AlexChurchill/MagicGeneratorDiscussion

Ok, I couldn't find the e-mail of the creator so I have to put my comments here. First, very good work, I'm impressed, a Magic generator that actually works!

Heehee, thankyou! My email address is mentioned on the parent page, AlexChurchill, but comments here are good :) --AC

But there are a couple of things I think you could improve without too much work (well, I'm not a programmer so I don't really know).

First, I think you should add a clause like "if the number of letters on the generated card is more than X, re-generate it". That would remove all the CRAZY, unusable cards with 10 different abilities that grants to all permanents an ability that grants to all permanents an ability that grants to all permanents an ability until end of turn until end of turn until end of turn.

Second, you should go easy on abilities that grant other cards abilities. It works for keyworded abilities, but others get too complex. Maybe building a second clause like "if the number of letters on the random granted ability is more tha Y, re-generate it".

These two are actually rather tricky, given this is implemented in MoonShadow's BNF-parser language. However, I do agree with the point underlying these two points, that the average complexity of the generated cards is too high. Scaling that back is a reasonably straightforward edit, which I may well do. --AC

Third, you should think of reducing the number of keyworded abilities, creature types and other block-specific things. Maybe it can be made optional (you would have a list of abilities, creature types etc. and you could choose which of them the generator can choose), if it's not too complicated. This is especially the case if you want it to be better on "random limited" games : cards that affect only goblin cephalids or arcane spells are often useless.

It is actually already optional: sometimes it'll produce cards that deal damage to "target creature or player", sometimes to "target creature", and occasionally to "target Wizard" or "target blue Goblin" or suchlike. --AC

Fourth (but I'm not so sure about this one), maybe you should consider having mana costs generated. To do that, you'd have to give a rough mana cost to all abilities as well as a mana cost estimation to alternative mana costs (such as sacrifice of permanents or loss of HP) for  and I imagine that it would be very very complicated, but it would make the generator a lot more useable in random limited. Also, it would provide more adequate costs for abilities, to avoid cards that have "1 : draw a card" (like the one that was used in one of your online games).

Heheheh. This is a massive project you request here. However, as it happens, myself and ChrisHowlett have already made quite some progress on it, over at ChrisHowlett/MCGManaCostModule. The cards there are quite a lot simpler than the ones here, because we're gradually adding abilities to that page as we teach it how to cost them. Eventually we do plan to replace this generator with that one, once we get the costings appropriate. But that is a huge undertaking. --AC

By the way, is there any way to play one of those online wiki games with someone out there ? I'd love to try them.

Absolutely! Just head on over to /TypeFourGenerated, find a subpage without an active game on it (like /TypeFourGeneratedGame5), and edit the page to say you'd like to play; then come back in a few hours or a day and see if anyone's taken you up on it :) --AC

Thanks for reading my suggestions and maybe to try and use them,

Roxolan

(you can contact me on the Wizards message boards, though it will take some time as I'm not often on them; too bad I can't leave my e-mail adress...)

Thank you, for visiting, enjoying, and commenting :) --AC

I'm obviously not an advanced computer user.  But we use this in a "fun-DC10 stack" (Fun=only using silly/fun cards).  Basically the winner of the DC10 gets to generate a card and, assuming its somewhat balanced for the format, add it into the pile (replacing a card of his or her choice, except for Squire :D).  The problem is: my local shop has no internet.  How can I use this script locally? o.o'  If this is too difficult to explain I understand...

The long answer is on [The Type-Four] page, and includes installing perl etc.  The shorter suggestion would be to just generate a big pile of cards in advance and take them along with you.  --Vitenka