Awesome job.

So far I would like the statistic page to include a top line for "none", figuring out how to turn off a row wasn't intuitive and a none row would be.

Just one thing so far, the nag I get for using the Win 9x fix on a Win2k machine. I understand why it's there, but could it perhaps get limited to appearing once, or somehow turned off by the user?

Because a) the program only works with the 9x fix for me, and b) I don't experience the problems that other users of the 9x fix experience. I mentioned that the last time the 9x fix was discussed. I guess I'm an aberration in that regard, though. I'll just have to live with the nag.

I've set to work on making XYZ mana symbols text-rendered again.

I have an idea for making art that's outside of the frame. Use the crop function for the image as usual, but then a mask editor can allow you to select parts of the image outside of the cropped area that you want to save. This then will make everything else in the image transparent and put the image on the top layer.

Planeswalkers is more tricky, but if the image is cropped twice, one crop for the actual image box, to let it be on the top layer, and the other crop for the image underneath the rules text, then it should work.

This is, of course, impossible for futureshifted frames

Hi !
I'm a french user of MSE, and this programm is really great.
I have a question : Magic Card in french aren't the same as english or russian.
For exemple, for type and subtype, en english it's : "Creature -- Human Wizard" and in french, the same looks like that : "Créature : humain et sorcier".
Difference are :
- capital letter just for the first word
- the word "et" ("and" in french) between subtypes
- ":" (instead of "--") to separate type and subtype.
I think the change must be in the "game" file, but when I do some change, MSE doesn't want to work.
I can type like this myself in the type line on the card, but I don't have any stats for type/subtype/supertype. All card are in different supertype.
Is there any solution for me (especially for the ":")?

Thank for answer me

From Ulrich, a user who has written me today, some requests.

- A button to set all copyrights to the default set copyright.
- A way to keep filenames associated with images when you put them on a card, to make it easier to find the art again later.
- More control over booster pack contents. This user specifically wants 4 uncommons instead of 3.

I would request that support for Mythic rare appearance in booster packs be added. It seems that they are never used.

You're right, they're not. You might find my custom booster pack generator expansion interesting, in the meantime.

Nopse, for the card type just put in "Créature : humain et sorcier" and it should work, the "--" will only show up on the card if you put anything on the other side of it, so if you put all of "Créature : humain et sorcier" in front of it, it should look just fine.

But what Nopse is saying is that now "Créature : humain et sorcier" shows up as a supertype, because the separation of supertype and subtype is based on the longdash.

Thx Pichoro for explain my problem.

I've found the solution :
I've open card_fields file, and I have replace in the ######## Card Type

combined_editor(
field1: card.super_type,
separator: " — ",
field2: card.sub_type,
soft_before_empty: true,
hide_when_empty: true

by

combined_editor(
field1: card.super_type,
-->> separator: " : ", <<--
field2: card.sub_type,
soft_before_empty: true,
hide_when_empty: true

Now, I'm searching how to put the word "et" between each sub-type without considering it like one of them...

I'll be honest; I've got a request. I'd like to see MSE not open a new version of the program everytime I open a set. Sometimes I just go looking through some files for something, and end up with a dozen copies of MSE bogging my machine down for me to clean up.

I know this was a request, but honestly, its annoying. I can see the value of being able to open in a new window, but by default is frustrating.

Nopse: In the next version you will be able to select "Card language: Français" on the set info panel. For now all this does is change the type separator to " : " and the subtype separator to " et ". It would be easy to also translate things like the card and creature type dropdown lists, but I can't do that myself. If you want to help, you could translate the contents of the "data/magic.mse-game/words" file, so we end up with something like

word list:
	name: type
	word:
		name: de base
		is prefix: true
	word:
		name: légendaire
		is prefix: true
	word:
		name: tribaux 
		is prefix: true
	word:
		name: de neige
		is prefix: true
	word:
		name: monde
		is prefix: true
		line below: true
	word: Créature
	word: Artefact
	word: Artefact Créature
	word: Enchantement
	word: Instant
	word: Rituel
	word: Terrain
	word: Planeswalker

will mutli-games ever be available in one set, ex. DeckBox*/MTG,
(* = still working on it)

Unlikely - the whole data structure is based on the fact that a set is of one game. If you want to add deckboxes to MTG sets, you should try to fit them around the mtg game file.

