Cockatrice - intended as successor to MWS

[Daenyth]

Just wanted to give people a heads-up that I've taken over the cockatrice package for Arch Linux. It needs a little work from the botched job the previous maintainer had, but when I have some time I'll give it a little love. Anyone feel free to message me if you have something useful, or drop by #archlinux-gaming on freenode

[mbruker]

New release! Quoted from the Cockatrice website:

A new version is finally ready to use. I apologize for all the delay. As usual, you can get pre-compiled packages on the download page.
This release mostly contains stability related fixes, but also some new features, e.g. single-player (serverless) mode, correctly attaching equipments/auras to cards, arrows that can target players, and others.
Have fun!

This version breaks protocol compatibility, so you need it in order to log in to the current server. Be sure to re-run the oracle tool as well as there have been some changes there, most notably the renaming of the cards starting with an AE ligature to just Ae so you can write the name on a typical keyboard.

I don't know how to inject data into a TCP stream, so it's not like I can easily test my beliefs about the data structures being sent.  The only thing I could do with my knowledge of communication over networks is send a copy of a handshake I'd previously seen and then try sending engineered data from there.

This sounds like a sensible thing to do. I tried to reverse engineer the MWS protocol when I first started the project, but it didn't matter enough to me so I abandoned it after seeing it wasn't even remotely a human-readable protocol. Of course, it would be really good if an interface between the protocols could be made.

Just wanted to give people a heads-up that I've taken over the cockatrice package for Arch Linux.

Thanks. Maybe once we reach beta stage and have proper versioning, we can get into other distros as well...

[AmbivalentDuck]

Of course it's not human readable, the data sent appears to primarily be pointers.  A common scenario on MWS: you Wasteland my Underground Sea (my only nonbasic in play).  If I send it to the grave before it disappears from your side and you draw an arrow to it, you get a pointer error.  Now, what sense would that make if MWS was using a standard map/associative array?  The answer is none: a map would throw an error or return a null pointer.  Clearly, when I tell you I've played a Sea I'm also telling you (bizarrely) what my pointer to that Sea is.  When you draw an error to my Sea, the data being sent must be two pointers: one for the source of the arrow, one for the target.

I'd appreciate help enumerating the hypotheses to test:

1) If I play a Beta Underground Sea, two unsigned (long?) integers will be sent.  One is a unique identifier for that edition/art/card name and the other is an unpredictable value since it's the actual pointer to the card on your side.
--This may be very wrong.  Think custom cards and custom tokens.  MWS may send everything on the card except the art.  In this case, one portion is static  and easy to reverse engineer, but there's still a short unpredictable region.
2) If you play two cards whose pointers I know, I should be able replay the standard arrow dialog substituting in the variable portion from their declaration packet(s).
3) There is a replayable and non-variable message sent for every standard action that may also have a variable (pointer? *sigh*) region.  Ie. Drawing a card, shuffling, discard, discard random, etc.
4) The opponent's copy of MWS has no knowledge of the cards in my hand or library at the start of a game.

As an aside, there's also this from MWS's developer on MWS's forums:

Hello all. About cheats - this impossible.
1) MWS have protection from debuggers, decompilers and memory pathcers
2) Connection protocol cipher before sended on network (this no text format like apprentice)
3) Cards order position when shuffle sended separatelly from card names and text.
4) All actions in MWS have message string in message log, you can't to do any actions without message in log.

All talk about cheats is imagination.

The cipher sounds annoying.  What if they exchange keys at the beginning?  It sounds like they attempt to exclude cheating by having an annoyingly hard to crack protocol rather than any sort of server-side control of information.

It also sounds like a successful crack simply breaks MWS.  Once we can forge packets, anything can.

Same source:

Real problem not in "Insufficient memory", but in internal null pointer exception, in Delphi 7 class library, which I can't fix because no official fix for Delphi 7 was available. It's really happens random on some computers.

Malhavoc, I bought Qt4 for windows yeasterday. Upgrade to Linux and Mac version I will buy later when program for windows will be ready.

Also, while .94f was released in 2005, "Detonator" keeps a semi-secret repo of new builds here http://www.magi-soft.com/private/.  Latest is in 2009.

[mbruker]

1) MWS have protection from debuggers, decompilers and memory pathcers
2) Connection protocol cipher before sended on network (this no text format like apprentice)
3) Cards order position when shuffle sended separatelly from card names and text.
4) All actions in MWS have message string in message log, you can't to do any actions without message in log.

