Interesting idea Moxy. The template looks pretty decent too.

When are we going to get to use this template?

My bad here's the link

Hmmm. Its not part of the Magic game.

I added a couple "loyalty" fields to the game file. Made another game file out of it so as not to disturb the official magic game file.

Man, i wish i could manipulate the system like that. I'm currently working on a unique game and i really wish i could just create a brand new frame and look for it. Wow

Thanks for the nice words. I just 'shopped the planeswalker frames though.

Does anyone else get the following error?

Parameter input: card has no member 'loyalty cost 4'
in function contains
in function loyalty_image

I checked the game and style files, and it LOOKS right to me...

Edit:

Found it, had to change the game name from magic to heros in the style file.

The P/T font changes to white on black cards, for some reason, even though the background box for it does not change.

Moxydotorg, if you're still lurking around, how does the idea of me making this compatible with the magic game file strike you?

-Pich

I would not mind at all.

It's done, and released in my "merry christmas" thread.

Moxy,

I'm working with this template, and I'm confused by a few rules related things:

Is the casting cost only paid the first time you play it?

Is there a limit to the number you can have?

In constructed, Hero(e)s are assigned randomly? What if you get two hero(e)s that you can't play because of casting color, turn them in, and are given a hero you can't play?

Is there a forum that deals with these rules? I'm seriously considering having a fun tournament at my shop, using these types of cards, and basing them off a handful of our more memorable players and tournament organizers..

I really like this template, and am considering playing around with this. Although, if I do, I will likely not follow Moxy's rules and make my own, making these less of a Magic variant. Hope that doesn't bother you Moxy.

So it never enters your deck, kind of like a Vanguard card. Might be worthwhile to make them a similar size.

There's definite potential here, though I may be with Pichoro, on this. Maybe give them a casting cost (since they have the mana pips on the card), restrict them to one unique hero per deck, though you may have up to 4 of that hero in your deck.

Once they're out, they STAY out, but you do have to do the work of getting them out. Maybe a few cards that let you affect heros, deck-searching, and hero-specific spells..

Or maybe just a special type of creature that has an experience track, with special abilities that become available as certain circumstances occur. A blue hero that gains an experience tick at the end of any turn you've drawn more than 1 card, for example.

Edit: Is there any good reason to use white text on the P/T box? Currently, if the card is black, or if it's a hybrid, or if it's a colored artifact, the template makes the P/T white, like the exp box next to it, but the background of the P/T never changes, and doesn't really warrant white text. Is this intentional, or a carryover from the exp box?

Indeed, font colors were having some awkward moments. There's an update at the library thread where I posted my original Magic translation, here.

With this newest update, p/t will always be black, and do to the awkwardness of trying to match font colors against that experience trigger box, I've put in a font color selection script (in the styling menu) for that field.

My friends and I have also been working on something similar to this for years. We thought we had gotten a break when Planeswalkers came out, but it didn't really help.

Here is what we had/did.

We were creating an expansion about warring factions on a plane. We originally created them as legends, but made them have an errata that we could only have one per deck. However, we still had problems with removal and things that gain possession of creatures. We scrapped the idea for a long time, but when Planeswalkers came out, we thought maybe we had a new solution. However, it was hard to work with creatures that look and act like planewalkers, but aren't planeswalkers. We had a lot of arguements about just making them planeswalkers, but it kinda went against the roleplay and story line we had going. I'm hoping maybe I can use these Heroes to fix our problems.

I think DarkSir makes some good suggestions about making more sense of these rules. However, I wouldn't put 4 of them in your deck. Manly because if you're following the rules about the Hero Zone when they die, you'd never need more than one, since you couldn't cast more than one; legend rule.

On the note of the Hero Zone, some confusion here. I don't understand why heroes come back with the same amount of experience they left with. Knowing this, if I had removal in hand I wouldn't even bother using it. This whole rule makes targeted and mass removal useless, especially if you stick to the rule that you just put these things into play for free during your upkeep. Might as well make these thing indestructible. But if you're only running one in your deck, having a Hero that dies would kind of suck. What's the solution? It's hard to say. I guess my solution would be that Heroes never go to the graveyard, but are instead sent to the Hero Zone when they die, but must be recast in order to come back into play. This is where planeswalkers have a clear advantage being that they cannot be targeted and do not die to wrath. Maybe we can find some happy medium between the two.

