Forge Beta: ??-??-2017 ver 1.5.60


16451 cards in total.


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Release Notes
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- Auto-Yielding Granularity -
It is now possible to specify the granularity level for auto-yields: it is possible to choose between yielding to each unique ability or to each unique card. The difference is that, for example, when yielding per ability if you auto-yield to Hellrider's triggered ability once, all triggers from other Hellrider cards will be automatically auto-yielded to as well. When yielding per card, you will need to auto-yield to each Hellrider separately. The historical Forge default of auto-yielding per ability has been restored, and the option can now be toggled in Forge Preferences (check out "Auto-Yield" under Gameplay) in both Desktop and Mobile Forge.
Note that in when auto-yielding per ability, auto-yields will NOT be automatically cleared between games in a match, which should speed the game up. When auto-yielding per card, auto-yields WILL be automatically cleared between games because they are dependent on card IDs which change from game to game, thus you will need to auto-yield to each card again in each game of the match.

- New Quest World -
There is a new quest world from Xyx based around the Portal set. Here's the description from the author: "It's 1997 and Magic has become the most elaborately complex game on the planet. In an attempt to make the game accessible to a wider audience, Wizards of the Coast releases Magic's first "Starter level" product: Portal, a set of simple cards with generic fantasy flavor. Fortunately, "simple" and "generic" do not automatically translate to "dumb" or "bland". Portal is quite elegant in its simplicity, visually distinct, with resonant top-down card design. It is both AI-friendly and beginner-friendly, but because it is not immediately apparent what all the good cards and decks are, it is also "experienced-player-friendly". If you ever want to introduce a friend to Magic and/or Forge, you could do a lot worse than send them on a Portal quest!"

- New Cubes for Drafting -
Many cubes were added for cube drafting in Booster Draft mode, many of them based on well known cubes available online. Many cubes were ported over from XMage and can thus now be played in Forge against the AI. Also, a 2017 MTGO Vintage cube was added, as contributed on the forum by zookham.

- Experimental Feature: Repeatable Sequences (Macros) -
A new feature for advanced users is available for testing. During a match, you can use the default shortcut shift-R to specify a sequence of actions (mouse clicks, essentially, in the desktop paradigm). Type the IDs of cards/players you'd like to interact with, in order. Then the default shortcut @ (shift-2) will execute your sequence, one "click" at a time, repeating when it reaches the end. This is useful for executing repeated combos, such as sacrificing a recurring creature to Goblin Bombardment. You can see the IDs of cards by turning them on under "Card Overlays" in the "Game" menu.
Caveats: Only two-player Magic is supported at the moment (opponents beyond the first cannot yet be specified in an action sequence). Objects that aren't cards or players, such as the mana pool, also cannot yet be scripted (though this may be added in the future). Finally, the macro will dutifully execute your click sequence without regard to changes in game state (so if an opponent kills your specified creature mid-macro, and you continue to execute it, you will be essentially clicking on the creature in the graveyard, which may or may not be what you want).

- Bug fixes -
As always, this release of Forge features an assortment of bug fixes and improvements based on user feedback during the 1.5.59 Beta release run.

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Known Issues
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Images for the latest sets will be available soon.

Aluren currently does not allow to cast creatures from other zones (e.g. Graveyard) if there is an active effect from another card permitting to cast them from there. This interaction is rather tricky to implement properly, but hopefully it will be resolved soon.

There is a known issue with the cost reduction for cards that have color-locked X in their mana cost (e.g. Drain Life, Soul Burn). Cost reduction will not apply correctly to these cards if the amount by which the cost is reduced is greater than the amount of colorless mana in the mana cost specified on the card (e.g. 1 for Drain Life, 2 for Soul Burn). Fixing this issue likely requires rewriting the way announced color-locked X is interpreted and paid (most likely it has to be represented with colorless mana shards but still locked to the colors required by the card).

Currently Improvise is implemented as a "clone" of Convoke keyword, which does not work correctly in corner cases (for example, together with an instance of Convoke or Delve). This is planned to be addressed soon.

Replacement effects that happen when a card moves from zone to zone (e.g. ETB replacement effect of Essence of the Wild; Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet replacement effect for a dying creature) need some rework to allow all of them to work in a rule-exact way without the need for special exclusions and hacks (see ReplacementHandler.java:120).

There is a known issue that allows Qasali Ambusher to be cast from any zone for its ambush ability (requires MayPlay update to be fixed). For now, a temporary measure was set up to prevent the AI from abusing this issue, but it is up to the human player to deliberately choose not to abuse this when possible.

Several people have noticed that the cards displayed on the battlefield will fail to be displayed when the number of cards on the battlefield increases. Maximizing the human panel can help to re-display the cards.

Some time was spent turning the static ETB triggers into the proper ETB replacement effects they should be, mainly to interact correctly with each other. This work is not yet finished. As a result there is currently some inconsistencies with "Enters the battlefield with counters" (Not incredibly noticeable).

A recent contribution to the code base should fix some of the bugs that people noticed with cloning type abilities. At this time there is one remaining issue that we hope will be addressed in the near future:
Copies of cards that setup Zone Change triggers via addComesIntoPlayCommand and addLeavesPlayCommand will not function correctly.

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Forge Archive Instructions
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The Forge archive includes a readme.txt file and we ask that you spend a few minutes reading this file as it contains some information that may prove useful. We do tend to update this file at times and you should quickly read this file and look for new information for each and every new release. Thank you.

The archive format used for the Forge distribution is ".tar.bz2". There are utilities for Windows, Mac OS and the various *nix's that can be used to extract/decompress these ".tar.bz2" archives. We recommend that you extract/decompress the Forge archive into a new and unused folder.

Some people use the Windows application 7zip. This utility can be found at http://www.7-zip.org/download.html. Mac users can double click on the archive and the application Archive Utility will launch and extract the archive. Mac users do not need to download a separate utility.

Once the Forge archive has been decompressed you should then be able to launch Forge by using the included launcher. Launching Forge by double clicking on the forge jar file in the past caused a java heap space error. Forge's memory requirements have increased over time and the launchers increase the java heap space available to Forge. Currently you can launch Forge by double clicking on the forge jar file without a java heap space error but this is likely to change as we add in more sounds, icons, etc.

(Unfortunately, until our Release Manager who owns a Mac is back, the Mac application of Forge can not be distributed. Hopefully it'll be back sooner rather than later.)
- The Mac OS application version -
We can now package Forge as a Mac OS application. You can double click the Forge.app icon to launch the forge application on your Apple computer running Mac OS. This application will automatically increase the java heap space memory for you as it launches. This version does not require the forge.command file and it does not need to start the Terminal application as part of the start up process.

The Mac OS X app version apparently requires the Mavericks OS and is not compatible with earlier OS X versions. People with earlier OS X versions should use the Windows and Linux version and launch forge on their Mac by double clicking on the included "forge.command" file.


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Contributors to This Release
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Agetian
DrDev
excessum
Gos
Hanmac
KrazyTheFox
Marek14
mcrawford620
Myrd
nefigah
pfps
Sloth
slyfox7777777
Sol
Swordshine
tjtillman
tojammot
torridus
Xyx
Zuchinni


(Quest icons used created by Teekatas, from his Legendora set http://raindropmemory.deviantart.com)
(Thanks to the XMage team for permission to use their targeting arrows.)
(Thanks to http://www.freesound.org/browse/ for providing some sound files.)