But then you have the problem of making them sort without disrupting things. Should something so different from a Magic card be in a Magic game file? This question has come up before with Vanguard; they're just so different though.

I agree that deckboxes shouldn't be part of the magic game; I was just pointing out what would need to be done on a custom-user-template level in order to include them in a magic set. Personally, I think packaging should be a game unto itself that includes styles for magic, yugioh, vs.

Hi !
Thanks for "french card" type.
I'll translate the file as soon as possible and I post it here.
Just one thing : In french, super type is after the type (for example : "Créature légendaire" instead of "Legendary Creature")
So, I've just invert the order, and it's all OK.

I have 3 more requests (yes, allways more things...)
- a possibility to choose the words for basics lands for the auomatic number. (because when I made some "marais" instead of "Swamp", this card takes a wrong number)
- a possibility to have 3 extensions or 4 (to create a whole bloc) in the same file, and to move a card from an extension to another one in the same bloc. (I'm not sure to be clear... English is hard !!)
- a possibility to "merge" an file into another. (When I work with other guys, I need to re-instert all there work in the main file...)

Thanks.

++
Nopse

I'll change the manner by which the basic land sorting script works to detect card color instead of card type.

I've been toying around with the idea of extending locale translation to the game file itself, but it would be an intrusive change, to be sure, unless I made it so that any string constant was eligible for translation, which has issues of it's own.

In the last thread I had requested export to MWS be improved to support the correct symbols for hybrids (both mono and dual colored) and I was just wondering if that feature was implemented since I didn't see it in this list any more.

Which brings me to a another request. With the next update (and subsequent ones) can you compile a change log? Or is there one and I missed it?

We can't just use locales for game files because:
- many localized strings are used in regular expressions
- not just the strings change, for example subtypes use lower case in French, the order of some things might be different (noun adjective vs. adjective noun)

Also, program locales should be separate from game locales, it should be possible to make English cards using a Japanese interface and vice-versa. This becomes especially important when sharing cards or collaborating on sets with people using different locales.

I am quite happy with the system I came up with for the Magic game file. It is very simple:

languages := [
      English: [
           creature:       "Creature",
           type_separator: " - ",
           is_land:        regex_function_goes_here,
           # etc
      ]
      French: #...
]
# The current language
language := { languages[set.card_language] }

I gotta admit; at first you last change for translations was more than a little intimidating. But with that blurb of code, its not so bad. I still plan to use card color instead of card type for basic land sorting, though. Looking at it now, I just feel like its cleaner that way.

here's the french word_lists

++

Nopse

Whoa, spoiler needed imo.

I have a request regards the cli; what is there is absolutely fantastic, and I note some interesting new scripts that will be useful with it also (the create_card one?). The problem is that if I'm using it, for instance, in a program that acesses cards from multiple set files, I need to be able to switch between them. At the moment, I have to pretty much do a :load command every time, because I don't programmatically know which set is loaded in at the time. I could store it locally, but being able to ask the cli what set is loaded would be pretty useful.

I have a request: The ability to switch between masks in a text field. As it stands, the mask works great, but it's flawed in that we can't script an "if-then" to switch masks if needed like we can in image fields. I have a template I'm working on right now that I needed to do just that and since I couldn't, I had to put in duplicate fields instead. It works, it's a sloppy solution though.

yes the would be helpful, maybe if possible to make choosable, like in the style fields.

I don't know about "choosable", but it really should be scriptable. In fact, I'm not sure if there's any reason for any field in a style sheet to not be scriptable these days. Are z indeces scriptable currently?