All this means is that the MWS developers didn't have a clue about what security means. If, hypothetically, someone were to successfully reverse engineer the protocol, all these assumptions would go down the toilet.

It also sounds like a successful crack simply breaks MWS.  Once we can forge packets, anything can.

Yes.

Malhavoc, I bought Qt4 for windows yeasterday. Upgrade to Linux and Mac version I will buy later when program for windows will be ready.

Does that mean it's actually still being developed? BTW, I think a transition from Delphi to Qt requires a manual rewrite of A LOT of code.

[AmbivalentDuck]

1) MWS have protection from debuggers, decompilers and memory pathcers
2) Connection protocol cipher before sended on network (this no text format like apprentice)
3) Cards order position when shuffle sended separatelly from card names and text.
4) All actions in MWS have message string in message log, you can't to do any actions without message in log.

All this means is that the MWS developers didn't have a clue about what security means. If, hypothetically, someone were to successfully reverse engineer the protocol, all these assumptions would go down the toilet.

But does anyone know how to go about it?  I agree that the security looks like shit and the cipher is probably just an obfuscation algorithm.  It's not going to be RSA or some such.

Malhavoc, I bought Qt4 for windows yeasterday. Upgrade to Linux and Mac version I will buy later when program for windows will be ready.

Does that mean it's actually still being developed? BTW, I think a transition from Delphi to Qt requires a manual rewrite of A LOT of code.

The way it sounds, there are two Russian programmers actually making a living off MWS registrations.  Supposedly, a QT version is forthcoming but it's in the same class as Duke Nukem Forever.

[yawg07]

Duke Nukem Forever.

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2010/09/03/controversial-long-awaited-duke-nukem-forever-will-finally-be-released/
Trust me, I'm just as shocked...

[piZZero]

I've been testing Cockatrice and it looked great to me, and very easy to use. The only problem I had so far, is the lack of players.

[piZZero]

Today while I was playing it crashed, and now everytime I try to connect it says: Socket error - Connection refused.

Any fix?

[mbruker]

Today while I was playing it crashed, and now everytime I try to connect it says: Socket error - Connection refused.

Apparently, you crashed the server. This needs to be fixed ASAP. Do you remember what your last action was (and in what kind of situation)? I'm afraid I haven't got a log file because it accidentally got overwritten

[piZZero]

Mmm, I don't really remember what series of actions I took, but I believe I was trying to cast a Sword to Plowshares to a Goyf

And I'm sorry!

[mbruker]

And I'm sorry!

You shouldn't be, discovering bugs is a good thing. I think we're going to see at least one extra crash (hopefully with log this time) before it can be fixed though.

[piZZero]

I'm getting the same error today, but this time I've done nothing. I'm just trying to connect to the server and it says the Socket error.

[mbruker]

The instability has been fixed. I'm going to update the server as soon as there's no game running.

[piZZero]

The instability has been fixed. I'm going to update the server as soon as there's no game running.

Same problem again today. Have you found out what makes the server crash?

[mbruker]

Yes, I just haven't had an opportunity to actually restart it as there were always people connected to it. Now it should be fixed.

[BruiZar]

Would you be so kind as to explain what makes our interface awful, in your opinion? You see, we can't fix what we don't know is broken.
Again, I'm sorry for the currently very slow development. I hope there will be more time soon.

With the caveat that I'm judging just on screenshots, I'd say it's because it's because you don't have somebody really interested in interfaces in charge of them . But that's the root problem. Here's a specific example:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v410/UniversalSnip/cockatriceplayscreen.jpg

everything I boxed out is wasted space for one reason or another.

• The phases icons and section is ugly (Not intuitive/clear, not aesthetically pleasing)
• The playboard is ugly. I'd like to have a high quality picture of a pro tour table instead.
• The number of cards in your library shouldn't be displayed. In a normal game, that information is not apparent, so it should be an option that you can toggle on or off.
• Consider using golden ratios in your GUI design
• Keep margins consistent
• The fonts don't look good, it looks like  you haven´t made a choice yet and simply used a fixed width font that programmers like to use.
• The buttons for floating mana, etc don't look good, they are colored circles, not buttons
• It could use a nice D20 /coinflip animation to decide who goes first
• Mouse overs on the cards in your hand to bring them to the front / scale size for readability. Requires you overhaul the cards in hands section, this would also make effects from cards like Hypnotic Specter more lifelike
• Cards on the battlefield are too small
• Awkward positioning of your opponent's hand.
• Top right magic the gathering card should get removed entirely. It´s not neccesary if you make the battlefield readable
• Implement voice chat
• Implement a system that extract decklists so players can review an online metagame analysis
• Seperate life and poison counters from floating mana counters
• Include several different sounds for playing a card. You don't need a foley artist, simply record it yourself
• Change the entire left section (the section with your deck, graveyard, exile). Right now, there is not really a design at all, only the positions are blocked out, and the layout leaves a lot to be desired.

