Hello. I haven't been a very active member of the MTGSalvation forums because I am spending lots of time working on my own site/game, but I do follow the "creativity" section with lots of interest
You might already know about Wagic. It is an "MTG like" game which does rules enforcements and has an AI. It runs on Windows, Linux and the Sony PSP. I won't go into details here, if you want to read more about it you can go on my blog. An important point is that the game is free, open source and community driven. Below are screenshots from the game:
As a result, Wagic is highly flexible and customizable. Graphics and sounds can be easily modified, but also cards can be created with a simple text editor. And that's the main point of this post, and the reason I'm not posting in the "software" forum, but here. (I might post a Wagic dedicated thread in the software subforums if people think this is useful, though)
Recently a group of members on my forum started working on a Star Wars MOD for Wagic, involving graphics and SFX sounds. They also took the excellent Star Wars block made by Alacar Leoricar, and ported it to Wagic. With his agreement we released this mod yesterday, and it is getting good feedback already. Below are a few pictures, a video and the download link.
This star wars mod is the first point of my post. The second one is that I think this mod could be the first of a series of custom sets adapted to Wagic: one problem when creating custom sets is that you might never actually play them. Printing real cards would be too expensive, and finding a player accepting to play it with you in MWS can be tricky.
Wagic is one solution to this. It is relatively easy to create a card and add it to the game:
Creating a set in Wagic only requires a text editor such as notepad, and adding cards is pretty smooth (no compilation or stuff like that required, just create a new text file, add it to the correct folder, and run the game), here is for example the code for Royal Assassin:
Full examples of sets can be found here. I strongly believe it is easy to understand.
Of course everything is not perfect, as all projects that do rules enforcement, all cards are not supported in Wagic, and some mechanics are not implemented yet. But the code base is slowly growing, and nearly 50% of the cards in the Star Wars block made it to the mod.
If you are interested to test your cutom sets and port them to Wagic, we have a growing community ready to help you with this. Some custom sets are created regularly on our forums, although I would be extremely happy to see more of the Custom cards from MTGSalvation make it into Wagic. The stuff created here looks really professional
Comments and feedback on both the starwars Mod and this idea of playtesting Custom sets are really appreciated. We are a small team of developers but we do listen to people's suggestions
Here's a thought - what if MSE could do a large amount of the chump work for making one of these? An export template for MSE is fairly simple to write, can export in formatted text, and could do the dull stuff like name, power, toughness, type, rarity, and text quickly for every card in a set. It could even be upgraded to do costs, and dare I say it, some common automatic rules enforcement texts.
I'm willing to give it a go, if you'll provide me some more examples. Say, an entire one of these set files, and also some other questions answered.
1.) How does Wagic format basic lands, splits, flips, and planeswalkers?
2.) Do Wagic sets include tokens or rules tip cards?
3.) What are the codes for all the rarities (including the special Time Spiral rarity), and what are the codes for the all the mana symbols (and I do mean all of them).
If there's documentation somewhere, I'd be happy to just go look there, if you'll tell me where.
I'll bet this in particular would have made Alacar Leoricar happy - I know his set is built in MSE.
Wow, thanks for the reply, an MSE template would be awesome!
Regarding your questions:
1)Basic lands:
here's an example for a forest:
text={T}: Add {G} to your mana pool.
auto={T}: Add {G}
id=129559
name=Forest
rarity=L
type=Basic Land
subtype=Forest
split, flips, and planeswalkers are not handled yet in Wagic
2) Tokens and rule tip cards are not included and will never be. Tokens are generated from abilities and therefore are defined by the abilities that create them, so they are not explicitely defined as part of a set
3) Rarities:
The rartiy line is written
rarity=X
where X is
L for lands
C for commons
U for uncommons
R for Rares
M for mythic rares
other rarities are not handled
Mana
Mana and costs are usually simple:
{1}[B}[B} means 1 uncolored and 2 blacks.