I don't see a need for a Hero Phase at all for two reasons. The first being, if they come into play for free and cannot be countered (similar to lands) why would they need their own phase? Just bring them in during your main phase. The second reason is, if we modify the rules to give these things a casting cost and a need to be cast like normal creatures, then they really don't need their own phase.

I don't think I really understand how these things gain experience. Is it any time that thing at the bottom occurs? Cause this example seems like it could level up really fast. On the subject of levels, the rules state the Heroes start at level o, and gain 4 levels, but this image goes to 5. Why not just say they start at level one. It seems more logical. Personally, I would like to see them have less levels. The reasoning behind that is that the text box is really tiny when you try to get 5 different abilities on there. It might be better that the heroes only have 3 levels similar to the 3 abilities of Planeswalkers. This would allow for cooler and bigger abilities to be gained. This way it is currently written it works well for creatures that are in colors with lots of good keywords. But what if your creature is blue. Gaining islandwalk is not overly exciting and it can't gain flash once it's already in play. Imagine gaining something flashy, like a black creature gaining a dance of the dead style ability or a green creature gaining the ability to grant all your creatures overrun. This couldn't be accomplished in the current formatting. There just isn't enough space.

Here is an example of what I came up with. Does this seem like I'm doing this right?

Well, my version of the idea didn't involve the Hero zone at all. They'd just be heroic legendary creatures. They could be killed, and their experience track doesn't carry from on card to another (though they would retain it if removed from the game). I like your card idea, here's the one I put together last night:

There's no reason they couldn't have LESS levels. Just change the track progression, and use less of the level abilities. If you do a game that doesn't restrict multiple different heroes, there'd be no reason you couldn't have 3 or 4 different heroes with only 2 levelups, or something. Build a deck around the Heroes of the Lance or something.

When I create a black Hero the font of the 'levelup trigger' area doens't turn white...
note: I downloaded it from the Merry Christmas forum

I think Pichoro changed the template, so you select that from a style option on the card. It defaults to black, but you can change it to white, if you like. I haven't downloaded that version, yet, myself, as I fixed it in my own way, and haven't needed to change anything yet

As an additional comment. Now that I look back at the template. I think had I made the piping for the card wider and put the experience track in that it would look better. When I get some time I might try doing something with a vanguard size card.

I see the possibility of fleshing out 3 completely different sets of hero rules, using nearly identical hero cards. I kinda like that.

I'm planning on doing something like my idea, for some casual games. Gonna make 10 or so heroes, each representing the "aspects" of their position on the color wheel, plus an artifact one or two, make up 4 copies of each, and let friends stock their deck before a series of casual games, to see how it plays.

The problem with vanguard sized creatures is that, these things attack and defend. How is that a problem? Well if you're starting the game with these in play, the example I made is a 4/4 flier. Which means my opponent is taking 4 in the air on turn 2 EVERY time! That's totally unfair. Even the 2/2 example is pretty good on turn 2. Remember Isamaru? I would say that if these things are going to start the game in play, they shouldn't be able to attack or defend. It's just completely unfair.

A friend of mine and I were debating this about the Supertype of Hero. Is it a supertype like Legendary or is it a supertype like Planeswalker? He was saying, should my angel be Hero Artifact Creature - Angel. Meaning Hero works like all other supertypes, but I was under the impression that Hero worked like Planeswalker. Planeswalker has no other supertypes. It is the ONLY supertype a Planeswalker can have. (That we know of)

The problem with making a Hero with less than 5 abilities is that the card format doesn't support it. Have a look at my example here. No matter where you put the text, it still gets super tiny. And as you can see, when you start adding bigger and flashier abilities, there's NO WAY this thing could start the game in play on turn one.
turn 1 for me is, put this in play, drop teramorphic expanse and sac it
turn 1 for you is play teramophic expanse and sac it
by turn 2, he can attack for 4, and he has 2 XP points already. That's crazy good!

While I agree that these things are too powerful to both start in play and attack and block (I think they shouldn't start in play), I think you must have some misunderstandings about the relationships between supertypes, types, and subtypes.

