SubmitYourDraft.com is LIVE. Please check it out!

[Ben Titmarsh]

Hey guys,

www.SubmitYourDraft.com is finally available!  I'd really appreciate it if you guys could check it out, have a play around and let me know what you think.  You can use the site in one of two ways:

1. Submit your own MODO drafts, instructions are here: http://www.submityourdraft.com/faq

If you choose to do this, your draft will be available for rating by the rest of the community.

2. Critique other peoples drafts.  On a pick-by-pick basis you can decide if you agree or disgaree.  This will cause the pick to get a rating, modify the overall draft rating and modify the members overall rating.

If you don't want to do either of these, then feel free to just check it out and read the draft recaps.  However, signing up will literally take 30 seconds of your time, no email confirmations or anything painful like that, just the basic details.  Register here: http://www.submityourdraft.com/register

While using the site, if you get an error page, then the problem will be automatically flagged with me.  For all other issues, cosmetic, usability, suggestions etc then please leave me a message here or send me an email: [e-mail]

I'm hoping to build up a bit of a community of contributors and critics.  So to kick it all off, I've submitted a couple of my own drafts.  Please head over to submityourdraft.com and let me know what you think.  I look forward to your comments!

[Ben Titmarsh]

After a hectic weekend, I had time for a micro release this morning. You now get a green border around a card when you hover over it to make it more obvious that your are supposed to click.

Kieran - good work on getting a draft up there. I'll be taking a look at it today.

[Kieran Symington]

Well, I had to do one sometime. I don't think my connection can handle the peak-time connections though - I tried one yesterday evening and MTGO was so unresponsive I timed out half my games! It's too frustrating to be doing regularly.

Ben Titmarsh said:

After a hectic weekend, I had time for a micro release this morning. You now get a green border around a card when you hover over it to make it more obvious that your are supposed to click.

Kieran - good work on getting a draft up there. I'll be taking a look at it today.

[Ben Titmarsh]

You should go for compensation, just tell them exactly that and you'll probably get a voucher for a free draft. They know how shit their software is (even though you connection is mostly to blame in this case), that they just give out free product at the drop of a hat.

Kieran Symington said:

Well, I had to do one sometime. I don't think my connection can handle the peak-time connections though - I tried one yesterday evening and MTGO was so unresponsive I timed out half my games! It's too frustrating to be doing regularly.

Ben Titmarsh said:

After a hectic weekend, I had time for a micro release this morning. You now get a green border around a card when you hover over it to make it more obvious that your are supposed to click.

Kieran - good work on getting a draft up there. I'll be taking a look at it today.

[Allan Chong]

Hi, can I make a few recommendations?

Can it be 'dont show picks' as the default view please?

Also, can you make it possible to cancel your pick selection? I have mispicked cards because of a few reasons:
a) did not see the rest of the pack (this is my fault, not the software)
b) hovered over a card, but accidentally clicked on it
c) clicking on cards way too quickly

As a result, I may have brought the draft rating a few % points lower than it should have and I do apologise for that.

Oh, and would it be possible to show the deck made according to spells/creatures/lands/colours category? That would be awesome. Thanks, and its a wonderful tool! Perhaps we can do one for the draft viewer Wizards sends out every week? Maybe just follow the winner of the draft?

-Allan-

[Simon Baldwin]

Found a random bug:

The hover image still appeared while I was hovering over cards after clicking vote, then when I went to go to the next pick, and the hover image stayed there for some reason. It went away when I went to save the screen shot though

[Simon Baldwin]

Hover card over the voting text thing obscuring it

[Ben Titmarsh]

Hi Allan,

The reason it defaults to showing picks is to make the intent clear for new visitors to the site. The View Draft page would look a little naked to new eyes if they didn't see the comments, ticks etc. However, you're not the first person to mention this, so I intend to have the show/don't show picks option as a saveable member preference so you can set it to 'don't show'.

If you accidentally click a card you should be able to just click a different one to change your vote as long as you do it before you click the vote button. Undoing votes and the ability to comment on a pick after you've already voted are both things I really want to get in there. It's definitely on my list so keep checking back and hopefully I'll have it in an update some time soon.

I agree that the deck display section is a bit vanilla at the moment. The problem I have is that in order to be able to sort, for example by converted mana cost, card type etc I need to store more information in the database for each card than I do at the moment (just the card name). This brings its own problems, where do I get that data from? how do I keep it up to date when new sets are released? If anyone has any suggestions I'm all ears because this would certainly be a nice feature.

Allan Chong said:

Hi, can I make a few recommendations?
Can it be 'dont show picks' as the default view please?
Also, can you make it possible to cancel your pick selection? I have mispicked cards because of a few reasons:
a) did not see the rest of the pack (this is my fault, not the software)
b) hovered over a card, but accidentally clicked on it
c) clicking on cards way too quickly

As a result, I may have brought the draft rating a few % points lower than it should have and I do apologise for that.

Oh, and would it be possible to show the deck made according to spells/creatures/lands/colours category? That would be awesome. Thanks, and its a wonderful tool! Perhaps we can do one for the draft viewer Wizards sends out every week? Maybe just follow the winner of the draft?

