First new update in a couple of weeks, since I've been on holiday, and it's a big one
Decks can now have a type (or format) set, which determines which cards are legal for that deck, based on card legality data.
When a type is selected for a deck, the "Add Cards" wizard will only find cards that are legal under that type. Cards that have "Restricted" legality will only be allowed to have a single copy.
Cards that are illegal, restricted, or explicitly banned for a type will have a label displayed in the card frame when viewing the deck, and will display a warning when the deck is opened.
Deck types are displayed in the deck list, on the deck card display, and can be changed via the "Edit Details" dialog for the deck.
Deck legality data is slightly out of date right now, as the underlying data from http://mtgjson.com/ has just been updated, and it takes ages to refresh the data However, I'll be doing a huge refresh of all legality data once Magic 2015 become legal for Standard.
The second big change I've made is to the conflicts view.
The conflicts view (shown when activating a deck if not all cards are available) now shows a graphical view of which cards are used by which other decks, instead of an austere bulleted list like before.
Additionally, the conflicts view can now be shown directly from the deck composition screen, allowng you to check the availability of cards in your deck as you build it. This should make it easier to build multiple decks with the same cards with them clashing!
My only feature I would love to see is a way to tell which decks have a given card in them.
(So I click on Domri Rade, and it tells me I have 4 in Jund Monsters, 2 in RG Devotion, ext)
Thanks
Agreed, that's a feature I'm hoping to add - I'm planning on implementing a better card details window showing which decks a card is in as well as legalities and possibly variants, accessible both from the search and from the Collection management page.
Meanwhile, I'm just putting together a post announcing a feature I rolled out yesterday that might partly fill the gap
Conspiracy is typed as an "expansion" but I feel like it should be typed as "conspiracy" the way that Archenemy is typed as "archenemy". It's a bit odd that Conspiracy is the only non-traditional expansion to be listed as just "expansion".
I agree! I'll try and get this updated next update, which should be any day now once Magic 2015 hits gatherer. If I were at home I could do this right away, but being out of town it'll need to wait for the next update.
Speaking of, will there be a big update of legality data when Magic 2015 comes out and Magic 2014 cycles out of standard?
I've added a major new feature to the software - namely, the ability to add cards to a wishlist!
The 'Add Cards' wizard now has a pair of additional check boxes on the 'Other Options' page:
Include Cards You Don't Own
Shows cards from outside your collection in the search results
Show Wishlist
Shows cards from your wishlist in search results
With the Include Cards You Don't Own option enabled, you will be able to see all cards that match your search criteria. Any you don't own, but want to use in your deck, will have an "Add to Wishlist" button.
Once you have added a card to your wishlist, you can add it to your deck like any other card. Wish list cards are clearly marked so that you know it's not a card you can actually play yet!
Your wishlist can be managed by clicking the "Wishlist" button for each Collection on the 'Manage Collection' screen. Cards can be either removed from the list, or marked as "Obtained"
Cards added to your collection that are in your wishlist are automatically marked as obtained.
I've just overhauled the front page somewhat, replacing the scrolling news window with fixed width previews, removing the intro text and adding a couple of other goodies.
I've just added two new features to the 'Deck Cards' screen, in edit mode:
Mana Curve Graph
Draw Chance (%)
The Mana Curve Graph (accessed by clicking the 'Show Mana Curve' button) shows you how many cards, and what percentage of your total cards, you have by calculated mana cost. This will help you see what you can cast in each turn of your game, and gauge things like the speed and aggression of your deck.
The Draw Chance (%) (shown on each card) shows the likelihood of drawing that card in a game, calculated against the number of copies you have in your deck versus your total deck size. This stat updates for every card whenever you ad or remove a card to the deck, or when you change how many copies there are.
These two features should make it even easier to build effective decks
This is a pretty major update - a complete rebuild from the ground up. I'll talk about the new features one at a time.
First, some basic stuff:
1. It's now public, and no longer tied to cards in your collections
Look at the menu bar, and you'll see a new option - "Deck Builder". This will appear regardless of whether you're logged in or not.
A practival upshot of this is that you're no longer constrained to build decks only out of cards that you own, or have in your
wishlist. The only time you need to be a registered user is if you want to save a deck to refer to it later.
