How to make Redshark bettter

[Paperfairy]

Hi. I've spoken to Mike about some of these things, but they didn't seem to get any attention. I'm hoping that some community support may be able to sway the cards in our favor.

I've been playing RS for it's entirety. There are some problems though, that I discuss with others on a daily basis, and I feel like these things are keeping the program from being the best they can be.

If anybody else agrees, please post and vocalize, or add to the list?

- built in finding battles client... scanning Hamachi networks is ridiculous when a simple IRC room can be built in
- sets needs to be released, honestly, when Bangrias translates them. I know some people's purchases are based on RS testing, and when we're not getting sets until WAY after we know about them, it makes testing difficult.
- IMAGES! Give us the ability to import a patch for images like YVD does... that way, you are not in trouble and we can visiualize. I KNOW WPM will host them so that the program doesn't come under fire, and I just don't understand the problem here.
- Keyboard shortcuts! Apprentice is whooping our ass here.
- Let me store decks where I want them... the program PULLS my decks to its folder, which is obnoxious (this is personal)
- (BIGGEST COMPLAINT) THE SHUFFLING ALGORITHM, 80% of my games are dependent on this, and it is not getting better....
- random glitches that have been around since the first beta still occur.... there is no set pattern or anything, simply random - what happens is that one player will see a TOTALLY distorted view of the game... both the log and the field are totally incorrect.. I'll play a DCE and my opponent sees me shuffle my deck and evolve Blaizken FB into Claydol (this has happened). In the past, it happened 100% of the time with Hurricane decks, but now I can't see a common factor...
- better Deck Builder... we'd be more than happy to help, but I will say the current one is nice, and one of our strengths
- IN GAME LABELS for SPs... my girlfriend was trying to learn to play, and the lack of this feature was CRAZY


It's not that we are not grateful, because I personally am, but I am dissatisfied that something is so close to being the best and yet has not made it.


I will say that an excellent job is done with the Trainer actions and the amount of stuff I can DO... like I said, the Deck Builder is awesome. The wide play field is a huge step up, and there is a lot of documented help, which is great.

We love the program - let's make it better now.

 

[AmishEskimoNinja]

RE: A letter of... sadness to mai_kingdra

Some of these things are valid concerns, but a lot of them are kinda nonsensical, or just unfair.

- built in finding battles client... scanning Hamachi networks is ridiculous when a simple IRC room can be built in

That would be nice, but I think it would require a redshark server. Which might be expensive.

- sets needs to be released, honestly, when Bangrias translates them. I know some people's purchases are based on RS testing, and when we're not getting sets until WAY after we know about them, it makes testing difficult.
- IMAGES! Give us the ability to import a patch for images like YVD does... that way, you are not in trouble and we can visiualize. I KNOW WPM will host them so that the program doesn't come under fire, and I just don't understand the problem here.

I assume that if images were easy to use in the program he would have done that instead of individually entering the data for each card. It would probably make the program too big or his architecture doesn't support it.

- Let me store decks where I want them... the program PULLS my decks to its folder, which is obnoxious (this is personal)

Try moving the whole program and decks into the location you want to store your decks. I run my redshark from a folder inside of dropbox in my documents. That way I can run the same deck files simultaneously from any of my computers. I use both Vista and XP computers and have never had a problem with this. And when you change versions, you just install the new one normally, and move it again. Its really easy.

- (BIGGEST COMPLAINT) THE SHUFFLING ALGORITHM, 80% of my games are dependent on this, and it is not getting better....

People complain about the randomizer on EVERY amateur (meaning not professionally released, as opposed to meaning shotty) video game that has a random component. The problem is that when something really unlikely happens in real life, we accept it because we can watch our shuffling/rolling/flipping. But when exactly the same thing happens on a video game, people assume its the fault of the randomizer. Its just not fair for the programmer...

- random glitches that have been around since the first beta still occur.... there is no set pattern or anything, simply random - what happens is that one player will see a TOTALLY distorted view of the game... both the log and the field are totally incorrect.. I'll play a DCE and my opponent sees me shuffle my deck and evolve Blaizken FB into Claydol (this has happened). In the past, it happened 100% of the time with Hurricane decks, but now I can't see a common factor...

I admit I've run into some annoying glitches, but thats just part of playing a game that isn't released by a company. You have to accept it and move on. The one I run into a lot is I add energy to my decklist and then can't remove it.

As a side note, changes to the newest version are AWESOME!! I love the deckbuilder, start, and stop game buttons. I also love the tournament decklist feature. Granted I would have preferred one formatted like the steven P program, but I'll take it! (have you though about interfacing with his?)

 

[Paperfairy]

RE: A letter of... sadness to mai_kingdra

That would be nice, but I think it would require a redshark server. Which might be expensive.

No. Setting up an IRC room is a five minute, two second process.

