Monday, August 22, 2011

Magarena - 918 Cards, Good AI


Forge is great but sometimes a little variety is good.  Magarena has rules enforcement like Forge and has a great AI.  Magarena's AI is the best that I've every seen.  (And I've heard that it is better than the new Duels of the Planeswalker.)  Magarena has a great user interface and looks like a real videogame.  Magarena lets you pick your theme from a variety of user created skins.

It is hard to describe Magarena's AI.  It feels like there is a little guy in the computer that is purposefully trying to destroy you.  The AI will play as hard and as smart as a human.  Sometimes the AI will hold back and you may think that it may think that it is a glitch but then the AI will play some uber-powerful card that changes the whole game.  Most games will be grueling 20+ turns. 

Magarena only has 1-on-1 matches and doesn't have any sort of quest mode.  Magarena features high-quality card scans so you can sit back and enjoy the great the great art.  While Magic is a great game, it also features some great artwork. 

Magarena-1.16b.zip  - Runs on Windows, Mac, Linux and requires Java 1.6

Magarena_1126.exe - Is a small update for Windows users and should be put in the same directory that you unzipped Magarena-1.16b.zip  

Link - Magarena Download Site for all future versions


Everybody loves screenshots.
p.s.
Working on an open source project is hard and thankfully other people step up to the task.  I, the original author of Forge, no longer work on Forge and ubeefx, the original author of Magarena, no longer works on that project.  Thanks to melvin who continues to work on Magarena and thanks to the Forge coders who have added more cards than I ever thought possible.

Forge Coding Team:
Friar Sol
Sloth
Dave
Rob Cashwalker
Braids
Max mtg
Jeff Wadsworth
Hellfish
ArsenalNut
Starcrash
Marc
Corwin
Chris H

7 comments:

  1. It is indeed cool that other people continue our work. Melvin already received help from other developers.

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  2. The internet really helps to find other like-minded people, for better or worse, but I think open-source videogames are win-win.

    My screenshot doesn't have the card pictures for 2 cards but it was the best screenshot that I had since it showed combat.

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  3. What would happen if someone were to combine Magarena's Ai and GUI with Forge's card list and customization options?

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  4. What would happen is that the Ai will take a day to plan each step :P

    I'm positive that Magarena will be able to handle many more type of cards without becoming too slow to be fun though.

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  5. "What would happen if someone were to combine Magarena's AI and GUI with Forge's card list and customization options?"

    Combining stuff only works in fan fiction.

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  6. Well, we are doing quite a bit of GUI work on Forge at the moment. So far the splash screen has been added for during the startup initialization. Braids isn't too comfortable with swing though, so she delegated the final part (actually placing the progress bar over the graphic at the bottom) to whoever can and wants to finish it.

    Aside from that the main launch screen is getting a fairly big overhaul with new graphic interface. Rob is still finalizing that though. After the initial release we're also planning on having a few options for the UI size so that users can use whichever one best suits their screen resolution.

    In another area, friarsol is working on a system that physically marks cards as being used for a cost. This allows cards to be discarded or sacrificed as part of a spell's cost, but can be 'undone' before the spell resolves if the player chooses to.

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  7. Macarena has all cards properties hard-coded.
    This is a way to nowhere... unless they have some very advance oraclerules to java coregenerator

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