Because cards in your deck are no longer tied to a particular card in your collection, each card of a particular name is only
shown once - no more deck listings with four different Forests in them, because you only happen to own a certain number of a
particular printing. That was clumsy as hell, and so now it's gone.
2. The layout has improved
The new version had a lot more options I wanted to include, and with that came an extended toolbar and info bar. Now, instead of a
toolbar at the top of the editor under a bunch of text boxes, there's a panel off to the left containing all that stuff. It's designed
to look a bit like 3DS Max, since I always liked that inerface
The "Add Cards" feature has changed quite dramatically. Instead of a floating window with a multi-page wizad that needs to be started
from scratch whenever you add more cards, there's now a fixed window at the top of the Cards view containing a scrollable folter pane in
one tab, and a card list in the other. This can be collapsed to make room for viewing cards.
The informational highlights on the cards have been tidied up, and can now show multiple messages and alerts.
For a better iew of your deck composition, cards can now be displayed in a categorised view, and are sorted by name.
Last, but not least, to make life a bit easier I've introduced an implicit "Full Screen" mode, which hides the top menu and title bar,
whilst simultaneouly chucking the browser into Full Screen mode. This can be activated either using the "Full Screen" button on the
toolbar, or using the F11 key on your keyboard
3. Stats are now updated in real time
The deck stats from version 1 are still there (plus some more - I'll address that later), but now they no longer update only when the
deck is saved - not only are they updated whenever a card is added, removed or changed, but the charts update automatically without
requiring a refresh.
4. Activation now locks decks against editing
Activation was always intended to notify the user if they didn't have enough copies of a card to build a deck, but this fell over if
an activated deck was edited whie the deck was still assembled and in play. This has now been circumvented by locking decks that are
activated so that they can't be edited.
Now some cool, new stuff:
1. The whole thing is now mana aware!
I think this is one of the coolest new features The whole system is now capable of undertanding not only the mana requirements
of cards, but also their potential mana production.
In the deck builder, this is used thusly:
Alerts are shown on card frames if you don't have the mana sources in your deck
Card frames have a chart showing how much mana of each type a card uses, and how much mana of each type that card produces
A new stat has been added to the charts window, and stats panel (more on that below) showing the mana consumption and mana production of the deck as a whole.
This makes it much easier to define the land base of a deck Parsing of mana production goes from something as shallow as understanding
the mana produced by basic lands to as deep as understanding Fetchlands and Mana Elves (and all types in between!)
2. Native Commander Support!
If you select a deck type of "Commander", you'll notice a couple of cool new things:
A new "Commander" panel will appear in the toolbox, with a "Select Commander" button
Any legendary creatures in your deck will have a "Commander" radio button on their frame
Any cards (aside from basic lands, of course) with more than one copy will show an "Invalid Quantity" error
If you select a Commander (either by clicking the "Select Commander" button, which will open the "Add Cards" panel with some extra filters),
or ticking the radio button on a legendary, the selected Commander will be shown in the "Commander" panel, along with that card's color identity,
the color filters in the "Add Cards" panel will be locked to your Commander's color identity, and any cards in the deck that violate the
color identity will be highighted with an "Invalid Colors" error. Also, your Commander (in the main deck view) will be surrounded by a classy
golden glow
This update also includes the groundwork for supporting Tiny Leaders
3. New Stat Charts, and Stats Panel
The new toolbox contains a panel showing a number of important stats - namely, the number of cards in your deck, mana consumption / production,
and percentages of cards by type.
The "cards in deck" stat also shows a target number of cards for your selected deck type. The number of cards you have will be highlighted in green, orange
or red - green if you have the optimum number of cards for the format, yellow if you have to many, and red if your deck contains an illegal number.
The old stats charts have been rebuilt and expanded. The window now has multiple sub-tabs per tab, showing:
Mana
Mana Curve
Mana Usage / Production
Power
Combined Power / Toughness
Separate charts for Power and Toughness
Types
Main types pie chart
Sub types by type (Creatures, Lands, Planeswalkers, etc)
4. Sideboard support
This one's a litte rudimentary, but I expect to expand it in future. Card frames now have a "Sideboard" checkbox to move them to the sideboard. Sideboard cards are
not counted towards deck stats (including card count) and are shown in their own category. The only downside is that moving a card to the sideboard is an "all or nothing"
thing - you can't have some copies in the main deck, and some in the sideboard - yet. Emphasis on the "yet"
5. Deck Copying
You can now copy decks - either your own (if you want to make modifications to an activated deck, for example, or experiment with a deck without affecting the original),
or somebody elses.
