Small changes

Since I published the “Sealed” update, there has been a lot of activity on our ticket tracker. It seems OCTGN is getting more and more attention and as a result, more defects and ideas are submitted.

To keep the list of tickets under control and to prevent people from getting frustrated by bugs or simple-yet-important missing features, I’ve decided to put the limited play aside for a moment and close a bunch of tickets.

As a result here’s a small update, to version 0.7.1.2. Most important changes:

- Several bugs fixed in some very rare conditions;
- Using the search box in the group window wasn’t working;
- Group action shortcuts now work globally (even if you don’t have your mouse over the group).
- Deck editor was always incorrectly reporting the deck is “unsaved” when closing.

Welcome to 2010!

I hope everybody had a great time during the holidays! The landscape is covered with snow where I live and it’s just beautiful.

Today is the first 2010 release (0.7.1), with the following changes:

1. New support for more complex packs definitions in sets files. E.g. this allows Mythic rares and other stuff like that (foil, whatever). Here’s how it works, for those writing sets:

<pack …>
  <options>
    <option probability="0.125">
      <pick qty="1" key="Rarity" value="M" />
    </option>
    <option>
      <pick qty="1" key="Rarity" value="R" />
    </option>
  </options>
  [possibly other options and/or pick tags]
</pack>

Basically, you can use an <options> tag instead of a <pick> tag. It contains as many <option> as you wish, each with a specific probability (the last one is not mandatory, it’s the whatever probability is left). The same tags are allowed inside an option as inside the pack itself (that is: as many <options> and/or <pick> as you want).

2. Since the introduction of the new “View” operation on piles, there has been some confusion between this newcomer and the old “Show to” menu, which has more or less always been there. I have done some renaming to make things clearer.

“Show to” is now “Visibility” and it indicates the default group visibility. That’s what you would change if – for example – a card asks you to play with your hand face up (revealed to everyone).

“View” becomes “Look at”. I hope it makes clear that you are temporarily looking at the cards in a pile, whatever the visibility of the pile is.

Moreover, the “Look at” command wasn’t available on collapsed piles (those little groups stacked on the right side of your panel). So you had to first expand them before being able to use it. This has been fixed, the “Look at” command is now available, whether the pile is collapsed or not.

3. Kind user Brent Paschall has submitted a patch to allow multiple selection in hand. After a bit of reviewing I have merged the patch and so you now can select multiple cards in hand, as you already can on the table. Use the Ctrl key to select multiple cards. I know the selection halo is barely visible, that’s something I intend to change in the future (I wanted to change it on the table as well, but never did). I did a bit of testing, but not extensively. So if you find bugs (e.g. when using actions on multiple cards) report them at the usual place (octgn.16bugs.com). This also prepares the way for multiple selection in groups, if you need it… Thank you Brent.

Happy 2010 everyone!

Sealed!

I have been procrastinating like crazy… So unfortunately I have been unable to complete the limited feature as fully as I would have like to. The good news is that you get some limited play for x-mas anyway; “Sealed” kind of gameplay is now possible, starting with version 0.7!

So how does it work? Here are all the details:

First you start a game as usual. Then, instead of using File > Load Deck (Ctrl+L), you can use File > Start Limited Game (Ctrl+Shift+L). Please note that starting a limited game will affect everyone, so you’d better agree on who starts the limited game.

Choosing this option brings up this new dialog box:

You cannot choose a game kind other than Sealed at the moment. Then you have to add the packs, that each player will receive. Don’t forget to add some “special” pack if you need to, e.g. the “Lands” pack provides an unlimited supply of basic lands.

Please take note that each set defines its own packs (because they may change over time, e.g. the recent introduction of Mythic rares in Magic). So you will have to get updated sets definitions for your game, otherwise there will be no pack available. More about that later.

Unfortunately, you can’t remove a pack from the list at the moment. So if you made a mistake, click Cancel and start all over again.

When you’re done and ready to start, click OK.