I believe there is a certain overhead associated with a field that is scriptable.

wait so i can't "script" it so that one could choose there image mask inwizard via "styling info" ?

Oh, you can do that. But that's not something to be done in the program by Twan; that's already possible for you to do in a template. Something like

mask: { if styling.mask_choice == "choice1" then "mask1.png" else "mask2.png" }

The problem with masks is mostly the way they are stored internally, which is different from how images are stored, and also different for different types of fields. image, text and choice fields all handle masks in different ways. This is mostly for historical reasons, the program just grew that way. I really ought to clean it up.

Yeah, I actually thought of that while typing out the request serves me right for not thinking the problem through.

There was an older type editor for making MtG cards and etc. I still have it on an older computer. The two things I did like about it was that you were able to change the font (text, color and size) on any card by accessing you font data base and the other was an easy import your own template with limited was to move text to fit on the card. Any way for this to happen?

Hello to everyone,

this is the first time I write here.

I'm working on my personal set of cards, made by a core set and two expansions. During this develop I've noticed a couple of things that may be useful:

1) there is not an "upgrade" program from one version to another. For example, if I change mana symbol, when I install the new version they are replaced. So, if the installer identify that it's going to upgrade an extisting version it could show a window where choose what you want to upgrade or not.

2) Working on the three sets at the same time, I've needed to move a keyword and some cards from one set to another. The only way I've found was to recreate manaully the keyword and the cards. I think that could be useful to have an export feature to exports keywords and cards to a file to use to import them into another mse-set file.

Thanks in advance!

Davide (Bitez) Bitetto

Just to expand on what Twan had to say here, I want to add that it helped me to keep a record of changes made in a separate file somewhere; that way whenever I updated, I could pull that up, and quickly do any patching I needed done.

Double post for moderation.

I've moved a thread hijack *ahem* to a new thread for setting up games.

The "Are You Playing Now" Thread.

Even though i think this could be a nice feature, i doubt the usefulness. A localized version for magic looks like a completely different game for MSE rather than a different style (option), allthough it might have some common parts. You wouldn't be able to (usefully) switch from French to German, like you're not able to switch from MtG to Space: The Convergence.

You would have to have separate localized functions in the game file, probably in some styles too, have seperate Keyword lists, seperate types, different behaviour regarding ordering of types, subtypes and stuff like that. Maybe even text alignment.
And even if you can create a mapping for each of those list and overload/redefine the functions, you'd still have to translate rules and flavor text, name and stuff like that when changing card language.

Split discussion on the location of data files to "Where should MSE store data files?"

Planeswalkers aren't different enough? And they can be put in the main set file. Just sort Vanguards after the land entries under some kind of "misc" entry or whatever.

Planeswalkers:
-Have color.
-Have casting costs.
-Have types.
-Use same keyword system as other Magic cards.
-Use same numbering system as other Magic cards.
-Appear in booster packs.

Vanguard:
-Don't have color.
-Don't have casting costs.
-Don't have types (unless you try to count "Character" and "Avatar").
-Use "passive" keyword system, because they can't have most of the keywords.
-Have no numbering system.
-Don't appear in booster packs.

I think I've made my point. About all they do have in common is that they have names, art, and rules text.

I requested this in the old feature request thread, it didn't happen, and got dropped. When you export to MWS can we please export the hybrid symbols correctly. I've provided a list of what they should export as somewhere else but if you need it i'll dig it up again.

There are some parts of building a set that become tedious after a few cards, so here are my ideas to make those tasks automatic:

For the Supertype, have it automatically include the appropriate word when:
-Creature: a P/T is typed in
-Artifact: when "Artifact" is selected in the colors menu
-Legendary: I don't know whether this can be guessed at, but I was thinking anything with a comma in the name is probably Legendary
-Land: When land is selected from the colors menu
-Basic- When a basic land watermark is used
-Planeswalkers: Just have this the default when opening the template
Have an option to turn this off so non-standard cards will still be makeable.
For this to work, MSE needs to check to make sure the Supertype isn't already present.