Planeswalker is not a supertype, it is a type. It can theoretically be joined with other types (but only permanent (tribal, artifact, creature, enchantment, and land, but not sorcery or instant), have supertypes (world, snow, basic, legendary). Although the value of these things is questionable. Mixing 'Walker and creatures or 'Walker and basic or legendary are probably bad ideas. But I think the others could work. Heck, even World Planeswalker might be fun.

Also, theoretically, each supertype can go on any type, although some combinations (Legendary Instant, Legendary Sorcery, World Instant, World Sorcery) don't make any sense. But a type can't have just any subtype. Each type has its own specific list of subtypes, and that is why the Tribal type was created; to allow the addition of creature subtypes to non-creature cards.

Okay, with all that out of the way, your card should be "Artifact Creature Hero - Angel" if Hero is a type, and "Hero Artifact Creature - Angel" if Hero is a supertype. It must be this way because artifact is not a subtype of hero or creature; it is a type.

I intend to use Hero as a supertype, and really, my cards will be creatures. But they will have a new frame to represent their strange additional rules, and will have the hero supertype to unify them.

At any rate, it cannot be an Angel or a Human Warrior, nor can it attack and defend, if it is not a creature. The subtypes could be allow by making the card Tribal, however. But do you really want to make every one of these Tribal? You could just say Hero is a type and has the same subtype list as creatures, but why not just make them creatures when they basically are?

As for the text shrinking, I could alter it so that the text didn't shrink as dramatically, but that would leave you with the experience levels (numbers on the left) out of line with the text. This is an inherent flaw of the entire idea, not just something with my update to the template. Moxy's version effectively had five separate textboxes that were each small; I instead used the same additions to the program that were required for Planeswalkers to make this template, so that there would only be one textbox with forced spacing.

One possibility because of how I did things is to have a four ability Hero with flavor text, if that helps. lol

The only idea I have to fix it is to add a style choice to tell how many levels the card will have. But this could get to be a pain, both for me and the user. But its not impossible; Pokemon and Top Trumps have both used this sort of feature already.

I doubt that can be done. If you try, you'll run into the same problem you ran into before that caused you to split this off into a new game file.

There's no way to refer to style specific fields in the style file, so you can't retrieve the number from the experience tracker.

I'd suggest a work around (like me using "power 2" in place of "loyalty cost 4" and "toughness 2" in place of "loyalty cost 5"), but I'm fairly certain there's nowhere to pull 10 unused text fields from.

Why is there a CC if they start in the game???

He was using it to denote color.

some of us intend to give it a cost, though.

Okay so, except for the brief time I was at the movies, I spent most of the day looking at the style files of both the planeswalkers and heroes files. I was attempting to give my theory of having heroes have less abilities a whirl. Here is what I came up with so far. Looking semi-good, gotta figure out how to make my tracker bar show, respace the text, and figure out why the trigger bar is turning transparent. Shown here in White because my red card is the one I'm doing the work on, and it looks pretty miserable. Also I keep getting an error: collection has no member 'trigger color' while updating styles for 'exp exp'. I'm using the planeswalker style file as a base and adding the relevant information from the heroes file into it.

Making a little more progress. I don't understand how to really make image masks. Attempting to figure it out.

Okay, first, the source of your error. When I was working on the heroes style following the complaint about font colors, I added a new style choice "trigger color" that dealt with font color for the experience gaining ability.

Second, a quick crash course on image masks. The mask itself can be any size, and it will be stretched (or compressed) across the image field laid out using the coordinates given. Black in the mask represents an area where the image will not exist, white represents where the image will be. To get transparency effects, you use grey, with darker greys showing less image.

Finally, I think you're going about this all wrong. The Planeswalker template should never be involved.

The only way I can see heroes with a variable number of abilities working is to add a styling choice for number of fields, then have the level numbers (left side) move and become visible or invisible according to that styling choice. Then you would also adjust paragraph height according to that styling choice.

I 100% agree with you Pichoro, there should be an option right in the style tab to determine number of abilities. However, that is the part I don't know how to do. I do know how to cut and paste stuff from other files into this file.

Yeah, I shouldn't have even posted that I was having trouble with the image mask. Figured it out like 2 seconds after I posted that image. Works basically the same as photoshop layer masks.