-Allan-

[Ben Titmarsh]

Cheers Simon, I think this is related to the same issue Kieran was experiencing. Javascript on the view draft page has become a bit of a monster. Got this one noted so i'll take a look at it as soon as I can.
Simon Baldwin said:

Hover card over the voting text thing obscuring it

[Philip Dickinson]

can you collect data from findmagiccards of gatherer through URL or anything? of course if wizards just implemented an api for gatherer that would make things easier lol. like if there was an easy way to get gatherer data in xml or sql format or something it would just be some simple scripts. forgive my slight ignorance here, my web-based dev skills are not so hot haha

Ben Titmarsh said:

Hi Allan,

The reason it defaults to showing picks is to make the intent clear for new visitors to the site. The View Draft page would look a little naked to new eyes if they didn't see the comments, ticks etc. However, you're not the first person to mention this, so I intend to have the show/don't show picks option as a saveable member preference so you can set it to 'don't show'.

If you accidentally click a card you should be able to just click a different one to change your vote as long as you do it before you click the vote button. Undoing votes and the ability to comment on a pick after you've already voted are both things I really want to get in there. It's definitely on my list so keep checking back and hopefully I'll have it in an update some time soon.

I agree that the deck display section is a bit vanilla at the moment. The problem I have is that in order to be able to sort, for example by converted mana cost, card type etc I need to store more information in the database for each card than I do at the moment (just the card name). This brings its own problems, where do I get that data from? how do I keep it up to date when new sets are released? If anyone has any suggestions I'm all ears because this would certainly be a nice feature.

Allan Chong said:

Hi, can I make a few recommendations?
Can it be 'dont show picks' as the default view please?
Also, can you make it possible to cancel your pick selection? I have mispicked cards because of a few reasons:
a) did not see the rest of the pack (this is my fault, not the software)
b) hovered over a card, but accidentally clicked on it
c) clicking on cards way too quickly

As a result, I may have brought the draft rating a few % points lower than it should have and I do apologise for that.

Oh, and would it be possible to show the deck made according to spells/creatures/lands/colours category? That would be awesome. Thanks, and its a wonderful tool! Perhaps we can do one for the draft viewer Wizards sends out every week? Maybe just follow the winner of the draft?

-Allan-

[Philip Dickinson]

quick googling found this from wizards in august 2008:

Q: Is there an API for access to the oracle card reference (Gatherer)? If not, is there a chance that there will be one? I'd love to create a fan site that has access to actual oracle data?
–Jay, Omaha, NE, USA

A: From Dave Guskin, magicthegathering.com Web Developer:

Hey Jay,

Unfortunately, we don't have an external API for Gatherer with our current system. (For those who are going "huh?" API stands for application programming interface, similar to the way many websites query Google's search directly for their own search mash-ups. External APIs, meaning interfaces that anyone on the web can use, take a bit longer to develop and put additional strain on servers, but do allow the community the freedom to develop their own look and feel around the services.)

There are no current plans to implement an API like this in the near future, but it's certainly something we'll keep in mind when developing out improvements to the Gatherer system and other tools we have in the works that build on top of it.

[Ben Titmarsh]

If such an API did exist I'd still need to download all of the data to prevent having to make another 45 requests (on top of the millions I already make for images). I guess I'd want to write some sort of cron job to periodically download everything a bit like Tom did for DCI Ratings Tracker. Speaking of which, you got any ideas on this one Mr Baker?

Philip Dickinson said:

quick googling found this from wizards in august 2008:

Q: Is there an API for access to the oracle card reference (Gatherer)? If not, is there a chance that there will be one? I'd love to create a fan site that has access to actual oracle data?
–Jay, Omaha, NE, USA

A: From Dave Guskin, magicthegathering.com Web Developer:

Hey Jay,

Unfortunately, we don't have an external API for Gatherer with our current system. (For those who are going "huh?" API stands for application programming interface, similar to the way many websites query Google's search directly for their own search mash-ups. External APIs, meaning interfaces that anyone on the web can use, take a bit longer to develop and put additional strain on servers, but do allow the community the freedom to develop their own look and feel around the services.)

There are no current plans to implement an API like this in the near future, but it's certainly something we'll keep in mind when developing out improvements to the Gatherer system and other tools we have in the works that build on top of it.

[Thomas David Baker]

I can do a regular export from my program if you like. We can agree an output format. I like pipe-delimited.

I am currently able to produce name, cost, power, toughness, oracle text, printings, prices, set_number, type, subtype, supertype, fulltype, converted mana cost, rarity, color, sets, legality, image, href and various other less useful bits of information about all the cards in the history of magic.

There is an update feature when new sets are released but it has to be manually kicked off rather than being automated (i.e. changes lag gatherer by 1 unit of my laziness).

Alternative you can parse gatherer yourself which is minorly painful but nothing too awful. This URL outputs every card:

http://beta.gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?action=a...

(CMC >= 0, text spoiler output)



Ben Titmarsh said:

I agree that the deck display section is a bit vanilla at the moment. The problem I have is that in order to be able to sort, for example by converted mana cost, card type etc I need to store more information in the database for each card than I do at the moment (just the card name). This brings its own problems, where do I get that data from? how do I keep it up to date when new sets are released? If anyone has any suggestions I'm all ears because this would certainly be a nice feature.