6. Assorted speed improvements across the whole site
Some of the features of this deck builder would have been impossible with the data structures I had in place originally, so I've reshuffled some thing in the database
to make them possible. This had the practial offshoot of making lots of other parts of the site run faster - the main one being the Collection Cards screen This screen
used to take exponentially longer to load the more cards you have in your collection... This is happily no longer the case
I'm sure there's some stuff that I've forgotten to mention - it's been a busy few months. These are all the main enhancements, though.
As always, I welcome bug reports. In the meantime, enjoy!
Welcome to Minouris's Library!
Old header post:
Hey folks
I've been working on this for the past few months:
It's a site for recording your card collections, with a tool for building decks from your existing collection. It has a full database of all existing cards (up to Conspiracy from tomorrow, hopefully) derived from the API at http://mtgjson.com/ :).
It's still got a bit of work going on with it, so I'd appreciate any feedback, and especially bug reports
Features / Screenshots:
Browse cards and add them to your collections
Create and Manage Decks
View / Edit Deck Composition and Statistics
Add Cards to Decks by Block, Set, Colour, Type, Rarity, Cost and Abilities
I've got one on the boil using both those APIs - http://mtglib.armchairguitarist.com/. I'm using direct links to mtgimage.com, and scraping mtgjson.com into a MySQL DataBase for some further analysis and linking before exposing it
In the end, we need it in a vector format. Not sure if GIMP supports this, but if the image was done with vector/path/gradient tools only (no bitmaps) then you may be able to export XCF to SVG (either built in or with a GIMP plugin).
They're definitely vectors. I'll try and export them to SVG and load them up in InkScape if I get a moment tonight, and see how they behave.
For the symbols, this relies on someone creating the new set symbols in SVG format and then uploading it to any of the numerous symbol forum threads (I have subscribed to them). So once I see a new set symbol SVG is available, I'll add it to the site as soon as possible.
I have one or two that I could contribute, once I pass my 5 post minimum... Can you use XCF files from GIMP?
RE: Symbols - Sir, I could kiss you. Figuratively speaking, of course How often do you expect to update them?
RE: Card Ids - I've seen a couple of good ideas (thanks aeos and negativeview :)). I might write a quick script that iterates over all the cards and chucks the ids generated with those methods into a map to check for uniqueness...
The software I've built imports all this data into a relational database, and initially used multiverseid as a primary key for the cards, which is great as long as all the cards coe from Gatherer. It runs into problems nowthat sets like "Happy Holidays" are in the dataset, though, as multiverseid is null for those cards.
Is anybody else here doing something similar? If so, what are you using for a primary key? I need it to be the same each time a card is reindexed, which means I can't use an auto-increment field, since each set is being imported separately and asynchronously. I've thought of using a combination of values from the card concatenated together (like ${setcode}-${name-as-ascii}-${number-in-set}), but that won't always produce a unique value for each card either, since not all cards have set numbers, and names are obviously non-unique.
Decks can now have a type (or format) set, which determines which cards are legal for that deck, based on card legality data.
When a type is selected for a deck, the "Add Cards" wizard will only find cards that are legal under that type. Cards that have "Restricted" legality will only be allowed to have a single copy.
Cards that are illegal, restricted, or explicitly banned for a type will have a label displayed in the card frame when viewing the deck, and will display a warning when the deck is opened.
Deck types are displayed in the deck list, on the deck card display, and can be changed via the "Edit Details" dialog for the deck.
Deck legality data is slightly out of date right now, as the underlying data from http://mtgjson.com/ has just been updated, and it takes ages to refresh the data
The second big change I've made is to the conflicts view.
The conflicts view (shown when activating a deck if not all cards are available) now shows a graphical view of which cards are used by which other decks, instead of an austere bulleted list like before.