The reason I am using the planeswalker templates is because I don't like the whole futuresite mana style with them running down the left side. I wanted them at the top right. Also, I used the planeswalker frame because I figured I could fit all the text into that textbox frame. Turns out I'm not correct there. Gonna have to make the text box about half a centimeter larger. I may also move the triggered ability elsewhere, possibly getting rid of it all together and adding it into the main textbox. I also need to figure out why I keep getting that artist brush in there. I deleted all the lines referencing artist.

2:15 am
Well I semi-finished. Still a few errors that I hope Pichoro can explain to me. I had to go back to the Heroes frame. After trying several times, I just could not make the text box any smaller and still fit the text. For shame, we're losing a lot of art with this frame. So here are my errors. When I open the set I get this warning:
On line 351: Unexpected key: 'loyalty cost 4'
On line 492: Unexpected key: 'loyalty cost box 4'

I can assume it has something to do with the missing loyalty box at the bottom. here's the odd part, the box that says "Xp" I added it last. It was working fine until I added the lines to add a fourth box. At first I thought it was because they were out of sequence. Put them in the right sequence, no such luck. In fact, adding the fourth box made MSE crash every time I turned it on. So I started removing sections to see what the problem one was. Turns out if I remove this section, it gives me those above errors, but still works.

extra card field:
	type: choice
	name: loyalty cost 4
	editable: false
	script: loyalty_image(card.loyalty_cost_4)
	Choice: loyalty up
	choice: loyalty down
	choice: loyalty naught

I've got all the photoshop files I used for this. I'll be glad to post them for you to use but it'll be the second.

I see you figured out where the paintbrush was coming from. But I'm curious; why delete that and the artist? Do you not want to credit Jason Engle for his wonderful artwork for Desai?

In reply to "On line 351: Unexpected key: 'loyalty cost 4'"... In the style file there will be a card field (not extra card field) that will be named "loyalty cost 4", but there is no similar field in the Magic game file. This is one reason that originally drove Moxy to make it a separate game all its own. When I recombined it back into Magic, rather than adding a "loyalty cost 4" field to the game file, I changed it to "power 2". "Loyalty cost 5" became "Toughness 2".

In reply to "On line 492: Unexpected key: 'loyalty cost box 4'"... This could be one of a few things. It might be a residual error from the above error. If not, look at the bottom of the style file, where the style specific fields are. At the very bottom are the areas where each style specific field is defined the same way as the others in the style file are. Just above it you'll see atleast 15 fields in this template that start with "extra card field:". This is where they are defined in the style file the same way they would be if they appeared in the game file. Each style specific field MUST have an entry in both of these areas, and not have an entry up in the main portion of the style file. It could be that the "loyalty cost box 4" field in this area has been renamed in one of the two areas, but not in the other. It could be that it does not have an "extra card field:" area. Check and make sure that it exists in both areas and is named the same thing.

The bit of script you posted has an error in it. The loyalty_image script is trying to reference a field from the game file that doesn't exist. "card.loyalty_cost_4" USED to be a game field in Moxy's version. I deleted it in mine, and as I said above, used "power_2" in its place. So change it to "card.power_2", and the error should go away. You'll still have problems with it though, if you haven't defined "power_2" in the style file as I told you to above, even though you won't get anymore error messages.

The error you're talking about with the Xp box might be the same sort of problem.

Most of your problems have been caused by incorrectly merging the two styles, which is why I advised that you stick with only one style. You have to be careful pulling code from other styles, especially when scripts are involved.

Thanks for the suggestions. Yeah, it's "working" now. Now I'm getting this warning:
On line 459: Unexpected key: 'Choice'

Does note pad have a way of showing you the line numbers so I can tell what line that is?

I didn't like how much of the card art was missing from these backgrounds. So I made the name line, type line, and text box more transparent.

Well I originally deleted the paintbrush and all that because it was in the way of the Trigger Phrase while I was using the planeswalker background. Now that I switched back to the "normal" heroes background, I tried putting it back. It would be in the exact same place as the planeswalker file. So I copied the text from the planeswalker file into this new file. The names and card numbers are where they should be, as you can see in my finished version, but the artist brush is gone. Can't figure out how to bring it back. Any suggestions?

Fixed the Experience bar. Didn't like how it looked. These are the rules my friends and I settled on for Heroes.

No, Notepad can't show you the line numbers, the only way to do it is to count. But this time, there's a better way.

Choose Edit -> Find, then do a search for "Choice", and change it to "choice". MSE is very picky indeed. I meant to comment on that in my last reply, but forgot to.