The problem is that you didn´t think about the interface, you simply implemented what MWS came up with, and changed the phases bar from the middle to the left of the screen. You must critically evaluate each and every aspect of the user interface and ensure it is consistent, easy and intuitive. This is not strange, because you´re a coder, and coders are often horrible in user interface design. Either get a designer on board or read:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/2149513/OS-X-Human-Interface-Guidelines

http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/AppleHIGuidelines/XHIGIntro/XHIGIntro.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP30000894-TP6

I want a program that comes as close as possible to the real experience. I don´t want to push buttons, I don´t want to feel like I´m interacting with my computer, I want to play magic.

[mbruker]

The phases icons and section is ugly (Not intuitive/clear, not aesthetically pleasing)

While this may be true, it would be more constructive to come up with an idea how it should be done instead.

The playboard is ugly. I'd like to have a high quality picture of a pro tour table instead.

Why don't you load one? I don't see a reason to include something special like that in such a general purpose application.

The number of cards in your library shouldn't be displayed. In a normal game, that information is not apparent, so it should be an option that you can toggle on or off.
It could use a nice D20 /coinflip animation to decide who goes first
Implement voice chat
Implement a system that extract decklists so players can review an online metagame analysis

No, all this is nonsense.

Consider using golden ratios in your GUI design
Keep margins consistent
The fonts don't look good, it looks like  you haven´t made a choice yet and simply used a fixed width font that programmers like to use.

I don't use any fixed width fonts in the interface. This might be a Mac issue I haven't noticed.

The buttons for floating mana, etc don't look good, they are colored circles, not buttons

Why should they be buttons? You don't have buttons in real life either.

Mouse overs on the cards in your hand to bring them to the front / scale size for readability. Requires you overhaul the cards in hands section

This I get (and it seems reasonable), but

this would also make effects from cards like Hypnotic Specter more lifelike

this I don't.

Cards on the battlefield are too small

Not doable any other way without implementing the game rules. Already explained A LOT of times.

Awkward positioning of your opponent's hand.

Where would you like his hand to be? I could see myself hiding it altogether since it only displays blanks anyway.

Top right magic the gathering card should get removed entirely. It´s not neccesary if you make the battlefield readable

The battlefield cannot be made readable, see above. An MTGO-like middle-click zoom could (and probably will) be implemented, but what will touchpad users do who don't have a middle button?

Seperate life and poison counters from floating mana counters

Yes.

Include several different sounds for playing a card. You don't need a foley artist, simply record it yourself

Possibly. Would be the first thing I'd turn off though.

Change the entire left section (the section with your deck, graveyard, exile). Right now, there is not really a design at all, only the positions are blocked out, and the layout leaves a lot to be desired.

As is the case throughout your entire post, I don't have a clue about what you exactly want. This doesn't help at all.

[AmbivalentDuck]

The number of cards in your library shouldn't be displayed. In a normal game, that information is not apparent, so it should be an option that you can toggle on or off.
It could use a nice D20 /coinflip animation to decide who goes first
Implement voice chat
Implement a system that extract decklists so players can review an online metagame analysis

No, all this is nonsense.

Since the cockatrice protocol is open, anyone could write an observer watched every open game used some Bayesian inference to get decklists/archetypes, and computed a meta accordingly.  Feel free :p

[The Atog Lord]

These comments simply reflect that different people use these tools for different purposes. When I use MODO, I find the ``attack'' sound effects distracting and annoying. The fact that an animation of a coinflip is shown is also annoying, and it does nothing to contribute to the actual game. I'm glad that MWS excludes those annoying features.

The only point of Bruizar's that I agree with is that the placement of cards is awkward. The intuitive placement is to have the cards placed as in MWS -- yours along the screen bottom and the opponent's at the screen top. These most closely resembles layout in real life. But even this is a matter of taste.

[BruiZar]

The phases icons and section is ugly (Not intuitive/clear, not aesthetically pleasing)

While this may be true, it would be more constructive to come up with an idea how it should be done instead.