I assume that if images were easy to use in the program he would have done that instead of individually entering the data for each card. It would probably make the program too big or his architecture doesn't support it.

Again, if hosted externally, the program's size would increase much, if noticiability at all. He didn't include images because he is afraid of copyright problems. -_- And the arcetechiture supports it just fine.

People complain about the randomizer on EVERY amateur (meaning not professionally released, as opposed to meaning shotty) video game that has a random component. The problem is that when something really unlikely happens in real life, we accept it because we can watch our shuffling/rolling/flipping. But when exactly the same thing happens on a video game, people assume its the fault of the randomizer. Its just not fair for the programmer...

YVD, Apprentice and Lackey don't have these problems. I get they're not perfect, but Redshark is really, really bad.

Again, none of the other TCG emulators have this issue, so it IS fixable. And yeah, that Energy bug wasn't always around either... it's a new one.
thanks for your input!

 

[mai_kingdra]

RE: A letter of... sadness to mai_kingdra

Paperfairy,

Thank you, Paperfairy, for this passionate post, as I hope it results in more Redshark feedback that I can use to make the program better! So, if you have thoughts, please post them - thanks.

As I have said many times, I appreciate all feedback. I hope my responses below can offer some explanation, perspective, and hope to your list of suggestions, frustrations, and comments.

- built in finding battles client... scanning Hamachi networks is ridiculous when a simple IRC room can be built in

I apologize for my IRC ignorance, but I will investigate this.

- sets needs to be released, honestly, when Bangrias translates them. I know some people's purchases are based on RS testing, and when we're not getting sets until WAY after we know about them, it makes testing difficult.

I don't see anything changing here. Although Bangiras' translations are helpful, his translated information is inadequate to add the set to the card database. (e.g. no card numbers, inconsistent text...)

- IMAGES! Give us the ability to import a patch for images like YVD does... that way, you are not in trouble and we can visiualize. I KNOW WPM will host them so that the program doesn't come under fire, and I just don't understand the problem here.

This is not an architectural limitation, but strictly my decision to not give Pokemon authorities a blatant reason to 'shutdown' the program based on the OCTGON(sp?) precedent. I agree, it would make the program richer on a visual level, but I've put way too many hours of sweat equity into it to take this chance. If I can get an official 'ok' from Pokemon USA (or whatever they're officially called) to include images...I'm happy to do so. But to do it just by allowing users to add image URLs or image file pathnames to the program, is essentially the same thing from a program architecture perspective, now it's just splitting hairs on how the program 'finds' the images. The way I see, the programmer is still responsible for the feature.

- Keyboard shortcuts! Apprentice is whooping our grass here.

There are some, what others would you like? Let me know and I'll see what I can do.

- Let me store decks where I want them... the program PULLS my decks to its folder, which is obnoxious (this is personal)

It's not hard, but I haven't had any other complaints about this, so it's not high on the list.

- (BIGGEST COMPLAINT) THE SHUFFLING ALGORITHM, 80% of my games are dependent on this, and it is not getting better....

Redshark uses an implementation of the Mersenne Twister random number generator algorithm. If someone would like to recommend a superior algorithm, please submit your suggestion. [I get up on my soapbox.] I will not say the the shuffling is perfect, but I truly believe one of the biggest "problems" with it is that it is too random. I think many players believe that if a deck contains 20 P, 20 T, and 20 E, they perceive true randomization to result in a deck order of P, T, E, P, T, E ..., which is an obvious over idealized result. In other words, many players like to believe that the 65% of all possibilities that result in acceptable initial hands is ok, but the 35% of all possibilities that result in undesirable starting hands are a result of a poor shuffling algorithm. [I step down from my soapbox.]

- random glitches that have been around since the first beta still occur.... there is no set pattern or anything, simply random - what happens is that one player will see a TOTALLY distorted view of the game... both the log and the field are totally incorrect.. I'll play a DCE and my opponent sees me shuffle my deck and evolve Blaizken FB into Claydol (this has happened). In the past, it happened 100% of the time with Hurricane decks, but now I can't see a common factor...

First of all, yes, there are some glitches in the program; however, as a professional software engineer, I don't believe that there are random glitches. Although they may be perceived as such, any legit developer knows that what seem to be random problems, almost always means that the source of the problem is still unknown.[How should a random bug be fixed? By random programming? I think that's a good way to explain my point.] Back to bugs...I am aware of the now and then problem where one player's playmat gets out of sync with the other player's playmat view. Although I don't have a solution yet, I'm working on a "feature" that will allow players to cooperatively correct it and allow the game to continue. I am also aware that there's an rare but elusive bug in the deck builder component. Both of these bugs/glitches suffer from the same problem, they are quite uncommon, and extremely difficult to reproduce. Being able to reproduce a glitch is the key to fixing the problem. So, although being made aware of a problem is indeed helpful, being able to re-create it is almost a necessity when it comes to solving it.

