Re: Alternative to Forge for Magic: the Gathering
I had a better luck by navigating the UI myself with objectnav and creating my own GoldenCursor marks than using the pre-made one, not because mine is better or worse but because this way I got to familiarize with everything that's onscreen. I would love to write a guide, but time is scarse and so I'll just drop some tips I learned in the past months:
1. The only things you really need changed in the forge.preferences file are
UI_SR_OPTIMIZE=true
UI_ENABLE_MUSIC=false (you can leave this out if the music doesn't bother you)
UI_SHOW_CARD_OVERLAYS=true
With this and Java Runtimes and Java Access Bridge enabled, you should be able to navigate the UI with NVDA's ObjectNav.
2- You navigate to an object, then press your shortcut to move mouse cursor to focus (mine is Caps+Shift+m, it deppends on what keyboard layout you are using in NVDA), then you press the Golden Cursor shortcut to add a bookmark. Put a name in it, think of different names beginning with different letters to facilitate use). Now with Golden Cursor you can move the mouse to this point and press your NVDA shortcut to do a left click (mine is Caps+[). You should do this to every single place on screen that's relevant, and there are a lot.
3- When you first launch Forge, main screen will be of Constructed game mode. I won't get into different game modes in this post, but Constructed is the most popular anyway. Before we get to the important places, let's take a look in the menu bar and game modes bar.
3.5- Many things can be navigated with tab and alt+tab, but most of them need ObjectNav, so unless I state otherwise, whenever I say "navigate to" I mean with ObjectNav.
4- Navigate all the way to the left and you will find the menu bar. Interact with it (in my keyboard layout, where caps+shift+arrows navigate, I do this with caps+shift+down), and you will find the options "Home", "Deck Editor", and others. Bookmark all that you think is necessary, but specially the Deck Editor option. You can also bookmark the Concede option, but it does have a very simple keyboard shortcut anyhow.
5- Going right from the menu bar, you will go through the many game mode options. Forge is a very cool application with a lot of different features. The first, Constructed, Booster Draft and Sealed, are the most popular. We will start with Constructed, which is the first mode when you first launch Forge.
6- In the Constructed mode screen, you will need to navigate around and find and bookmark some stuff. First, find the fields name and deck for the first player, and be sure it is set to Human, not AI. Do the same for the second player, although you don't need to bookmark the second player's name field, for the game can generate a random one every time. So, bookmark with Golden Cursor the following objects:
- First player's deck
- Second player's deck
- Preconstructed Decks, which is the list of pre-constructed decks that come with Forge
7- Left from the preconstructed decks list you will find a drop-down menu. If you change it, it will give you different deck listing options. To use the decks you will create on deck editor, choose Custom User Decks. Right from the decks list you will find checkboxes to view the deck, call a random deck, play in singleton mode, and the button to Start Game. So, every time you go to your deck's bookmark, click it, then go to the deck list, click it, choose your deck, go to your opponent's deck bookmark, click it, go to the deck list, choose his/her deck, then go to Start Game.
8- In deck list, in cards list, in almost every list, you will find, left from the list, viewing options. Always click the List Mode, for Image Mode is not accessible. Navigate in lists with arrows, pageup, pagedown, home and end.
9- Deck Editor is quite self-explanatory. In any list of cards, including the enormous Catalogue, you can press Control+F to find cards. Find cards will search your text in card's name, type and text. Pressing space in the Catalogue sends a copy of the card to the deck, and pressing it on the deck takes it away. By moving mouse cursor to a card in a list you can right-click and get additional options. Left from the deck card listing you will find a drop-down menu, where you can switch from main deck to sideboard. Navigate around and get familiarized with the many many filtering options that both deck list and catalogue list have. Decks you construct and save will be, in Constructed Mode screen, on the Custom User Decks.
10- When in a game, the most important places to find and bookmark for easy access are:
Your Hand
Your Field
Opponent's Field
Your Life (which is just next to your Avatar)
Opponent's Life (likewise besides his/her avatar)
Stack/Combat/Log (explained below)
Your zones (Hand, Library, Graveyard, Exile, etc)
11- Stack, Combat and Log options. What really matters here is:
11.1- When you click the Log, the UI will show a series of text fields, one after another starting right from the Log button, one field for each game action taken since the game begun. You will need this logs to know which creatures are blocked by whom and which card is being targeted each time. Whenever something happens and you are not sure what it was, click on the Log option and go navigating until you find the last action.
11.2- Sometimes the game will prompt you to choose a card. If it is from your hand, navigate to your hand and click on it. If it's on your field or your opponent's field, just do likewise. Sometimes the game will show a dialog with a list of cards that can be conveniently navigated with arrows and tab. But sometimes, such as when you must look for a card in your Library or your Exile or your Graveyard, that it will just open the cards onscreen and wait for you to click on them. When this happens, these cards will be just over the Stack option. So when you navigate there with Golden Cursor, it will read the first card in this list, go left for the others.
12- Almost every action taken will return your cursor to the prompt field or Ok button, so you will have to go back where you were to continue doing stuff. When you need to clickk 4 of your 5 creatures, it can be a little tiring clicking and going back to your field a lot of times. Be patient.
13- You can navigate the game screen with tab, but it will cycle only the prompt, the Ok button, and the card textbox field from the card detail fields. Prompt will tell you the turn and phase and if there are effects waiting on stack, and Ok is how you pass priority. From card textbox it is easy to navigate to the left and read the other card detail fields.
14- Sometimes the UI changes the places of player fields and hands, I have no idea why. So, to avoid that, instead of bookmarking the first place on my battle field, I bookmark it on the first object left of it. same with hand.
15- Sometimes it is frustrating and tiring. Sometimes the NVDA just won't move the mouse cursor to the exact object you are navigating over, sometimes I try it five, ten times, navigating from the left or the right of the object, until NVDA finally puts the damned mouse cursor over the right place. If you want a smooth experience, this is not for you.
16- Finally, in my opinion it is worth it. Magic is a wonderful game, Forge is a nice application with many different interesting game modes, and what we have in terms of accessibility is enough to fully play it if you have the patience to deal with the drawbacks.
I hope this helps someone.
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