The font on the 1 and 2 (Which I guess are mainphases) are not clear. The circles around them look like buttons, but the picture is already in a button frame. You can't have 2 buttons within eachother.
The symbols are not appealing. If you don't have a designer I suggest making vector art yourself, using proper gradients and scaling it down to the size of your buttons. Otherwise, let a designer create raster art at 4* the size, then scale down. The backgrounds of the buttons (White rectangles) are too plain. If you want to go with a 'less is more' approach, be consistent with it. This means the background shouldn't be green, grey, blue and black. The swords is blue+grey, the shield is brown, the end turn is red, the clean up step is lightbrown with yellow, the mainphases are darkblue with a gradient, the draw step is brown with red and black, the upkeep is grey with a gradient (i think?). Remove all the hues, apply a consistent color to all of the buttons. Either use gradients everywhere or no where. And please, redesign the buttons cause they look like >_<.

I won´t bother you with color theory, but at least pick a palette using this site so its at least balanced for the eyes. http://colorschemedesigner.com/

The playboard is ugly. I'd like to have a high quality picture of a pro tour table instead.

Why don't you load one? I don't see a reason to include something special like that in such a general purpose application.

Well, whatever you do, get rid of the current one. Make it a solid color if you can´t make something that looks polished because the pattern you have right now is like tabasco in my eyes.

The number of cards in your library shouldn't be displayed. In a normal game, that information is not apparent, so it should be an option that you can toggle on or off.
It could use a nice D20 /coinflip animation to decide who goes first
Implement voice chat
Implement a system that extract decklists so players can review an online metagame analysis

No, all this is nonsense.

*This just makes you play worst in tournament settings and it clutters the screen with information you would normally not have. It´s not neccesary and takes away skill from the game.
*Voice chat is not nonsense, especially if you´re going to be making this for touch input devices.
*D20/Coinflip can be tastefully done, again, especially if you´re going to make this for touch input devices
*Metagame analysis is nice to have, at least for me. Not essential but would help increase the value of your tool.

Consider using golden ratios in your GUI design
Keep margins consistent
The fonts don't look good, it looks like  you haven´t made a choice yet and simply used a fixed width font that programmers like to use.

I don't use any fixed width fonts in the interface. This might be a Mac issue I haven't noticed.

In any case, your margins are not consistent. The weighting of your design is flawed. For more information I suggest you read into this http://960.gs/

The buttons for floating mana, etc don't look good, they are colored circles, not buttons

Why should they be buttons? You don't have buttons in real life either.

Because people are used to pushing buttons, and the fact that these buttons are, buttons. You have to push the colored circles which make them buttons. I hope you understand what a button is.

Mouse overs on the cards in your hand to bring them to the front / scale size for readability. Requires you overhaul the cards in hands section

This I get (and it seems reasonable), but

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f17XZtMRopk 1:40, change album covers to magic cards, selected card is bigger and brought to upper most layer.

this would also make effects from cards like Hypnotic Specter more lifelike

this I don't.

For picking random cards. Same as above, but it would show the back of a card, and you could pick one of the cards in the same manner.

Cards on the battlefield are too small

Not doable any other way without implementing the game rules. Already explained A LOT of times.

This is simply poor design. It's very doable and games rules have nothing to do with the fact that you have such small game-objects. If you can't fit the game rules, redesign it.

Awkward positioning of your opponent's hand.

Where would you like his hand to be? I could see myself hiding it altogether since it only displays blanks anyway.

In the middle of the screen, held the way you would normally hold cards, First Person Shooter style.

Top right magic the gathering card should get removed entirely. It´s not neccesary if you make the battlefield readable

The battlefield cannot be made readable, see above. An MTGO-like middle-click zoom could (and probably will) be implemented, but what will touchpad users do who don't have a middle button?

Which touchpad users are you talking about? For which platforms is this program intended? Are you developing an iPad client? If so, I would worry more about the current design of your chat window for touch-input devices.

Include several different sounds for playing a card. You don't need a foley artist, simply record it yourself

Possibly. Would be the first thing I'd turn off though.

Audio and visual feedback is important for a user interface. If you have insufficient feedback, the program will simply be vague and unintuitive. The least annoying sound is the sound of actual cards.

Change the entire left section (the section with your deck, graveyard, exile). Right now, there is not really a design at all, only the positions are blocked out, and the layout leaves a lot to be desired.

As is the case throughout your entire post, I don't have a clue about what you exactly want. This doesn't help at all.