{1} for uncolored (can be {2}, {3},...)
{B} for black
{G} for Green
{U} for blue
{R} for Red
{W} for White
{T} for Tap
{S} for Sacrifice
{X} for X
{RW} for hybrid Red White
{UB} for Hybrid Blue Black
{2U} for Hybrid 2 uncolored one blue
[...]
Snow Mana is not handled. Tapping another card as a cost is not handled yet. Sacrificing another creature as a card is not supported enough so I won't go into details here.
People who create sets for Wagic usually prefer to rely on existing sets, which is also a good opportunity to answer your first request. Existing sets can be found at: http://code.google.com/p/wagic/source/browse/trunk/projects/mtg/bin/Res/sets/
Click on each set name on the left, then you can display _cards.dat which is the set itself. todo.dat has the exact same format, and contains cards from the set that cannot be handled by Wagic yet.
every card is wrapped in card /card tags that I cannot write on this forum because they trigger some phpBB code here.
I've never used MSE myself (which is weird since I keep recommending it to people who ask me how to create their own sets), and I didn't know it exported a text (Now that you said it, it makes perfect sense for it to have an MWS template for example). I'll give it a try this weekend, maybe I can try to create the template myself, and ask you for help if I am stuck at some point.
Something important to note - the current version doesn't exactly export as text. (Almost) Everything in MSE is done with templates, so there are templates for games, templates for different visual and layout styles of each game, templates for symbol-fonts (like the different kinds of mana symbols), templates for translations of the GUI, and templates for ways the data can be exported from a set.
There is a default form of MWS export that's included, but it runs rather poorly (although many people have forced it to work anyway). Recently, there was a bit of a renaissance of export templates, including a new MWS exporter that makes a text file and a folder full of properly named renders.
Through some careful application of regex's and repeated filtering of the rules text, I'm sure its possible to add some ability to write rules enforcement automatically.
You might already know about Wagic. It is an "MTG like" game which does rules enforcements and has an AI. It runs on Windows, Linux and the Sony PSP. I won't go into details here, if you want to read more about it you can go on my blog. An important point is that the game is free, open source and community driven. Below are screenshots from the game:
As a result, Wagic is highly flexible and customizable. Graphics and sounds can be easily modified, but also cards can be created with a simple text editor. And that's the main point of this post, and the reason I'm not posting in the "software" forum, but here. (I might post a Wagic dedicated thread in the software subforums if people think this is useful, though)
Recently a group of members on my forum started working on a Star Wars MOD for Wagic, involving graphics and SFX sounds. They also took the excellent Star Wars block made by Alacar Leoricar, and ported it to Wagic. With his agreement we released this mod yesterday, and it is getting good feedback already. Below are a few pictures, a video and the download link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2kKI4Zb8Lc
Download and more info here
This star wars mod is the first point of my post. The second one is that I think this mod could be the first of a series of custom sets adapted to Wagic: one problem when creating custom sets is that you might never actually play them. Printing real cards would be too expensive, and finding a player accepting to play it with you in MWS can be tricky.
Wagic is one solution to this. It is relatively easy to create a card and add it to the game:
Creating a set in Wagic only requires a text editor such as notepad, and adding cards is pretty smooth (no compilation or stuff like that required, just create a new text file, add it to the correct folder, and run the game), here is for example the code for Royal Assassin:
text={T}: Destroy target tapped creature. id=129708 auto={T}:destroy target(creature[tapped]) name=Royal Assassin rarity=R type=Creature mana={1}{B}{B} power=1 subtype=Human Assassin toughness=1Full examples of sets can be found here. I strongly believe it is easy to understand.Of course everything is not perfect, as all projects that do rules enforcement, all cards are not supported in Wagic, and some mechanics are not implemented yet. But the code base is slowly growing, and nearly 50% of the cards in the Star Wars block made it to the mod.
