The current implementation of custom sleeves is lacking in terms of user selection. Having the sleeve need to match the exact name of the deck is a hassle, especially when attempting to keep a library of generically named sleeves in the same place; selecting from the rest of them at random, while good on paper, in my experience isn’t the greatest because it leads to a mismatch in “mood” between the theme of the deck and the custom card sleeve. Additionally, if you have two specific decks that you want to give the same sleeve, and therefore make a duplicate of the sleeve and name it accordingly, it gives that sleeve a higher chance to be picked at random when a deck doesn’t have a sleeve, therefore throwing off the probability of other sleeves being selected.
I propose that there be an option to select the sleeves given to a deck inside of the deck editor. The button for it could be placed in the top-left bar of buttons, or squeezed in to the left of the banlist dropdown box or deck name editor, or even one level up as an option in the Deck Manager screen. It would pull up a grid of card sleeve previews from the images in the Sleeves folder (if this implementation is unfeasible, it could instead open the Unity file browser). The user could then choose between “no sleeve,” “random sleeve,” and any other sleeves that were in the Sleeves folder.
When you have 2 or more decks that you want to give the same sleeve to, then use the tag system. That is, give those 2 or more decks the same tag. Then name your sleeve the same name as the tag. The tag system is under-utilized but I promise you that tags are much better than files and folders. We used to keep decks inside folders and subfolders but that’s not a good way to organize decks long-term. A single deck can have multiple different tags to categorize it and you can search by tags.
Basically, you don’t have to name your sleeves the same name as your deck. You can name them as the same name as a tag that is assigned to a deck. If a sleeve name matches neither the tag nor the name of a deck, it will be assigned randomly.
Creating a UI to select the sleeves inside of a deck editor will be a new hassle since we already have deck thumbnails. Why you ask? Because sleeves are files that are stored locally. Omega is a cross-platform game so when you click on “browse”, it has to be able to interact with the file system on ANY platform that includes linux, android, windows, and more. We were lucky to even do this for the import ydk but that option is something we want to avoid in the future. We want to avoid the client having to interact with files and folders. That is also why we use codes to easily copy paste instead of files.
Not wanting to interact with various filesystems makes sense; thank you for explaining that to me.
As for the tag system, I think that not enough is done to promote its use. For one, the option to assign a tag to a deck is on a small icon bunched around other small icons. If you wanted to promote its use, I would recommend either moving it to the right sidebar in the Deck Manager (if space allows), or perhaps even within the deck editing menu itself. Additionally, while you say that decks can have multiple separate tags, there isn’t an inherent option to assign more than one tag to a deck. This could be an issue of not knowing syntax, but then that runs the risk of people who aren’t willing to learn such syntax being unable to figure out the full functionality of the tag system. Maybe a sub-menu with the option to add, remove, or even sort tags on a deck would be in order, rather than a single text box pop-up.
Also, this could just be a me thing, but even after assigning tags to my decks for my sleeves (it worked; thank you), after closing the game and re-opening it, all of my tags were removed from my decks. I can file this as a bug report separately, but I figure it’s worth bring up while I’m talking about it.
I will add that even Master Duel avoided interacting with file systems which is why you can’t use your own custom sleeve. You use pre-selected sleeves and playmats that the game offers. Omega at least allows you to customize beyond that but we could have easily taken the same direction.
Tags are separated by semicolons. Unfortunately, there are several features in Omega that are undiscovered. Let’s even forget Omega - there are features in EDOPro which has existed for almost 6 years now that remain undiscovered. We can only do so much to “promote”. Users must be curious and find out what buttons do. Nobody gave me an instruction manual for ygopro but I figured it out. If the UI has to change in order to make every feature discoverable, it will cause the UI to be cluttered with extra information that nobody will like. We added game tips for this reason but anything more than that, is too much. The tag symbol is universal. We didn’t create it. Tags are used in many UI systems all over the world so when you see an icon with a tag, one should know what it means. Creating submenus and more menus is more work in the UI. Maybe eventually but so far, people already find Omega UI to be complex and adding more and more menus, just makes it even more complex.
As for what you said about re-opening the game deleted your tags. I cannot reproduce that.