The green, grey and black areas to the left of the play field need a revamp. You tell me you can´t increase the size of the cards, but you waste space with the black area. The entire green area can be removed because you can position your hand in the bottom middle of the screen. Yay, more real estate gained. The grey area has an ugly Player label (Font with a fuzzy green background?) Again, not consistent with the rest of the screen. I personally think the deck should be 3d, but not the crappy isometric Patience card-stack 3d, but proper 3d. I understand that this will probably be a pain for you to do from an engineering perspective, but you can trick the effect visually. Just don´t make it look like Patience.

The problem is, you have no design. Please understand that people like pretty things. Design is more science than art. If you stick to the rules, it will look better. I'm not criticizing you for lack of polish because it's still in development. What I see is the potential for a great application, which will go to waste if it's not properly designed. The devil is in the details. I hope this helps.

Edit
I'm being so honest about what I think of it with a reason. Your users won't give you feedback, they'll just uninstall it and go on with their lives. They'll forget about you, go back to MWS or whatever they used before, and you'll be wondering where all your users are. I do appreciate the effort, but in order to make this a success you must realize that, fan project or not, the quality should be high.

[Delha]

@Bruizar: I think part of the problem here is that while design may arguably be a science rather than an art (I disagree, but whatever), it is certainly not a hard science. Since we're talking aesthetics, you're going to have lots of differing opinions. You're arguing as if your viewpoint is The One True Way.

[BruiZar]

That is a misconception dehla. Something that is aesthetically pleasing is something that is easy for the mind to process. In other words, clearly identifiable, organized work always looks better than the opposite. Things like contrast, typeface, font size, composition, and even golden ratios, color palettes, silhouettes and good application of color theory dictate how well the design is. Golden ratios apply to nearly everything in good design. Even the shape of your head and the distance of your facial features use golden ratio (which is a mathmatical phenomenon to begin with). There has nothing to do with opinion. There is a lot of research on this topic. If you simply follow the rules, you can make a great design. I'm not asking for a genius design because I doubt he is an art savant.

It may seem counterintuitive but your opinion about what you think looks nice is not unique. We are machines built to interpret data, and the easier it is for us to consume data, the less we have to think, the more intuitive the experience and the higher the aesthetic value.

I have given links to apples design guidelines (which he should apply anyway since he's developing for mac), 960grid system (usually used for website design, but usable for aligning objects and keeping margins consistent), a colorwheel with a palette generator so je doesn't have to learn color theory. Engineering isn't enough. It has to be usable and appealing.

Edit: concerning my previous comment on the buttons. Youcan use other tools for marking mana, it doesn't have to be a button but the current build has buttons which do not look like buttons. This lack of clarity takes away from the design.

[mbruker]

The font on the 1 and 2 (Which I guess are mainphases) are not clear. The circles around them look like buttons, but the picture is already in a button frame. You can't have 2 buttons within eachother.

I might agree with that.

If you don't have a designer

In fact, I do, just obviously not a professional one.

And please, redesign the buttons cause they look like >_<.

I'll forward these ideas. Sadly I don't have time to learn how to do that ATM.

Well, whatever you do, get rid of the current one. Make it a solid color if you can´t make something that looks polished because the pattern you have right now is like tabasco in my eyes.

Which one do you mean? Apart from the solid color, Cockatrice comes with three different textures for the play zones. I like the "fabric" one best.

*This just makes you play worst in tournament settings and it clutters the screen with information you would normally not have. It´s not neccesary and takes away skill from the game.

In a tournament setting, if for some reason I need to know the number of cards, I count them. Since you can't do that yourself in such a program, the number has to be displayed somehow. Why make the user waste mouse clicks when the number can be displayed right there on the pile where no other useful information could be displayed anyway?

Voice chat is not nonsense, especially if you´re going to be making this for touch input devices.

Voice chat itself is not nonsense, implementing it in such an application is. There are perfectly working implementations out there, and I don't see a reason to reinvent the wheel. Of course, it would be nice to have some kind of integration, but I'm not going to write everything from scratch just for that purpose.

*D20/Coinflip can be tastefully done, again, especially if you´re going to make this for touch input devices

It can, it's just not necessary.

*Metagame analysis is nice to have, at least for me. Not essential but would help increase the value of your tool.

There's going to be some kind of deck list sharing mechanism. Since for tournaments, the server-side deck storage tool will have to be used and the decks will be stored in the database, it won't be difficult to publish them in some way. I'll have to think about all that very carefully, though.
Any analysis you want to do, you can perfectly do with a suited analysis tool. This program is for playing, and overloading it with features only very few people need will not exactly help beginners understand it.

