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I just finished work on a SC Card Game map similar to 'WAR' and was considering making a SC Magic the Gathering game. I already have some decent ideas on how it can be done, but was going to see what people think about it. My previously mentioned completed map will be uploaded soon as well. Any input is welcome :-D

It would take you a long time...

Not just long, it would take forever. A whole lot longer than the Monopoly map made by Devlin.

Yes it could be done but it would be as dumb as that yugioh map my Metalkon or w/e because there arnt enough units to make the cards

That's where virtual units come in.

But we're talking about an insane amount of cards, unless you were to make a large amount of maps with a couple preset decks to choose from, so it doesn't get boring.

And its funny you should say that (about my Monopoly), Chrono, because at one point I was thinking of making an MTG card game after getting tired of all the MTG madness maps out there. Good thing I didn't.

Well, you could make one set of cards from the series that the cards are sorted in, like Onslaught, Exodus, Tempest or even the first ones; Alpha, Beta and Unlimited.

But, making a deck on your own would be too much, and if you're making virtual units, the string limit would also make some sort of limit how big the map is going to be, consider each deck has 60 cards, like 18-20 of them are lands and then there's spells and summons etc. there too. That'll be somewhat 40 strings per deck without considering pluses and minuses. How many strings do you have? 255 right? It requires one string per effect also.
You'll have one separate trigger for each card that's owned by one player plus by every effect that the unit has, a combat phase system, mana system, stack system.

Considering how big the map is going to be in size of triggers it will be almost unplayable at the B.net, if it even gets finished..

And Devlin, if you are going to try, give me a PM, so we'll both go to the graves trying to make what's impossible.

I think card games on sc arent that great. Waiting for turns and all, it gets way too boring. I think if you start on a "Magic" map it will take a lot of time and it probably wont be that great either. Its an interesting idea though

the 'limit' is 1024. however, thats only the staredit impose limit. the true limit is roughly 65535 characters, give or take a few hundred/thousand.

although heimdal has proposed an idea for new editors that could apparently add 30,000? or so more characters.


a project of this sort is definitely possible, it would be a massive pain just trying to accomadate all the different cards. something of this sort would require massive amounts of patience, foreplanning, and trigger duplicator/TrigEdit.

What about mutliple death counters? I mean there are 50~ units in only only the terran team, considering there are 255 teams plus/minus used ones which would be at least 243 teams left, with 50+ units and buildings each of every 255 players it would be 255x50=12750 unique cards which you also can have a counter on too (with only terran units and buildings), but it would only take VERY long to make it.

I thought you couldn't use player 12+ for deathcounts?

Can't? Aw crap. Then my idea went to hell, hehe

yeah you should try something so huge, cause it would probably takes years to get it to work. Consider the triggers for such a system to keep track of a deck the 60 cards and all the different abilities. That right there is insane enough, but if you through in a database of cards, it makes my head hurt.

well, i wouldn't go so far as to say it'll takes years, maybe one year(of hard work), not including time to research all the different cards though.

regardless, i'd be VERY impressed with someone who made this efficiently.

hm, maybe as a little side project, i'll work on the pseudo-triggers for this.

Well, why would you need 12750 cards? I think 100 or so would be sufficient for a pretty fun map. Maybe later you could simply use excactly the same triggers in a different map and just change the cards, like impossible scenarios, think how many versions of those there are

I really don't think 100 cards would be that fun really, that'll make only like three decks at a maximum (four of the same cards as max in one deck, except landscapes) and that'll make it pretty dull, unless you balance those decks really hard, but it still will make the maps pretty monotone, since there's only six different games considering how you chose decks, if people choses the same it can have six "different" game style possibilities, but if you only want to chose different decks, you only have three possibilities.
I'd say 1000 cards or a full expansion set, so you have some decks to chose from, or as many playable balanced strategically and as powerful pre-set decks that are possible to make, like those pre-sets that comes out for every expansion already made by Wizards.

But still, it would still make a tough challenge for a pretty pending end result. And it also would hinder people from playing it, considering that there's pretty few that know how to play the game compared to how many that actually plays Starcraft, and the size of the massive amount of triggers in map will make the map so big that it will decrease the number of players that will actually play it to only SEN or other sites that host Starcraft maps will be able to play it, because I think it would be a very long download if someone hosts it in public on the Battle.net.

I'd say this is a huge work for nothing, but it's really up to you!

About the strings:

You can have 65534 characters (including the NULLs, and plus the length of the very last string), and 32768 strings (minus 1 for every 2 characters you extend the last sting over the 65534 chars mark).
This is not possible with the current generation of editors, though. Current editors that break the SE string limit can have 65534 - 2 * NumberOfStrings + LenghtOfLastString characters, and up to 32767 strings (which results in 0 characters per string...)

So, theoretically it would be enough with both methods for a decent map, just the first method is not available for practical use yet (unless you go hex-editing).

I had that very same idea some time ago, too, but I threw it away because of the huge amount of work. Consider a map with 1000 cards to have several thousands of triggers... And how are you going to do a quick custom deck-creation...?

custom deck would be easy, just take forever ingame and wouldn't be worth it to the players...random deck creation with no mixup of cards though would be a piece of cake

That's what I mean, custom deck creation is for people that have too much time. You'd play that map like 1 hour to dreate the deck and 20 minutes to battle it out...

Random deck creation is like "wow I got 10 plains but only black creatures"

well, it wouldn't be too much of a pain to include 'limits' and ensure proper distribution.

It always would come down to really trashy combinations. In Magic you have to build a deck with a concept, otherwise it would only come down to hack'n'slay as you don't have a use for the more special cards...

It's very simple, the creator of the game make several pre-sets of deck cards which you play with, not just three decks, but more like 10 in every game, that'll be a 500 cards, if the decks are going to be somewhat different from eachother.
Making a deck in game will just make the game even more advanced and require more triggers.

Different preset Decks are about the only option to involve some variation. Choosing 60 Cards out of ~500 just takes too much time, no matter how great your selection interface is.
And not being able to play with your own/custom-made deck kinda limits the fun a LOT. About the most important thing in Trading Card games is the ability of creating and optimizing custom decks.

Yeah, of course, but as many aren't making own concepts and try to make tweaks and identical copies of winning concepts, you can actually make pre-sets of the most popular decks, such as Red sligh, Green stompy, Black suicide, Blue control (if that's possible), White weenie and all those classical decks, but of course, having an own choise in these already very complex and time consuming games would only make the map not just slightly harder but a very huge leap harder. I'd say skip the making of own decks if this is going to be made and pull in some of the classical pre-sets.