To get the paintbrush back, you have to put back in the "extra card field" portion, and the portion where the coordinates are defined. Then, there should be a script to add... Something about paintbrushes. You should be able to find what I'm talking about in the Planeswalkers; its not in my version of Heroes.

Huzzah! I found the missing parts. I was looking in the wrong part of the file. I was missing these lines. The sad part was I knew what I was missing, not sure why I couldn't find it. I kept telling myself, "You're missing the graphic locater line." Not sure I why I didn't search for the name of the graphic file. lol.

extra card field:
	type: choice
	name: paintbrush
	script: paintbrush_color(value)
	editable: false
	choice: black
	choice: white
extra card style:
	paintbrush:
		right: { 206 + card_style.illustrator.content_width * -0.5 }
		top : 486
		width: 30
		height: 12
		z index: 1
		render style: image
		choice images:
			black: /magic-future-common.mse-include/paintbrush_black.png
			white: /magic-future-common.mse-include/paintbrush_white.png

I like to use an editor called EditPlus 2 (specifically v. 2.11). It's great, as it shows line numbers and does automatic indentation (and for coding in established scripts like HTML, Javascript, VBscript, etc. it has auto syntax checking). EditPlus is free for a 30 day trial, but v. 2.11 is even better because it doesn't have a timebomb that kills it after the trial. It just courteously reminds you that you are on day 75 of your 30 day trial. Another feature I like is that it adds a menu item to the Windows right-click menu, so you can just right-click one of the mse system files and click EditPlus instead of having to do "Open With" and choosing Notepad from the menu each time.

While it doesn't actually show line numbers in notepad if you press crtl+g in notepad you can specify a line number to go to. You can use that to figure out what line number a specific line is.

That's interesting Moxydotorg, but it doesn't work for me. I found that choice under "Edit -> Go To...", but its always greyed out for me. It would be nice if it did, for some of the more awkward templating problems.

You may need to turn off word wrap.

Indeed, that was my mistake. Thank you.

Actually, with word wrap off, Notepad displays line and character numbers in the status bar.

I don't have a "status bar" apparently, then.

Try turning it on in the View menu ¦D

*sigh* What can I say? It didn't register that Sensei said "word wrap off", not "word wrap on". Ah well.

my apologies. The art wasn't on my work computer. And the thumb drive it is possibly on is out of town right now. I'll post it though when I get it back. Although it may be a bit late then.

Leaving the creature type off becomes much more complicated because things stop working the way you would naturally expect them to work.

As far as Type or Supertype (or possibly subtype) bit. It can't really be a subtype because of rules baggage unless you're playing old skool. Type makes since but I don't really see any reason to give it subtypes. Supertype is where it naturally fell for us because we saw the rules working similar to Legendary. The Hero supertype provides structure for the added mechanics on the creature cards. Now we didn't limit Hero to modifying just the creature type. You could make a Hero Land, or Hero Enchantment or whatnot if you could imagine one. Our feeble minds just haven't been able to imagine one of those up yet though.

So in the end, you'll want to add Creature as a type to your cards to allow them to enter combat and work well with other creatures on the board as players would assume.

First off, I think it would look better and more "organic" if the bottom left of the exp bar is adjusted a bit. First, the very bottom left corner being so square looks bad when the other corners of the template are rounded. The bottom right corner of the bar should be fused into the rest of the "pinstripe"; there's still a black divider there if you notice. I felt like the other one could get away with that, but this one looks off.

There's no clear definition of where the "experience trigger" and the experience abilities go (atleast not for one of us looking at it). Do they all just go into the textbox?

I'm still inclined to say there's no way to reference the number of levels and use it to adjust the typeline (and paragraph height). However, if you were to find a way, here's what I think you would need to do with it. You would have to have the typeline as a separate piece that can "float" up or down without looking out of place on the experience bar. If you do this, as it floats up, the textbox will have to stretch to fill the new area, or it too will look out of place. Thus, it has to be a separate piece as well. That leaves the actual base of the frame looking something like the promo frame, and you would have separate textboxes and typelines (like textless/token FPMs).

Yes I would leave the exp trigger and levels in the text box similar to blau's last contribution.
Here's another shot at it. I broke the type line and text box off so they can slide around if I'm able to figure that out.