Another suggestion I have is to have keyboard shortcuts for fields, customizable in whatever game file the fields are declared in. I think <Shift> is a good accelerator, as MSE doesn't use it to my knowledge. This, as well as limiting the mouse-keyboard switching, will allow some fields to be selected easier, i.e. watermarks. If you can't find the spot to select the field, just use the shortcut.

My last suggestion is to have a simple xml/yaml style text exporter, in addition to the more complex one now in place. I have tried to create spoiler export-templates before and the documentation is scarce, and the formatting is hard to deal with. For those who don't want to have super fancy templates, xml/yaml would do and is simple enough for anyone, and should be easy to create documentation for.

Automatic supertypes would mean adding loads more scripting, and most of it would just be annoying; the legend thign for instance; loads of legends don't have commas, and because MSE is made for custom cards, I'm betting a fair number of people will want to put commas in nonlegends. Having it do it automatically is just adding unecessary complexity to the template, especially for people new the the program. At the moment, most of the behaviour is pretty self-explanatory, and I don't think we should be adding too many 'hidden features' like this that aren't immediately obvious.

As for the artifact->artifact and land->land cases, you have it the wrong way around; the border colour shouldn't define the words, rather, the words are what define the border colour. And indeed, if you type artifact in, the frame does change to artifact. Unless you want to do something special, the frame should pretty much always be left on default; the template derives it from the text and manacost correctly in nearly all cases. Switching around the way the automation works would be counter-productive in my opinion.

Out of all your suggestions, this is the one I'm most in favour of. But it would require a lot of scripting, and is really just unnecessary. Sorry, but if you can't type out "Planeswalker", then you can select it from the dropdown. If you can't take the time to do that, (tested: takes under a second to click and click), then I'm sorry but that's just pathetic.

Erm, forgive me if I'm wrong, but shift is the accelerator key for Capital Letters. If (for example) shift-n is the shortcut for the name box, how am I supposed to put an "N" in the rules text? You ma or may not be aware that a system for quickly navigating the fields on a card via the keyboard already exists: the tab key, which cycles though every editable field on the card.

The title pretty much says it. Please oh please add SVG support for import/export of expansion symbols. I find the symbol editor a bit lacking, and being able to design an expansion symbol in my own application and then import it into MSE would be a HUGE plus.

You can import bmp or png graphics into the symbol editor (make they are strictly monotone though), though I do agree that SVG import would be a useful addition, even if it was only an import of the basic shape.

Also, welcome back, MSE forums! We missed you during sourceforge's update.

EDIT: I have a request, paritally borne of discussions we had a while ago about collaborative sets, and partly of my own development of Draft/PlayWithMSE; Versioning of set files. I would be great if, when a set file is written, it is given a version number that can be used to track changes. It could be an incremented long, or even something as simple as the date, since multiple updates in one day can usually be condensed and treated as one big update.

It occurs to me that we could trim the size of Magic templates considerably if we cut the {color}lcard system entirely. Wouldn't it work better if lands worked like multicolor cards? What if we just had clcard as the base image, (like mcard,) and used the artifact_blend_card mask for every land color combination greater or less than 2? And we used the multicolor_blend_card for two-color lands? I'm sure it'd be complicated to code it with two different masks, one of which is only used when "Only for Two Color Cards" is selected from the Use Gradient Multicolor dropdown box in the Set Info tab, and only when gray hybrid names are on. But I'm also sure it'd be worth it to trim some 270 kilobytes (over 33%) off the magic-new style. (Mind you, to trim that much, we'd have to get rid of the {color}lpt files, too, as I did with 7½ Edition.) This would also solve the annoyance of tri-color lands refusing to use the gold background, no matter how many times I select "Only for Two Color Cards."

Sorry if this seems like a sudden and major request, but I seriously think we could really streamline Magic templates. At least by Version 0.4.1.