In any case, your margins are not consistent. The weighting of your design is flawed.

You may be right about that, but adjusting this to look perfect could be quite a bit of work that I don't have the resources for.

I hope you understand what a button is.

Are you saying that everything that behaves like a button should be rendered with that beveled gray corner? I don't think the mana counters would look very good if they were rendered like that. If you don't mean that, I apparently don't know what a button is.

For picking random cards. Same as above, but it would show the back of a card, and you could pick one of the cards in the same manner.

You can do with far fewer mouse clicks if you just let the server choose the card. Your randomly discarding a card has nothing to do with your opponent, and it shouldn't have.

Cards on the battlefield are too small

Not doable any other way without implementing the game rules. Already explained A LOT of times.

This is simply poor design. It's very doable

It's not my fault if you didn't read what I wrote on the subject before. The table has four rows, and users who like to place the cards freely want to have those rows. If everybody just let the cards fall into place by single- (or double-)clicking, empty rows could be hidden. As this is not the case, they can't. So the height of the table is 8 cards total, and there's nothing you can do about that. Your idea to make the hands horizontal (which is possible through configuration, by the way!) takes away even more vertical space.

Which touchpad users are you talking about? For which platforms is this program intended? Are you developing an iPad client?

My laptop has a touchpad. I don't know if I'm living in some kind of Neanderthal world there.

Audio and visual feedback is important for a user interface. If you have insufficient feedback, the program will simply be vague and unintuitive. The least annoying sound is the sound of actual cards.

Fine. I'm not saying I won't do it

Change the entire left section (the section with your deck, graveyard, exile). Right now, there is not really a design at all, only the positions are blocked out, and the layout leaves a lot to be desired.

As is the case throughout your entire post, I don't have a clue about what you exactly want. This doesn't help at all.

The green, grey and black areas to the left of the play field need a revamp.

Are we talking about the same version of the program? I don't have a black area left of the play field. Like I said, the green one can be transferred to the bottom middle by clicking a checkbox in the Apperance tab of the config thing (if you'd like to have your cards displayed even smaller, that is).

The grey area has an ugly Player label (Font with a fuzzy green background?)

I agree, it's ugly. The background is not green, but rather a lighter shade of grey than the rest. I don't know how to make it look nicer.

I personally think the deck should be 3d, [...] I understand that this will probably be a pain for you to do from an engineering perspective

Yes.

The problem is, you have no design. Please understand that people like pretty things. Design is more science than art. If you stick to the rules, it will look better. I'm not criticizing you for lack of polish because it's still in development. What I see is the potential for a great application, which will go to waste if it's not properly designed. The devil is in the details. I hope this helps.
I'm being so honest about what I think of it with a reason.

Thanks. Honest and constructive comments I always appreciate, critism due to lack of understanding of the problem at hand too high a level of abstraction, I do not so much. Sometimes it's difficult arguing with you as your posts tend to contain a little of both.

They'll forget about you, go back to MWS or whatever they used before

MWS sure is a masterful piece of eye candy

It may seem counterintuitive but your opinion about what you think looks nice is not unique. We are machines built to interpret data, and the easier it is for us to consume data, the less we have to think, the more intuitive the experience and the higher the aesthetic value.

I agree.

I have given links to apples design guidelines (which he should apply anyway since he's developing for mac)

I'm not developing for Mac specifically, I have OSX for the sole purpose of compiling this application. If it needs to look perfect on one platform and there's only one way of it actually doing so, it should look the same on all platforms, right? And with some exceptions (fonts etc.) it pretty much does.
Let's not let this thread derail into some kind of OS / GUI toolkit bashing discussion.

[Delha]

From Dictionary.com

aes·thet·ic   /ɛsˈθɛtɪk or, especially Brit., is-/  Show Spelled[es-thet-ik or, especially Brit., ees-]  Show IPA
–adjective
1. pertaining to a sense of the beautiful or to the science of aesthetics.
2. having a sense of the beautiful; characterized by a love of beauty.
3. pertaining to, involving, or concerned with pure emotion and sensation as opposed to pure intellectuality.
–noun
4. a philosophical theory or idea of what is aesthetically valid at a given time and place: the clean lines, bare surfaces, and sense of space that bespeak the machine-age aesthetic.
5. aesthetics.
6. Archaic . the study of the nature of sensation.

Care to show me where you found your definition? None of these say anything about ease of interpretation.