Additionally, the conflicts view can now be shown directly from the deck composition screen, allowng you to check the availability of cards in your deck as you build it. This should make it easier to build multiple decks with the same cards with them clashing!
As always, have fun!
Thanks
Agreed, that's a feature I'm hoping to add - I'm planning on implementing a better card details window showing which decks a card is in as well as legalities and possibly variants, accessible both from the search and from the Collection management page.
Meanwhile, I'm just putting together a post announcing a feature I rolled out yesterday that might partly fill the gap
Legen - wait for it, 'cos it's mythic rare - dary
The full set has been added to the database, so go ahead and start making decks before the prerelease
Speaking of, will there be a big update of legality data when Magic 2015 comes out and Magic 2014 cycles out of standard?
The 'Add Cards' wizard now has a pair of additional check boxes on the 'Other Options' page:
With the Include Cards You Don't Own option enabled, you will be able to see all cards that match your search criteria. Any you don't own, but want to use in your deck, will have an "Add to Wishlist" button.
Once you have added a card to your wishlist, you can add it to your deck like any other card. Wish list cards are clearly marked so that you know it's not a card you can actually play yet!
Your wishlist can be managed by clicking the "Wishlist" button for each Collection on the 'Manage Collection' screen. Cards can be either removed from the list, or marked as "Obtained"
Cards added to your collection that are in your wishlist are automatically marked as obtained.
Go forth and conquer!
Cooler stuff coming soon ^.^
- Mana Curve Graph
- Draw Chance (%)
The Mana Curve Graph (accessed by clicking the 'Show Mana Curve' button) shows you how many cards, and what percentage of your total cards, you have by calculated mana cost. This will help you see what you can cast in each turn of your game, and gauge things like the speed and aggression of your deck.The Draw Chance (%) (shown on each card) shows the likelihood of drawing that card in a game, calculated against the number of copies you have in your deck versus your total deck size. This stat updates for every card whenever you ad or remove a card to the deck, or when you change how many copies there are.
These two features should make it even easier to build effective decks
http://mtglib.armchairguitarist.com/ is still the location of the app
This is a pretty major update - a complete rebuild from the ground up. I'll talk about the new features one at a time.
First, some basic stuff:
1. It's now public, and no longer tied to cards in your collections
Look at the menu bar, and you'll see a new option - "Deck Builder". This will appear regardless of whether you're logged in or not.
A practival upshot of this is that you're no longer constrained to build decks only out of cards that you own, or have in your
wishlist. The only time you need to be a registered user is if you want to save a deck to refer to it later.
Because cards in your deck are no longer tied to a particular card in your collection, each card of a particular name is only
shown once - no more deck listings with four different Forests in them, because you only happen to own a certain number of a
particular printing. That was clumsy as hell, and so now it's gone.
2. The layout has improved
The new version had a lot more options I wanted to include, and with that came an extended toolbar and info bar. Now, instead of a
toolbar at the top of the editor under a bunch of text boxes, there's a panel off to the left containing all that stuff. It's designed
to look a bit like 3DS Max, since I always liked that inerface
The "Add Cards" feature has changed quite dramatically. Instead of a floating window with a multi-page wizad that needs to be started
from scratch whenever you add more cards, there's now a fixed window at the top of the Cards view containing a scrollable folter pane in
one tab, and a card list in the other. This can be collapsed to make room for viewing cards.
The informational highlights on the cards have been tidied up, and can now show multiple messages and alerts.
For a better iew of your deck composition, cards can now be displayed in a categorised view, and are sorted by name.
Last, but not least, to make life a bit easier I've introduced an implicit "Full Screen" mode, which hides the top menu and title bar,
whilst simultaneouly chucking the browser into Full Screen mode. This can be activated either using the "Full Screen" button on the
toolbar, or using the F11 key on your keyboard
3. Stats are now updated in real time
The deck stats from version 1 are still there (plus some more - I'll address that later), but now they no longer update only when the
deck is saved - not only are they updated whenever a card is added, removed or changed, but the charts update automatically without
requiring a refresh.
4. Activation now locks decks against editing
Activation was always intended to notify the user if they didn't have enough copies of a card to build a deck, but this fell over if
an activated deck was edited whie the deck was still assembled and in play. This has now been circumvented by locking decks that are
activated so that they can't be edited.
