Battletech plugin update

[Johnny Blaze]

Years ago when the first set came out my local card shop had a Rep come and hold a Demo day for Battletech, for awhile we had about 20 or so who played, then alittle more when Commanders came out with the Clan decks, we had a league and a few tournaments, then poof nothing,

[VictorSteiner]

Thanks for the work on the update!

[Artillero]

many thanks for the work done!

[Nirrol]

There was a reason WotC stopped printing it...

Not enough marketing? I've only ever met around 3 people IRL who every played...

The reason they stopped printing it is that people stopped playing it.
People stopped playing it because WOTC f**ked up the expansion sets, leaving players confused as to card wordings and rules. How, for example, do you break the knee joint on a jeep?
WOTC tried to remedy the situation by releasing the Commanders Edition ... but it was already too late.

[Johnny Blaze]

So having said all that if anybody wants to play Message me, we will see about playing

[IntoTheRain]

I'm still around.  Haven't been on in a while due to lack of players.  If anyone wants some games, or is on at a particular time, then I would love to get a few games in.

Also, if there really are 6-8 of us, we should try and get a game night going or something.  I may have one or two more I can scrounge up from retirement.

[smurph_83]

im always up for a game. a certain night/time and maybe a facebook group would help me greatly.

rules and such may be an issue, as certain card  have bad wording, star commander for instance. "you may reroll any die by any player this must be used during a mission" some take this as unlimited use. which it clearly is a once used per mission that he is involved in. kinda fell out with a player over this as he wouldnt back down and claimed he could reroll any die any time as many times as he wanted.

so perhaps if a group set up of a weekly battletech night we could have a (uptodate so everyone on same page) rules list (on facebook page as sticky?) and any misunderstandings go to a vote to avoid any bad feelings toward anyone. we all like to win but i prefer to enjoy it.

also besides all that we may encourage more players via facebook to join and it can house a link to the downloading of plugin etc. dont have to use your offical facebook if thats a worry.

[IntoTheRain]

Gordon / Thor Prime.

A few of us have had the chance to test out the plugin a little bit this weekend, and found a few errors that need fixing, as well as a few things that would make the game easier to see / use.


Card Errors:
1) One of the spider and spider revised images are flipped.
2) One of the Cyclops uses the Blow the Pass image.
3) The C3 Cyclops is not in the game at all.
4) The scrapheap is not visible to any players.  It needs to be visible to all.


Usability Fixes:
1) The pop out images on the left hand side are really annoying.  They take up a lot of the board room and the cards are plenty readable without the resizing.
2) The damage and construction counters are difficult to see.  The colors don't show up well against the Btech card backgrounds, and the tokens themselves are smaller and more transparent.
3) Speaking of tokens, Btech uses enough different styles of tokens, that another, extra, token type would be useful.
4) Can we get a scrap top card of stockpile button?  Or even a /scrap X ability?  Something that can be set to a hotkey or run via text command to make the game move a bit faster?
5) Something is wrong with the card images.  IDK what happened, but they are far more grainy in game than the previous versions.

Thanks guys for all the hard work!

[Johnny Blaze]

The pop out thing is set in your plugin preferences, yes it needs better tokens BUT token size can be adjusted in Preferences

[IntoTheRain]

Another, The card Double Overtime is half its intended size.

Johnny you coming to join the group or what man?!

[ThorPrime]

Card Errors:
1) One of the spider and spider revised images are flipped.
2) One of the Cyclops uses the Blow the Pass image.
3) The C3 Cyclops is not in the game at all.
4) The scrapheap is not visible to any players.  It needs to be visible to all.

1 should be fixed if you remove the cached images for the spider cards (LT231, CE272, CE273, CS081).
2 and 3 are now fixed by updating the image for CP-11-C (CR030). This version is the one with c3.
4. Is now also fixed

Usability Fixes:
1) The pop out images on the left hand side are really annoying.  They take up a lot of the board room and the cards are plenty readable without the resizing.
2) The damage and construction counters are difficult to see.  The colors don't show up well against the Btech card backgrounds, and the tokens themselves are smaller and more transparent.
3) Speaking of tokens, Btech uses enough different styles of tokens, that another, extra, token type would be useful.
4) Can we get a scrap top card of stockpile button?  Or even a /scrap X ability?  Something that can be set to a hotkey or run via text command to make the game move a bit faster?
5) Something is wrong with the card images.  IDK what happened, but they are far more grainy in game than the previous versions.

I think someone else already addressed 1. This happens when the LHS panel is made too small/large. Deleting pluginpreferences.txt should fix it.
For #2 I've gone ahead and changed to rather simple light colored token images that should be much easier to read even if they aren't very fancy...
As for handling damage. I know its not THAT clean, but you can right click on your stockpile and use the menus to navigate through Move->Top->X->To Top Of->Scrapheap. I'll look into making a better macro...

There was a problem with the ultra update list I think that was causing it to use the "high" images. If you installed ultra try updating the plugin and deleting everything in your set/setimages folder.

[ThorPrime]

Another, The card Double Overtime is half its intended size.

If you have a high res scan of that card, please contribute it. Since it was a promo card, its been nearly impossible to find a good image...

[IntoTheRain]

Whats up with the new plugin?  The cards are huge!  They don't fit into the planes and overlap each other.  They also take up WAY to much room on the card table.

Edit: but the new counters look much more readable, thank you.

[ThorPrime]

Whats up with the new plugin?  The cards are huge!  They don't fit into the planes and overlap each other.  They also take up WAY to much room on the card table.

Edit: but the new counters look much more readable, thank you.

You must have the "ultra" version installed. Intended for use on very large monitors. You can also use the scale setting on the game window to make them take up less space on the table while still being large in the LHS panel.
You might want to install the"high" version for the same res MTG uses. And if your LHS panel is already the wrong size, deleting the plugin preferences or just installing again from the high URL should fix it.

[IntoTheRain]

Did a full reinstall.  Fixed pretty much all the problems.

I did find one error still, the spider images still seem to be reversed.  There may be 1-2 still out there, but we won't know until it gets played more.

As far as the counters go, they honestly look much better this way.  Readability should take precedence, and it is difficult to see the graphic at that scale anyway.

You should get on some time and play a few games.  A man should get to reap the rewards of his hard work.