It may seem counterintuitive but your opinion about what you think looks nice is not unique. We are machines built to interpret data, and the easier it is for us to consume data, the less we have to think, the more intuitive the experience and the higher the aesthetic value.

I've never claimed that what a given person thinks looks nice is unique. I simply claimed that those views are not uniform, which is implied by your viewpoint. I don't disagree for a moment that there are rules one can follow, I've even learned some of them myself. That doesn't change the fact that any given product will be appreciated to varying degrees by different people. I would point toward the desire for customizability as a standing testament to this claim.

[Daenyth]

Just to provide a counterpoint, I'd much rather a clean and simple interface. MWS really makes me want to vomit just looking at it. It's far too busy and distracting. Mindless and Scrollrack look much better imo

[BruiZar]

From Dictionary.com

aes·thet·ic   /ɛsˈθɛtɪk or, especially Brit., is-/  Show Spelled[es-thet-ik or, especially Brit., ees-]  Show IPA
–adjective
1. pertaining to a sense of the beautiful or to the science of aesthetics.
2. having a sense of the beautiful; characterized by a love of beauty.
3. pertaining to, involving, or concerned with pure emotion and sensation as opposed to pure intellectuality.
–noun
4. a philosophical theory or idea of what is aesthetically valid at a given time and place: the clean lines, bare surfaces, and sense of space that bespeak the machine-age aesthetic.
5. aesthetics.
6. Archaic . the study of the nature of sensation.

Care to show me where you found your definition? None of these say anything about ease of interpretation.

I don't have time to look everything up now. Dictionary definitions can differ from specialist meaning/industry standards/jargon. I don't feel like argueing over this. I've spent the last couple of years managing designers and artists as a producer, so I've analyzed and evaluated GUI and UX design for a while now.



The list I wrote out was based on a previous version. The current one is better.

I would remove the entire chat part and perhaps implement it the same way MMORPGs do. Make it fade out when the chat is inactive several seconds and make it pop up when you press enter. That gives you ~25% more real estate for the battlefield. if you remove the green area, you will gain another ~6%. Place the hand in front, the way I showed you (how the iPod album browser works.). Don't try to keep all the cards apart from each other. You can stack them and use mouse over to bring one to the front. You don't need 4 rows. 3 is more than enough. Use the horizontal space instead of the vertical space for the cards. By removing 1 row you will have 25% less space for cards, but you gained ~30% by removing the chat section and the green area. This means that you can have bigger pictures and keep approximately the same number of cards on the battlefield. The reason for this is because you are now not limited to the vertical, but the horizontal axis and a magic card is less wide than it is high.


Also, the grey area around the phases buttons is too wide. Make it more narrow and use the same margin as you do with floating mana symbols, space between deck/graveyard/exile, etc.

Is the "Spielername / Deck" section really important? I think it's just filler and takes up precious space.
I understand what you mean by Touchpad now. My mistake, confused it for touch screen interfaces because you are developing it for mac as well. That said, you don't need a middle mouse button to zoom. You can simply zoom out the battlefield automatically if a certain number of permanents are on the battlefield. Don´t put the burden on the user, put the burden on the designer.

About MWS, I don´t use MWS for a long while now. It´s a huge time trap and gives me headaches. The interface is horrible and it feels like looking at a PC from the 80ies. There are more people that refuse to play on MWS for this reason.

About the background.









I´m pretty sure you can´t copy paste this because you´d infringe copyrights, but you can take a similar approach to the background. Also, note how none of these pictures use 4 rows of cards.

[mbruker]

I would remove the entire chat part and [...] Make it fade out when the chat is inactive several seconds and make it pop up when you press enter.

The message log is not only a chat box, but it shows all changes to game, and it does it better than the table itself does. While playing, I pretty much look only at the chat window while my opponent does stuff. This way, you can process the change in information much faster. This is because there are no hands moving cards around like there are in real life, so changes happen instantly, and you don't know where to look for them at a given moment.

Is the "Spielername / Deck" section really important?

It's part of the game state. I think every non-private part of the game state should be visible at all times. From the game's perspective, this includes the number of spectators and the deck IDs of the players.

You can simply zoom out the battlefield automatically if a certain number of permanents are on the battlefield.

This is already the case.

note how none of these pictures use 4 rows of cards.