When you do, everyone receives its packs and the screen looks like this:

One notable shortcoming is that it’s currently impossible to filter or sort the card lists (but I have plans for that!). You can pick whatever cards you want by double-clicking. If you click on multiple cards (e.g. in your deck, or in the unlimited supply), a small popup appears and asks how many cards you want. Enter a digit (or leave the default 1) and hit enter to move that many cards at once.

When you’re ready there’s a link at the bottom. The selected cards are loaded (as any normal deck would) and you can start playing.

As I said, defining packs is something each set must do, so you’ll have to get updated set definitions (at least for the sets you want to play sealed with). For game creators: here’s a reference example of how packs are defined:

<set ..>
  <packaging>
    <pack name="Booster" id="edb3a88e-8c29-4cf2-9d52-1660cd2841c8">
      <pick qty="1" key="Rarity" value="R" />
      <pick qty="3" key="Rarity" value="U" />
      <pick qty="11" key="Rarity" value="C" />
    </pack>
    <pack name="Lands" id="01bb17b6-3bf6-41e9-bfb3-51fe95147e3a">
      <pick qty="unlimited" key="Rarity" value="L" />
    </pack>
  </packaging> 
  <markers>..</markers> 
  <cards>..</cards>
</set>

If you wanted the updated XSD description, it’s available here: http://octgn.net/octgn-client/CardSet.xsd
The updated data access library (for coders) is here: http://octgn.net/octgn-client/Octgn.Data.dll
There’s access to packs definition inside it, and even a function to open random packs according to their definition.
(Remainder: you need the VistaDB.dll as well: http://octgn.net/octgn-client/VistaDB.NET20.dll)

This is my christmas gift to you all. I hope you’ll enjoy the holidays and have a great time. I’ll be mostly afk until 2010, so don’t expect answers or updates after the 26th!

Merry x-mas and happy new year!

You guessed it…

OK, some additional fixes today:

- There was an important regression in the last update. Double-clicking a card with a default action that moves it (e.g. from hand to table) would result in a crash.

- An unrelated but similar crash would happen if you double-click the close link in group windows.

- You now can “sort” by set in the deck editor. I use quotes because you actually sort by set id rather than set name. So while the cards are grouped by set, the set order may seem random. This is an improvement, I will finish the fix later.

- Finally, the messaging code has undergone some important changes, which you should be totally invisible to you.

Regarding that last change. For the few people, who are building from the SVN trunk, you don’t need NVelocity to generate the messaging code anymore. The project now builds completely inside visual studio 2010, using the built-in T4 templating engine instead.

Sorry, limited isn’t ready yet, but it’ll be your christmas present

Can you believe it? Even more fixes!

I’ve published a new minor upgrade: 0.6.1.5.

No breaking changes or features, just 10 new fixes. Thanks to Hearn who reported 8 of those, which makes him the bug reporter of the month

As usual, if you want to see all the small changes you can check the recent activity in the bug tracker. The most important changes are:

• Removing markers is now correctly reported in the log window;
• Existence and correctness of pictures in set files are now checked during set import to prevent crashes during games;
• The multiple selection lasso was imprecise on tapped cards. Manipulating cards near their edges may have some unwanted effects;
• Targetting arrows may be incorrectly placed when moving a card across the 2-sided table limit;
• Several crashes in weirds corner cases (e.g. creating a token which isn’t in your database, loading an empty deck, or adding 0 markers, …).

I also did start working on limited play (that is: drafting and such). And I would like to know what you think about print runs:

[1] I am not interested at all in limited play, so don’t even think about print runs!
[2] I don’t care about print runs. Random packs (according to rarities of course) are more than enough!
[3] Print runs would be great. They are more realists and the sequence of cards has been balanced by the game designers. I don’t really think it would be useful, though, because I don’t know of any published print runs for my favorite games.
[4] Print runs are awesome. And for the games I play, they are available here: (provide some links to descriptions of the way print runs work in your game please).

I personnally think print run support would be a nice plus for OCTGN 2, but I don’t really know of any source of print runs [3]. Without data print runs are useless, so I am currently unsure if I will code the feature.

