nice, thanks for it. but elvish piper, id: 39, has no effect. please look to correct that in your next version

Anonymous said...

good job, as always. matter of time that this takes of on a bigger scale in the community (and then probably have wizards will get nasty?). How many downloads do you have on average for a new version?

would be nice for quest if someone could clean up/ smoothen the cards available for quest. Though i like seeing potentially all 3200, it's often a pity that you do not have enough mana fixing and removal in the beginningtimuche

DemoneNero said...

Thaks a lot

Anonymous said...

>>gregK said...
hi, i just tried out your program. very nice, thanks for it. but elvish piper, id: 39, has no effect. please look to correct that in your next version<<

What are you talking about... it works fine. Has for a long time.

gregK said...

also, spells that count the 'number of basic land types you control' seem to count non-basic dual lands as 2 types of basic lands, when they should count as zero

Anonymous said...

@gregK

The Domain keyword cares about the number of basic land types there are among lands you control, not how many different basic lands you control. There's a slight difference. : )

While Forge has it right in this instance, there are errors, and pointing them out is helpful. If you want to do so, there's a thread in the forum for that.

Cheers
~slowe

Rorik said...

I pretty much consider this to be one of the huge improvements in the history of forge.

You no longer only have the possibility of playing with all kinds of crazy cards against an AI that is getting smarter and smarter as the versions go by; but you now also have a forge as a game of its own in with its very own objectives and mechanics.

This was indeed the last little step needed to make forge in to the most addictive and fun to play non-official magic application out there — and, for perhaps the first time, even more so than Wagic!

Congratulations!

Forge said...

Each version of Forge boasts more cards and other improvements. The fantasy quest mode gives Forge a long term compaign.

Wizards of the Coast doesn't seem to really mind, they could easily take down Forge if they wanted to.

Forge said...

Roughly Forge is downloaded 1,000 times a month, so that works out to about 12,000 a year.

My blog gets 200+ visitors a day.

Xzarf said...

The market sell limit of 500 doesn't seem to be lifting for me. I am 53 games into it and the max is still 500 (which was really disappointing when selling a card worth 35k, expecting 7.5k and getting 500).

DennisBergkamp said...

Xzarf,

That's strange... are you sure it's over 50 WINS though? It's not games played, it's the amount of wins that have to exceed 50.

Xzarf said...

Okay, my bad, I just 53 games in (28-25)

Norin the Wary said...

I am curious as to how new cards are added. I tend to think that you should be able to add about 90-95% of the cards that exist rather easily, since you would have the code for them, and it would be copy/paste to get them in.

Also, I wondered if you planned on ever distinguishing cards by the set that they come in, so that a draft/sealed could use cards from only certain sets.