This is because in real life, people don't save a row for spells on the stack. I had been considering making a real stack for a long time, but ultimately decided it complicates playing a lot for very little benefit. Again, the biggest problem is that many people don't use the predefined rows like they're supposed to (it would even save them many clicks) but throw their cards on the table anywhere they like. Because of that, the "stack" has to stay on the table and cannot be put into another zone that would dynamically disappear when not needed. This is what I meant when I said it can't be done without implementing the game rules.

[BruiZar]

I would remove the entire chat part and [...] Make it fade out when the chat is inactive several seconds and make it pop up when you press enter.

The message log is not only a chat box, but it shows all changes to game, and it does it better than the table itself does. While playing, I pretty much look only at the chat window while my opponent does stuff. This way, you can process the change in information much faster. This is because there are no hands moving cards around like there are in real life, so changes happen instantly, and you don't know where to look for them at a given moment.

Valid, I'll discuss later

Is the "Spielername / Deck" section really important?

It's part of the game state. I think every non-private part of the game state should be visible at all times. From the game's perspective, this includes the number of spectators and the deck IDs of the players.
Alright, that's a valid point. Again referring to FPS games, perhaps holding TAB works?

You can simply zoom out the battlefield automatically if a certain number of permanents are on the battlefield.

This is already the case.
Alright, so if you can implement automatic Zooming, I really see no reason for having the small cards. Make them big, they´ll scale anyway. The stack shouldn't be relevant to this.

note how none of these pictures use 4 rows of cards.

This is because in real life, people don't save a row for spells on the stack. I had been considering making a real stack for a long time, but ultimately decided it complicates playing a lot for very little benefit. Again, the biggest problem is that many people don't use the predefined rows like they're supposed to (it would even save them many clicks) but throw their cards on the table anywhere they like. Because of that, the "stack" has to stay on the table and cannot be put into another zone that would dynamically disappear when not needed. This is what I meant when I said it can't be done without implementing the game rules.

I don´t see the use for rows at all to be honest. The only thing it does is quickly snap cards to a grid. I doubt players will use the rows for the stack because it´s too time consuming and you´d have to manually drag your spells onto the opponent´s spell to respond. MWS uses its arrows and that works, although its not a very pretty solution. If it is really important to have the stack displayed visually I suggest you do implement the necessary rules  changes. I personally doubt you would need this in the initial release and can be developed later. Right now, the design is suffering from your workaround for the stack.

To me it feels like you are defending rows and search for reasons to include it, instead of reasons to simplify and perhaps exclude it.

[mbruker]

Again referring to FPS games, perhaps holding TAB works?

That would work. Not having to hold Tab and seeing the information anyway works even better.

I doubt players will use the rows for the stack because it´s too time consuming and you´d have to manually drag your spells onto the opponent´s spell to respond.

This comment only shows that you've never really used the program. When you click a card that is in your hand, it will fall onto the table at a predetermined position. I never drag a card from my hand anywhere. The place where the card is put is determined by its card type. The "stack" row isn't really a stack but a row reserved for instants and sorceries. The differences are that both players have such a row, and that there are no virtual objects (abilities, copies etc) to be put there. As I said, it's not possible to create a separate zone for non-permanent spells without forcing users to always single-click the cards into that zone (instead of dragging). If I were to do that, I would have to implement some other things as well, mostly dynamic creation of temporary piles for cards like Gifts Ungiven or whatever, since you wouldn't be able to just drag the cards onto the table any more. The idea is not really bad, I just don't think it'll be easier to use than it is now, so all that has to be considered very carefully.
In the beginning, there were no rows, and you could put cards wherever you wanted. This was a bad concept because it implied a direct connection between rendering and server-side coordinates. Using the concept of a fixed table grid that is not directly correlated with display coordinates, it's possible to display the pieces of information given to you by the server the way you want it. The option "economic land layout" is an example of this. Keep in mind that the rows need not necessarily be displayed as rows, but the cards in one row share the same logical row index to group cards that contextually belong together (lands in one logical row, creatures in another, instants and sorceries in yet another).
I'm not going to discuss this any further as long as you're not willing to understand what this is all about. Of course it's not optimal, and there is a lot of room for improvement, but you're thinking in the wrong direction here.

[BruiZar]

Alright, discussion closed then. You have my feedback. Decide for yourself what works best.

edit: I'll give one last round of feedback.


Automatic set importer is nice, in MWS its is a pain to install. -> Should be able to check ´automatically start cockatrice after downloading´
Deck building works

My only real compaints come from the game screen. There is so much wrong that I didnt have any more place to scribble. I wouldn't make a long row of floating mana symbols, atleast not vertically. Consider overhauling the entire left section.