- better Deck Builder... we'd be more than happy to help, but I will say the current one is nice, and one of our strengths

First, let me say "thanks" to the compliment. Second, what improvements would you like? The best card search engine that I know of is on Pokepedia, but my experience is that it can be frustrating waiting for the new sets to be included in it.

- IN GAME LABELS for SPs... my girlfriend was trying to learn to play, and the lack of this feature was CRAZY

I'm sorry to cause problems in your love life ... but, seriously, I haven't had this request before. Do you mean just further identifying all the pokemon with G, GL, C, 4 suffixes? If so, I guess I could use the new "card name suffix" feature in v3.50. This could be used to display "Camerupt G" as "Camerupt G (SP)".

It's not that we are not grateful, because I personally am, but I am dissatisfied that something is so close to being the best and yet has not made it.

I will say that an excellent job is done with the Trainer actions and the amount of stuff I can DO... like I said, the Deck Builder is awesome. The wide play field is a huge step up, and there is a lot of documented help, which is great.

We love the program - let's make it better now.

Again, I appreciate the kind words here. I would like to apologize to all for the lack of updated Help content as I have not updated it in several versions, mainly due to being lazy, and also because that the basic functionality remains the same as it was many versions ago. I admit it's not a good excuse, but it is true.

 

[AmishEskimoNinja]

RE: A letter of... sadness to mai_kingdra

Actually, my problem is Dropbox. I want to have installed versions in Crogram Files on two seperate computers, with the decks in the Dropbox folder, but RS always pulls the deck into its own folder, and then I have to copy back. No reason for this behavior at all. -_-

Like I said, just put the whole program in dropbox. You don't need a separate program installed on all of your computers. The same files run perfectly fine on multiple computers from dropbox.

 

[Paperfairy]

RE: A letter of... sadness to mai_kingdra

IRC: Yay!
Sets: You are correct in that. What about Prerelease then? WPM has scans by then, with all the needed information.
Images: I can understand that. Maybe WPM should just find his contact over at TCPi…
Keyboard shortcuts: Yes, there are a few. I guess the goal here is to be able to do anything without the use of the mouse. I understand dragging cards needs the mouse, but every action/menu should be able to be activated via mouse. This is most evident in the Deck Builder, where I cannot use “Enter” to add a card. If you like, I will compose a list of shortcuts and corresponding actions. Up to you.
Deck Pulling: Fair enough.
Shuffling: This is what I have observed. When I finish or alter a deck, the first shuffle behaves like a real deck, in that I’m drawing handfuls of Energy and one Trainer, or one Pokemon and several Trainers, etc. The more that I shuffle the deck, the more acceptable the hands become, but this usually takes 2-3 games to get right, and this assumes I’ve made no changes to the deck. I always just lay on Ctrl+S at the start of all games and during my games, which helps a little bit, but still seems a bit much. If you like, I can research the shuffling algorithms used by other programs and get back to you.
Gltiches: They are difficult to recreate, yes. I appreciate your recognition of the issue, though.
Deck Builder: Searchable card text is my biggest thing. SPs as a search filter, I love Rocket’s Machine under Trainer – can Team Galactic have one? BIG thanks in the Energy labels BTW. Keyboard shortcuts too, as stated.
SPs: Yeah, that is perfect, actually.
amisheskimoninja - Dropbox: My box has limited space as is! I suppose that IS a fix, but I really think it’s weird that the program does it in the first place.

 

[WailmerMan]

The bad shuffling needs to be fixed. It seems like people always get bad hands they would never get IRL, and 2 of something gets prized a lot

 

[michaelmasacre]

I agree the shuffleing algorythm at times seems to be aweful but i usually just chuck it up as "well i suppose it could happen in real life". And don't be afraid to ask for help on the program, I know myself as well as others would be glad to write you some coding. We use your program and you have been kind enough to grace us with the priviledge to use your proggy. Repaying in some small way as to try our hand at it wouldnt be a problem. Of course you could test our work and make the final call, to make sure none of us crossed any lines (so to speak).

 

[Paperfairy]

On that note, I know several that would be more than happy to write patches for new sets.

 

[D.u.n.g.e.o.n]

Not totally offtopic but...
When will the HGSS set be playable? or are they already?

 

[mai_kingdra]

Not totally offtopic but...
When will the HGSS set be playable? or are they already?

already ... for about a week.

 

[Poison Pokemon Master]

i think an option to allow us to "attempt" to reconnect to the player if a connection has been lost would be greatly appreciated
many times a game will disconnect because hamachi servers are always crazy, if you could put in some kind of feature where we have the choice to reconnect to the player and the game BEFORE the game is completely lost, that would be really awesome