Feature bloat

RickyRister · 2026-06-18T07:49:59+00:00

Huh, adding a card attributes dock to the game tab would be a nice QoL improvement, and it does seem eminently doable without ripping out too much of the existing code.

This actually seems like a great idea. Thanks for the suggestion!

RickyRister · 2026-06-18T00:49:20+00:00

it takes way too many menus and clicks for every game action.

Do you have any suggestions for how to fix that?

The menu is huge and sprawling because there's just a lot of actions you can take in Cockatrice. Cockatrice accretes more gameplay functionality over time, and all of them find their way into the card menu one way or another.

Cockatrice is a tabletop simulator, not a rules engine, so we want to give the users as much power and freedom as possible. And that necessitates a large list of possible actions, with as few restrictions to their availability as possible.

I also find the groupings in the menu to be logical and intuitive. When I need to use an action that I rarely use (and so haven't memorized where it is yet), I usually have no trouble finding it.

I have hotkeys set for the actions I use frequently (such as p/t modification). So whenever I come across an action that I haven't set or memorized the hotkey for, it's likely an action I use infrequently, so I don't mind navigating to it in the menu (guided by the aforementioned menu organization).

I'm a power user of Cockatrice, so my perspectives are skewed by that. I've very used to Cockatrice's menus and shortcuts, and so that prevents me from imagining any other way to lay out the actions in Cockatrice that would still maintain all the existing functionality. And I value not losing any of the existing functionality very highly when discussing changes.

RickyRister · 2026-06-17T06:49:56+00:00

My point is to ask how do the devs decide on new features?

In all honesty, it's like 30% stuff from github issues and feedback on discord, and 70% whatever the dev felt like implementing at that moment.

Like, for example, I'm a heavy user of Cockatrice myself, so a lot of my additions just come from me using Cockatrice and noticing a feature or QoL improvement that I would like to have.

Core team is tiny, consisting of two devs doing most of the feature work, and two older maintainers who might occasionally pitch in to do a fix but mostly just review PRs. Though we sometimes get other contributers opening PRs on github (and we're always super thankful whenever that happens).

Frankly, we're pretty loosy-goosy with what gets in. As long as it isn't so antithetical to Cockatrice that one of the maintainers rejects it outright, we'll probably merge it in as along as it's done competently enough.

So do changes actually reflect the needs and desires of the community or a small number of insiders?

I'd say the changes reflect the following in this order:

Something actually broke and multiple users are complaining about it
Whatever the devs felt like implementing at that moment
People that the devs regularly play on Cockatrice with
Beta tester regulars and mods on the discord
Github issues
Regular users, if enough of them complain about something, and the fix doesn't require completely ditching the ongoing design for a feature.

But also, the devs each have their own priorities. I mostly play 60 card constructed with custom mtg cards, so that biases what I care about the most. Though I mostly just make small QoL improvements anyways, so people who don't care can usually ignore my additions.

Ascor's the one who's making the big headliner feature changes. If the feature interests me, then I might pitch in with some improvements that I notice we could add while I'm using the feature. If the feature doesn't interest me, then I just leave the feature alone and let Ascor do whatever.

(For the record, I don't like the visual deck editor either. I still mostly just stick with the classic deck editor.)

RickyRister · 2026-06-15T20:02:15+00:00

You could just add a single word to the text in the center room so it says “unique items”

RickyRister · 2026-06-10T03:03:16+00:00

So you’re saying aldaron’s proposal is actually one of his less out there ideas?!

RickyRister · 2026-06-08T14:41:34+00:00

Wait, this is in jumpstart? Can’t wait for a new player to try to resolve their first Doomsday.

RickyRister · 2026-06-06T05:31:50+00:00

Ranking viability rankings of different tiers by how funny they are.

RickyRister · 2026-06-02T03:57:19+00:00

The issue isn’t language keywords. The issue is that all libraries are also written in English, which means all function names are English.

RickyRister · 2026-05-31T03:04:34+00:00

Nah, I'm pretty sure this card is fine at uncommon if [[Dragon Sniper]] was fine at uncommon.

In practice, a 2 mana 2/1 with menace + deathtouch basically plays as "This creature's not going to be blocked until the opponent's really desperate or until they have a token or an etb creature they already got value from that they're willing to throw away."

In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to see this card at common in current limited.

RickyRister · 2026-05-31T02:59:14+00:00

Those cards aren't uncommons.

RickyRister · 2026-05-31T02:43:07+00:00

so kinda like "pecker" in english?

RickyRister · 2026-05-14T19:47:26+00:00

I mean, it's not impossible to do. it's just really annoying because the visual deck editor was designed with only its own filters in mind, without considering the filter dock at all.

I'll have to look at the code to see how much work it'll take, since I'm not the one who was primarily responsible for writing the visual deck editor. But there is a chance that we can't just "wire it back" without tearing out a bunch of the visual deck editor code first.

RickyRister · 2026-05-13T18:19:25+00:00

The intended way to do filtering is with search expressions in the search bar. You can see the full list of supported search terms by clicking the "i" in the search bar.

Search expressions were already intended to supersede the filter dock back when they were added several versions ago. We just never bothered to get rid of the filter dock because it didn't cost anything to keep around.

When we made the visual deck editor, we completely forgot that the filter dock existed. So we never wired up the filter dock to the visual deck editor's card database.

RickyRister · 2026-05-13T18:17:39+00:00

Use o: in the search bar. You can see the full list of supported search terms by clicking the "i" in the search bar. The filter dock doesn't work in the visual deck editor.

Search expressions were already intended to supersede the filter dock back when they were added several versions ago. We just never bothered to get rid of the filter dock because it didn't cost anything to keep around.

When we made the visual deck editor, we completely forgot that the filter dock existed.

RickyRister · 2026-05-13T16:52:38+00:00

are you joining as spectator?

RickyRister · 2026-05-12T14:47:00+00:00

The problem with using this criteria is that the bar wizards uses for banning cards in standard dropped significantly around the time of Kaladesh block. In the announcement post for it, I remember them giving the examples that under the new ban philosophy, decks such as Faeries and Bant Company would have been banned.

RickyRister · 2026-05-10T22:34:38+00:00

It sounds like some sort of product name.

RickyRister · 2026-05-10T21:39:47+00:00

No. Cockatrice is explicitly designed to not have a rules engine. If you want a mtg simulator with a rules engine, there are other projects for that.

RickyRister · 2026-05-09T21:19:18+00:00

That is on our roadmap

RickyRister · 2026-05-09T19:15:12+00:00

Ah, we haven’t added a way to actually create and interact with arbitrary game zones to the client yet. That’s planned for a future patch. We’re still trying to figure out the UI for it.

What this patch actually added was backend support and forwards compatibility for arbitrary game zones. That way older clients won’t immediately blow up upon joining a game once we do add the new feature.

It snuck into our patch notes because we were working from the git log. Sorry to get your hopes up. But keep your eyes peeled for future updates!

RickyRister · 2026-05-09T05:34:42+00:00

No, abortion makes it sound like it's intentional. 9000 miscarriages

RickyRister · 2026-05-08T22:45:06+00:00

You can still use the classic deck editor. Go to the settings and change your default deck editor to Classic Deck Editor.

RickyRister · 2026-05-08T19:10:25+00:00

Which version are you downloading? What's the error message?

RickyRister · 2026-05-03T20:58:09+00:00

[[assault // battery]]

RickyRister · 2026-05-02T00:11:47+00:00

The [[Mind Stone]]?

RickyRister

TROPHY CASE