Tuesday, January 17, 2012

New Version

(Sorry for not publishing anything on Monday.)

New versions of Forge are great and taste like fresh buttered movie popcorn, hmmm… There are 200 new cards and the user interface has gotten a major overhaul. (And yes Forge now has Serum Powder.)

Chris. H. posted:

(Begin quote)

A new UI is being developed and it will take some time before it is finished. Forge is somewhat unstable at this time as the new user interface is a work in progress.

The first step was to update the battlefield window. The second step was to update the New Game window and this section still needs some work. We want to get constructed node and then quest modes working first and will then try to get the draft and sealed modes working again afterwards. While most of this work has now been done there are still a few areas that are not finished and you may discover a bug or two.

Enjoy the new work and be patient as this part of the project moves forward. For now, only "Constructed" mode is far enough along to be considered reasonably stable. Quest mode, Sealed and Draft are somewhat stable and you should be able to use these three modes without too many bugs and issues being noticed. Please report all bugs and issues that you notice.

(End quote)

Working on a new user interface is very complicated. It takes weeks to create a new user interface and mere minutes to criticize. I’m not saying that all criticism is bad but try to balance your criticism with a little bit of praise. A good balance points out the good and as well as the bad.

Listing some positives also helps the author know what he is doing right, which is as important as highlighting the negatives. If you only list negatives, the author will probably just give up out of frustration.

Some of the new cards look very cool.

Bogardan Phoenix (2RRR, 3/3, flying) returns to the battlefield after dying once.

Culling Scales (3, artifact) - "At the beginning of your upkeep, destroy target nonland permanent with the lowest converted mana cost" if there is a tie, target any one of them. This card is just dying to be the center of a creatureless blue control deck.

Doubling Cube (2, artifact) - "3, tap: Double the amount of each type of mana in your mana pool". Deckbuilders, start your engines.

Vish Kal, Blood Arbiter (4WBB, 5/5, flying, lifelink) and some cool an ability to grow larger, if you sacrifice a creature. Everybody loves flying fatties.

Serum Powder (3, artifact) - If you have Serum Powder in you hand, you can exile all of the cards in your hand and then draw the same number of cards, which is an unique ability. In my option, Serum Powder seems like it would improve most decks.

Dreams of TCG videogames,
mtgrares

p.s.
Maybe it was good that I didn't post anything Monday since a new version of Forge was released yesterday. Sometimes being late is a good thing :+)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

01-16 is when this version of Forge was first posted to the forums.

Link - Forge 01-16 (Windows, Linux) 33 MB and can be unzipped with Winzip or 7-Zip (free, open source)

Link - Forge 01-16 (Mac) 35 MB and can be unzipped with with Keka

Download - Card Pictures (160 MB) - These are some of the low-quality (LQ) card pictures. 

Java - Forge requires Java in order to run

If you have any questions/comments, please post them to the forum.

Reporting Bugs:
Forge is always a work-in-progress. Some cards (and card interactions) are more buggy than others. To report a bug, please follow the instructions here.

p.s.
These are the people that make Forge awesome. They donate their time, skill, and patience.

ArsenalNut
Chris H
Dave
DeadSpeak
Doublestrike
Friar Sol
Hellfish
Jeff Wadsworth
Marc
Mark
Slapshot5
Sloth
SoulStorm
Squee1968
Xanbie
ZzzzSleep

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Found a bug with Ghostly Prison - if a GP is on the table, there's an error popping up when you try to pay 2 for a creature to attack.

Anonymous said...

Hey guys, thanks for an awesome program and updates and the blog and everything!