mtg hologram duels?
General forum
Posted on Dec. 28, 2018, 7:50 a.m. by vasarto77
Ignoring the terrible story, bad characters, not following the rules of the game or any of the cards, playing cards that don't or never did or will exist and ALL of the other problems the Yugioh cartoon series had, one thing about it REALLY interested me and kept me watching when I was younger and that was the hologram duels!
Do you guys think that it might be possible, through either hologram technology or some sort of 2-4 player VR system that a yugioh like mtg battle can take place? Would it ever have an impact on how we play or make competitive playing more fun if stuff like that existed? Imagine playing a Sigil Captain then watching how cool he looks after you stack a Armadillo Cloak and a Behemoth Sledge and watch him go to town on your opponent and his creatures in all his completely realistic but hologram 3d goodness!
Think that's ever gonna happen? Even in 20 years?
I don't see yugioh style holograms happening in any shape or form in our lifetimes... but Maybe it would come in a different form... like integrating MTGO/Arena with 3D Television or those V.R. headset things people game with these days?
December 28, 2018 10:26 a.m.
The problem with doing magic cards as holograms would be some magic creatures are so incredibly large that if you want to have a realistic looking representation you would need a gigantic hologram unless you want to have mini versions of the creatures. imagine a to-scale hologram of Emrakul, the Promised End in real life that would be horrifying lmao
December 28, 2018 10:28 a.m. Edited.
I dont think the size of creatures is whats holding back holo magic :D
December 28, 2018 6:38 p.m.
The biggest thing holding back a holomtg is probably the number of cards.
Like even in standard there are over a thousand cards. Not to mention tokens, emblems, etc. Having semi-unique holograms for each of those? That would be a lot of memory for any program.
December 28, 2018 7:37 p.m.
I've thought about this idea myself. The problem I keep thinking of is how to display effects that don't really have a physical representation, like Curiosity or Blackmail. Also, something like Sickening Shoal or Dismember would get pretty graphic.
It's a fun idea, and a computer with enough memory and processing power might be developed in the next few decades, but the execution would take as much work as anything else.
December 29, 2018 9:01 p.m.
I know this is old already, but yes please! There are of course multiple limitations and problems, but hey, those are to be overcomed.
First of all, to program all of those cards would be pretty annoying, since there's thousands of them! It'd be inefficient to code of all them individually so you'd need to make an algortithm that automatically codes them based on their body text. Then just run it through all the cards and you got that covered. Of course the algorithm would have to be updated each new release to account for new mechanics, but it could work.
Secondly, you'd need to get A LOT of 3D designers and artists to make the models. Not just 1 per card either, as a lot of them would need attacking animations, some stuff to reflect their abilities as well as some models for when they're equipped with something (no need to do one for every artifact, just make a clunched fist for a weapon or something). It'd be also cool if each duelist had an access to a little soundboard and an access to alternative animations, like a big flashy finisher move to earn 'em some style points at tournaments. Cause y'know, we don't want a modern-pokemon situation where every creature just does an identical little swirl and that's it. It has to be cinematic, dammit! You'd need like a few whole studios worth of animators and modelists, and even then it will take A WHILE. It'd be a big investment for WotC for sure.
This crazy ammount of assets and the size of some creatures would make it so it's probably only really profitable to do hologram duels on actual stadiums, like in yugioh. Not sure if people would really want to pay crazy ammounts of money for a small board to play mtg on, and trust me, the price would be crazy. It'd need like a harddrive with hundreds of terabytes to have all those assets.
But man, if they did tournaments on stadiums with holographic displays, cool animations and people doing over the top performances, I'd watch each and every single one of them! That's just too cool to miss!
All that assuming that wotc won't go broke before holograms will exist, of course xD
Demarge says... #2
We will probably never get a paper to hologram system for mtg, we might one day see every card put into arena in 20 years. If there is ever a game engine and modeling tools that could allow game artists create hundreds of assets for a single creature with every enhancement option (heavily why yugioh has such restrictions on enhancement cards) with a cost to the company being around a grand and get each card done at 1 week deadlines. Though atm the cost for just the game assets to make UMA draft format would probably cost around one or two AAA game budgets on a 3-5 year timeframe. It could be cool, but wizards chess for chess tournaments might be a more realistic first goal. Or maybe an overly dramatic retelling of a pro tour top 8 movie where most of the decks shared many of the spells (now I wanna see a yugioh style anime where they take the likeness of pros for hologram battle tournaments).
December 28, 2018 8:25 a.m.