Pokemon Deck Tester
A downloadable game for Windows
Welcome to the Pokemon Deck Tester main page. The PDT is a program specifically tailored towards testing decks with as few variables as possible. As such, you play against yourself, or a decently competent AI, with whatever decks you set up. The intention behind this is that sometimes you want to try a deck to counter a popular deck, but now you don't need to "own" the digital cards like in PTCGO or Live, and you don't have to hope that you'll eventually be paired against the proper deck that you're aiming to play against. Of course, this is just one example, but maybe you just want to play the game without having to face a human opponent, or you don't want to test a new deck build against a bad AI using a deck that makes Theme Decks look professionally built.
For tutorial/guide videos aimed at helping players go from zero to hero, or for PTCG video content that isn't hyper focused on only meta stuff, check out my channel at:
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfShepard
Features of the PDT:
- Every card that the Expanded format covers
- Deck Builder (obviously, kind of card to not have one) with all cards available to use.
- A Database to let you search every card on many different conditions (3rd pic shows it)
- An "Inspire Me" tab that picks a random card for you based on certain criteria, which then also shows some related cards to help you build a deck with. It's sort of in place of the Deck Wizard from PTCGO. It doesn't just hand you a terrible deck, but instead shows you combinations you could use to make your own terrible deck from! Or it might be good, I don't know.
- A Custom Card Maker, see pic 4 and 5. I figured since you're playing against yourself that being able to play with custom cards would be pretty nice, plus I haven't seen anything quite like this done before. It's quite complicated, so there's a lengthy guide under the Card Maker tab. The short of it is that you grab/make a custom card image in your preferred image editing software, then the PDT handles the rest based on your input.
- A Custom Rule Set Maker. Have fun making all sorts of rule changes, like playing with Prize Points instead of Cards, turning off certain Win Conditions, and even a rule that allows any pokemon to evolve into any other pokemon.
- A decently competent AI that you can play against, with it being able to handle using any deck you give it, rather than it being limited to certain pre-built decks.
So enjoy the Pokemon Deck Tester, and do let me know if anything breaks or isn't working quite right. I'm a one man army here, there's only so much I can find on my own.
When you get into the download link, there will be a few .zip files. Grab the one labelled PDT.zip, and it'll have a ReadMe.txt explaining further. You can then choose which of the remaining .zips to download, as I've split them so you don't need to re-download over 8 GBs of files every few months, since not everyone has super fast internet. This will enable certain cards to be used, so for example, if you don't want to use the older Gen 5/6/etc. cards, just download the current gen's .zip file and that's about all you'd need.
There's no auto updates, at least for now, so you'll need to redownload the PDT.zip and the current gen .zip, then just drag and drop the files from the .zips to replace them where you have them on your computer to update the game.
Future Update Plans / Priority List:
1 - Staying up-to-date with new sets being released.
2 - Custom Content; I have the Card Maker and Rule Set Maker done, but there may be other custom content I could include that I currently don't have.
3 - AI opponent to play against; This is pretty well done, but at the same time will never really be done, seeing as I could take another year just tweaking numerical values to make the AI just a bit smarter.
4 - Cover every Pokemon card printed; Currently hahahaha no. This is a VERRRY far off goal, simply because of how long it's already taken me to get everything done that I have so far. This isn't to say I don't want to do it, it's more that I'm being realistic and only have so much time in the day to do this.
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Development log
- 4-11-25 Update - Database Update13 days ago
- 3-28-25 Update - JTG27 days ago
- 2-4-25 Update - Finished Rule Sets79 days ago
- 1-17-25 Update - PRE, AI and Rule Sets97 days ago
- 11-7-24 Update - SSPNov 08, 2024
- 9-17-24 Update - SCRSep 17, 2024
- 8-3-24 Update - SFAAug 03, 2024
- 6-15-24 Update - The AI UpdateJun 16, 2024
Comments
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Is there a way to import decklists? I think a simple dictionary that converts the likes of 'Octillery BKT 33' into '0601043' would do the trick if it's not implemented yet
(ptcgsim has a nice collection of exportable decks for each year, wh I'd love to be able to import and play against for variety)
It's on my To-Do list, I just haven't gotten to it yet. You can currently copy/paste from the .txt files in the Decks folder, but I do want to have an in game option for it. I'm also unsure how I'd want to handle it specifically, as I'd want it to be more than just the card's filename, like you've said. Thinking about it... all I would need is the set and card number and I could get the filename from that... well, guess I know what I'm doing tomorrow.
I cant resize the window, so It dont show my hand
That's because I had that setting disabled, as I never looked into getting the game itself to scale with the window size, and this was the lazy option I chose, which really wasn't the best. Try redownloading it now, there's a new menu on the main screen labeled 'Window Size:' that has a few different sizes you can pick, and see if any of those help. I can also add in more sizes if necessary.
Ok
Not see some of the pictures of the cards selected in the deck builder. This is problematic because I need certain variations of certain cards in my deck. What should I do?
That's probably because you didn't get all the card image files, which isn't your fault, I apparently got a bit lazy with error handling, as the Database will still create the cards even if the images aren't available, so if you redownload the PDT.zip, that part should be fixed.