If you are interested to test your cutom sets and port them to Wagic, we have a growing community ready to help you with this. Some custom sets are created regularly on our forums, although I would be extremely happy to see more of the Custom cards from MTGSalvation make it into Wagic. The stuff created here looks really professional
Comments and feedback on both the starwars Mod and this idea of playtesting Custom sets are really appreciated. We are a small team of developers but we do listen to people's suggestions
Thanks again to Alacar Leoricar!
Wagic: Card Games against an AI on Android/iOS/PSP/Windows/Linux/Nokia N900
I'm willing to give it a go, if you'll provide me some more examples. Say, an entire one of these set files, and also some other questions answered.
1.) How does Wagic format basic lands, splits, flips, and planeswalkers?
2.) Do Wagic sets include tokens or rules tip cards?
3.) What are the codes for all the rarities (including the special Time Spiral rarity), and what are the codes for the all the mana symbols (and I do mean all of them).
If there's documentation somewhere, I'd be happy to just go look there, if you'll tell me where.
I'll bet this in particular would have made Alacar Leoricar happy - I know his set is built in MSE.
My Moderator Helpdesk| My Custom Set List | My MSE Template HostingRegarding your questions:
1)Basic lands:
here's an example for a forest:
text={T}: Add {G} to your mana pool. auto={T}: Add {G} id=129559 name=Forest rarity=L type=Basic Land subtype=Forestsplit, flips, and planeswalkers are not handled yet in Wagic2) Tokens and rule tip cards are not included and will never be. Tokens are generated from abilities and therefore are defined by the abilities that create them, so they are not explicitely defined as part of a set
3) Rarities:
The rartiy line is written
where X is
L for lands
C for commons
U for uncommons
R for Rares
M for mythic rares
other rarities are not handled
Mana
Mana and costs are usually simple:
{1}[B}[B} means 1 uncolored and 2 blacks.
{1} for uncolored (can be {2}, {3},...)
{B} for black
{G} for Green
{U} for blue
{R} for Red
{W} for White
{T} for Tap
{S} for Sacrifice
{X} for X
{RW} for hybrid Red White
{UB} for Hybrid Blue Black
{2U} for Hybrid 2 uncolored one blue
[...]
Snow Mana is not handled. Tapping another card as a cost is not handled yet. Sacrificing another creature as a card is not supported enough so I won't go into details here.
The full documentation is here:
http://wololo.net/wagic/create-your-own-cards/
As most documentations, it is a bit outdated, but nothing serious.
People who create sets for Wagic usually prefer to rely on existing sets, which is also a good opportunity to answer your first request. Existing sets can be found at:
http://code.google.com/p/wagic/source/browse/trunk/projects/mtg/bin/Res/sets/
Click on each set name on the left, then you can display _cards.dat which is the set itself. todo.dat has the exact same format, and contains cards from the set that cannot be handled by Wagic yet.
For example here is Zendikar:
http://wagic.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/projects/mtg/bin/Res/sets/ZEN/_cards.dat
you can replace ZEN with other 3 letters codes to see the other ones
every card is wrapped in card /card tags that I cannot write on this forum because they trigger some phpBB code here.
I've never used MSE myself (which is weird since I keep recommending it to people who ask me how to create their own sets), and I didn't know it exported a text (Now that you said it, it makes perfect sense for it to have an MWS template for example). I'll give it a try this weekend, maybe I can try to create the template myself, and ask you for help if I am stuck at some point.
Thanks!
Wagic: Card Games against an AI on Android/iOS/PSP/Windows/Linux/Nokia N900
There is a default form of MWS export that's included, but it runs rather poorly (although many people have forced it to work anyway). Recently, there was a bit of a renaissance of export templates, including a new MWS exporter that makes a text file and a folder full of properly named renders.
Through some careful application of regex's and repeated filtering of the rules text, I'm sure its possible to add some ability to write rules enforcement automatically.
I'm going to PM you with further questions.
My Moderator Helpdesk| My Custom Set List | My MSE Template HostingI wish you luck!