Rolling Your Own

When programming you either have the choice of using someone else’s code or writing your own. In this example, I will be talking about a graphic library that would help me write the user interface. I can either use someone else’s or try to write my own.

The downside of using someone else’s code is that you have to practically memorize the documentation in order to get anything done. You also have to understand the logic of how to use the code. Just reading the documentation alone rarely answers all of your questions, just like the encyclopedia doesn’t explain grammar or how to write a book.

Writing your own code library is often called “rolling your own.” The user interface for MTG Forge is going to be very simple. User’s can move cards. Life points and the mana pool will be shown for both players. These requirements are very, very simple compared with most videogames. The benefits of “rolling your own” is that you don’t have to read any confusing documentation and that you often get things working up and running more quickly.

After trying a simple graphics library, I gave up and decided to roll my own. All I have to do is read a card image, reduce its size, draw a white rectangle, and draw the card name. The attack and defense as well as the damage and assigned combat damage will also be shown on each card. (Sometimes you want to know how much damage is assigned to your creature during combat.) No animation has to be done and everything else is pretty straightforward.

This card picture is taken from MTG Forge’s version 2 user interface. The red number represents the damage and the blue number represents the assigned combat damage.