More fixes

It seems those fixes never stop

Again, there is no new feature today, but a batch of 10 bug fixes. I’ll just mention the most important ones, if you want the full story you can check it out on the bug tracker.

- Fixed a crash when someone removes a card from the table at the same time another player adds a card to the table;
- Fixed a crash when moving a card to the bottom of a pile from the “Top X” window;
- Fixed performance issues in the token dialog with big databases;
- Fixed a crash when trying to use a variable in the addmarker script action.

I’ve also started to think of some more important changes, more about that later…

Small fixes

I am publishing a small update to the client (0.6.1.2).

I have fixed a few problems and regressions and I tweaked the look and feel a bit. This is a small maintenance update, there is no breaking change since the 0.6.0.0 release.

If you are bored and want to a list of the most important changes:

- Added support for variables to addmarker and removemarker actions;

- Markers aren’t displayed with 1-3 images anymore. There’s always on marker image and a number next to it;

- Fix: unable to start two instances of OCTGN on the same computer;

- Fix: random card selection never selects the last card in group;

- Look and feel changes: you’ll have to find out for yourself (hint: most of the changes are visible in the “view cards” window).

I think next time we’ll have new features

PS: if you are writing game modules for OCTGN 2, I made a post yesterday, which may be of interest for you.

Updated XSD files available

This will only interest game authors. If you are a player you may skip this post.

I’ve updated the xsd schemas for the game and set definitions. They were terribly out of date.

Game schema: http://octgn.net/octgn-client/Game.xsd
Set schema: http://octgn.net/octgn-client/CardSet.xsd

Those two files may be used by your xml editor to validate that your file is correct. If your xml doesn’t validate against those schemas, chances are OCTGN will not like them.

Let me know if something is still wrong in those files.

To a lesser extend they also contain some documentation. Here’s for example an overview of the set files:

Minor update: fixes and improvements

Hello everyone,

after a far too long period without updates, I’m pleased to announced that I’m publishing 0.6.1.0.

As you can tell from the release number, it’s a minor update, which is compatible with the previous one and even uses the same network protocol (that is: no new message is exchanged between clients).

So what’s new?

• The way xml game definitions are read has drastically changed. The previous way required almost no code at all, but it was extremely troublesome to maintain the parsing of actions. This has changed and it is now much easier to extend the available tags for your game scripts. In fact I already fulfilled many past requests (like random card selection, bottom card selection, adding and removing markers, filtering by card orientation or highlight, and so on). An up-to-date list of the supported scripts is available in the wiki (that’s here for actions, boolean conditions and card selectors).
• The xml parsing update contains the only breaking change in this release. If you’ve used <persist>true</persist> as a workaround for the bug preventing persist=”true” to be set on the <newcard /> action, be aware that this has been fixed and your game needs to be updated. Only the attribute syntax is now supported (as it always should have been).
• Lots of bugs reviews and fixes. Too many to mention them all but if you are really interested you can check the recent activity at octgn.16bugs.com. Maybe the most important fix is the “cropped board image” regression some games had when I introduced the two-sided table.
• You still get some very small improvements, like being able to change your nickname before starting a new game!

There are still bugs I would have liked to fix that aren’t. But I figured that you’ve waited long enough, so you deserved some update just to know I’m still alive and kickin’!

Next time: maybe a few more fixes, and some small features (probably).

Update

Last time I wrote that I still had a few tasks I wanted to complete before publishing the next update.

Unfortunately, because of some problems I couldn’t do everything I wanted to… Those things are NOT done:
- Skinning the 1,2,3 and A-Z buttons;
- Thourough testing (this release has only be superficially tested, and it includes big changes. So hopefluly there won’t be too many bad surprises, please report any problem);
- Rework some contextual menus a bit;
- Review the way one moves card to the bottom of a pile.

Anyway, since you’ve been very patient since the last release and there is major new functionnality available I decided to publish the new update!

One is now available to view and manipulate Top/Bottom X cards, which is a major step forward. I think it enabled many new games/cards.

Enjoy!