You've also shown me how lazy I was with the Database, I hadn't even considered that it may be super slow to build on older computers. The Database is currently built once you go into the Deck Editor, Card Database, or Inspire Me tabs, as they all need it, but once you leave the Deck Builder menu, it clears out the Database completely and then has to be refilled, since you could create some cards, then go back into the Deck Builder and it would need to be refilled otherwise the new cards wouldn't show up. I do have an idea on fixing that part, but at some point, the whole Database needs to be created, which will need nearly 11,000 cards to be created, although less when I fix the issue if you don't have all the card images. I'll definitely get working on fixing these issues, though.
I've also updated the Read Me.txt to try to be a little more clear on the file structure necessary, which is probably just telling me I need better/more error messages implemented.
I currently only have what the Expanded format covers, which is every card from the start of Gen 5 and newer, so I don't have any Gen 1 cards yet. Although you could very easily make the card yourself, the Custom Card Maker could handle it for now.
And thank you, I've been off and on working on this for a bit over 4 years now, I'm glad that it's not just me getting good use out of the PDT.
Every time I click Create Deck the game freezes and stops responding. Did I do something wrong?
It's currently working just fine for me. It does have a small load time when you click it as it builds the card database, which does lock it up until it's done. What are the rough specs of your computer?
It locks up as soon as I click it. It also locks up when I click the card database. I wonder if it's because my laptop is kinda a potato and has trouble running Firefox and Zoom simultaneously. Here's my rig
Overview
Computer model: Hewlett-Packard HP EliteBook Folio 9480m
Operating system: Microsoft Windows 10 Home (10.0, Build 19045)
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4310U CPU @ 2.00GHz 2/4 0.0v
Motherboard: Hewlett-Packard 22DA
RAM: 8 GB
Hard disk: KingFast (238.5 GB/Fixed hard disk media)
Graphics card: Intel(R) HD Graphics Family (1 GB)
Monitor1: LG Display LGD048B (1366x768 / 13.9 Inch)
Monitor2: HPN HP 24mh (1920x1080 / 24 Inch)
Sound card1: Krisp Audio
Sound card2: Realtek High Definition Audio
Sound card3: Intel(R) Display Audio
Keyboard1: HID Keyboard Device
Keyboard2: Standard 101/102-Key or Microsoft Natural PS/2 Keyboard for HP Hotkey Support
Mice1: Synaptics SMBus TouchPad
Mice2: HID-compliant mouse
Audio1: Krisp Audio
Audio2: Realtek High Definition Audio
Audio3: Intel(R) Display Audio
Camera: HP HD Webcam.
When I tried it, I only had 9th Gen cards downloaded. Also, just to confirm, I do need to extract the cards to use them in the resources tab, correct? If so, that's not the problem right now but they are supposed to not be extracted that may be an issue
I fixed the problem by switching to a more powerful computer. I now have the issue of not being able to test the built in deck though. Also are there any gen 1 card download that I might have missed? I want to add gust of wind. Does the program only have standard cards? Btw looking over the whole program I can clearly see how much effort you put into this and it looks amazing!
I try to load the Blastoise v decks and it gives me a message that I am missing 0800101 which is Blastoise v. I have The file containing that loaded into the resources folder. It is extracted. The weirdest part about it is that I can find it in the database. It just won't load it.
Okay I figured it out. When you extract file it gives you 0# files in the path. You need to remove one of the files from the path or it won't recognize it correctly. Currently I don't have any other problems with it. I'll let you know if I do. Amazing game!
Can you make a simpler version for Android?
It's a never say never situation, but likely not. I know Godot has the option of exporting for Android, but I'd probably have to re-do most of the UI to fit a phone screen, and I don't know if Godot can handle finger tapping the same as mouse clicking, among other potential issues. So maybe eventually, but I'd need to look into it more before committing to it.
I've been trying to use the AI feature but it seems to always crash a few second after its turn
Try redownloading it now, I think I got it. It was missing a parameter for the evolution check, but it's there now. I thought I got them all, but that's what I get for testing with a deck that only has basics.
Alright cool, I also found a couple issues in the tester
- When there's an ability or card that lets you choose more than 2 or more cards from your deck, but you only have 1 to choose from, you can't just choose the 1. Example, Forretress EX Ability, I only had 4 grass energy in the deck and it just soft locks me
- When I don't use the AI functionality and play both hands, in the case where I can use Forretress to attach 5 energy to my bench pokemon, I can't seem to attach any energy for my Player 2, but it works fine with player 1
So it turns out a fix I tried broke more things, go figure. Pretty sure the soft lock issue was because of a layering issue, where you weren't able to click the Done button if there was a sprite underneath it, meaning if you had 3 or more benched pokemon, the sprite would override the button click and just not continue processing. The Player 2 issue is because I work on functionality with Player 1, when copy/paste the completed code to Player 2, and I've occasionally forgotten to do that, so there may be more spots like that, but hopefully this one is good now. Go ahead and try it again and see if I got it, I was testing specifically with Forretress EX, and everything was working right.
cant make it recognize the cards in the resource file, is there any guide to installation?
Yes, there's a Read Me.txt in the PDT.zip file. Basically, everything in that zip needs to be kept in the same directory, then the folders from the other .zips are just put into the Resources folder as is.
looks good i dont know which one to downloa
The PDT.zip contains the game and Basic Energy cards, then each of the others are each generation of cards separated out, so if you don't want to play with the older cards, you could just download the 08 and 09 zips for just standard. It's a way to help avoid needing to download too much at once. There's a Read Me.txt with details in the PDT.zip as well.
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