Now some cool, new stuff:
1. The whole thing is now mana aware!
I think this is one of the coolest new features
of cards, but also their potential mana production.
In the deck builder, this is used thusly:
This makes it much easier to define the land base of a deck
the mana produced by basic lands to as deep as understanding Fetchlands and Mana Elves (and all types in between!)
2. Native Commander Support!
If you select a deck type of "Commander", you'll notice a couple of cool new things:
If you select a Commander (either by clicking the "Select Commander" button, which will open the "Add Cards" panel with some extra filters),
or ticking the radio button on a legendary, the selected Commander will be shown in the "Commander" panel, along with that card's color identity,
the color filters in the "Add Cards" panel will be locked to your Commander's color identity, and any cards in the deck that violate the
color identity will be highighted with an "Invalid Colors" error. Also, your Commander (in the main deck view) will be surrounded by a classy
golden glow
This update also includes the groundwork for supporting Tiny Leaders
3. New Stat Charts, and Stats Panel
The new toolbox contains a panel showing a number of important stats - namely, the number of cards in your deck, mana consumption / production,
and percentages of cards by type.
The "cards in deck" stat also shows a target number of cards for your selected deck type. The number of cards you have will be highlighted in green, orange
or red - green if you have the optimum number of cards for the format, yellow if you have to many, and red if your deck contains an illegal number.
The old stats charts have been rebuilt and expanded. The window now has multiple sub-tabs per tab, showing:
4. Sideboard support
This one's a litte rudimentary, but I expect to expand it in future. Card frames now have a "Sideboard" checkbox to move them to the sideboard. Sideboard cards are
not counted towards deck stats (including card count) and are shown in their own category. The only downside is that moving a card to the sideboard is an "all or nothing"
thing - you can't have some copies in the main deck, and some in the sideboard - yet. Emphasis on the "yet"
5. Deck Copying
You can now copy decks - either your own (if you want to make modifications to an activated deck, for example, or experiment with a deck without affecting the original),
or somebody elses.
6. Assorted speed improvements across the whole site
Some of the features of this deck builder would have been impossible with the data structures I had in place originally, so I've reshuffled some thing in the database
to make them possible. This had the practial offshoot of making lots of other parts of the site run faster - the main one being the Collection Cards screen
used to take exponentially longer to load the more cards you have in your collection... This is happily no longer the case
I'm sure there's some stuff that I've forgotten to mention - it's been a busy few months. These are all the main enhancements, though.
As always, I welcome bug reports. In the meantime, enjoy!
Welcome to Minouris's Library!
Old header post:
Hey folks
I've been working on this for the past few months:
http://mtglib.armchairguitarist.com/
It's a site for recording your card collections, with a tool for building decks from your existing collection. It has a full database of all existing cards (up to Conspiracy from tomorrow, hopefully) derived from the API at http://mtgjson.com/ :).
It's still got a bit of work going on with it, so I'd appreciate any feedback, and especially bug reports
Features / Screenshots:
Browse cards and add them to your collections
Create and Manage Decks
View / Edit Deck Composition and Statistics
Add Cards to Decks by Block, Set, Colour, Type, Rarity, Cost and Abilities
They're definitely vectors. I'll try and export them to SVG and load them up in InkScape if I get a moment tonight, and see how they behave.
I have one or two that I could contribute, once I pass my 5 post minimum...
RE: Card Ids - I've seen a couple of good ideas (thanks aeos and negativeview :)). I might write a quick script that iterates over all the cards and chucks the ids generated with those methods into a map to check for uniqueness...
So, a question for the floor:
The software I've built imports all this data into a relational database, and initially used multiverseid as a primary key for the cards, which is great as long as all the cards coe from Gatherer. It runs into problems nowthat sets like "Happy Holidays" are in the dataset, though, as multiverseid is null for those cards.
Is anybody else here doing something similar? If so, what are you using for a primary key? I need it to be the same each time a card is reindexed, which means I can't use an auto-increment field, since each set is being imported separately and asynchronously. I've thought of using a combination of values from the card concatenated together (like ${setcode}-${name-as-ascii}-${number-in-set}), but that won't always produce a unique value for each card either, since not all cards have set numbers, and names are obviously non-unique.
Any ideas?