Draft your cube at CubeTutor.com!

[Ben Titmarsh]

I felt this was a big enough feature to announce it on a new thread.  Draft cubes here:

Ben's Cube: http://www.cubetutor.com/draft/1
Simon's Cube: http://www.cubetutor.com/draft/5
Tom's Cube: http://www.cubetutor.com/draft/7
Kieran's Cube: http://www.cubetutor.com/draft/12

You can pick cards and you'll see them on the right as you do so.  You're actually playing againt 7 bot drafters who basically just force two colours each and take the occasional artifact/land.  Each colour will be drafted by at most 3 bot drafters so it kinda mimics what should end up happening in a real draft.  They pick at random a card from their colours.

As usual only minimal testing has been performed, please do report any bugs and let me know what you think!

[Ben Titmarsh]

I've been thinking about this a lot.  The problem with a home page is that you don't see the per cube tabs (because you have no cube context) and I think it's a bit of a leap to get people to hit the Ben's Cube button afterwards.  I want to really make sure I'm showcasing the functionality in that initial page visit.  I've been trying to get some info on to the right hand side with the welcome box and news but I agree it's not ideal.

Any spark of genius would be much appreciated!

[Dan Barrett]

First visit lightwindow with a few lines of explanation, and link to a fuller FAQ?

[Thom Richardson]

Put the Modo cube up as the example?

[Kieran Symington]

Just some random ideas for your front page:

Put the video on the front page or some screenshots of various tools in action.

Do a visual poll of a random pack from a random cube asking what people would first pick. Have it turn into the pick order bar garph for each card once you click on your choice.

Show a random 'card of the day' with random stats such as the %age of cubes it is in (as a pie chart) and the total pick order across all cubes (as a bar graph).

Link to 'hot' forum topics.

Show a random uploaded 'altered card of the week'.

[Ben Titmarsh]

Thanks for the ideas guys, as ever I'm writing them down!  This graph shows concurrent users for the last day.  It's amazing but also terrifying... when am I going to get chance to take the site down for a release?!

Another interesting stat, over 10,000 cards have been drafted in the last 24 hours!

[Dan Barrett]

Something that would be cool once you have a LOT of cubes in place would be some analysis across all of them - e.g. most used cards and so on - could be really useful for those new to the cube scene looking to knock up a first draft list quickly?

[Ben Titmarsh]

yep absolutely

[Ben Titmarsh]

Guys I just wanted to say thanks for all your help with getting this project off the ground.  Kieran and Simon were the first real users of the site and if I wasn't building it for what you guys wanted I probably would never have got this far.  Thanks for all the contributions and encouragement that everyone else has provided too.

Drafting in particular has been an absolute revelation and I think one of the main reasons that this "launch" has been so positive so thanks for convincing me to do it.

I'm not going to be arrogant enough to say this is a success yet because I've still got a relatively small user base and absolutely massive list of stuff to do but I'm feeling happy and confident with it as it stands, and am looking forward to just making this site as awesome as possible. 

P.S. if you want to be inspired to just build something for the sake of building, I highly recommend Warren's Rendog Let's Play Minecraft videos on youtube! 

[Paul Hodgson]

Great work Ben! The cards drafted graph is awesome, definitely one to include on the meta stats page once you build it. 

I think a general forum may be a good idea, to allow for easier discussion between cubers? Also perhaps a hot topic on the front page, or list of cubes with most/least activity to try and drive traffic?

[Simon Baldwin]

Saw someone post a link to this on the MTG Google+ community last night. 

Had a look at the list/index, most of them seem to be <Username> | <Username>'s Cube, I was looking for any interesting themes, but I suspect most are just good stuff/fun cards. Did spot a Ravnica cube though

Also, I opened a couple of drafts in different tabs to have a look at, opening a new tab messes up any draft I have started. 

Recreation:

- Have the index of cubes open (Tab A)

- Open one in a new tab to draft (Tab B)

- (I think this is optional, but it is what I did): Pick a card from that cube (Tab B)

- Go back to the index (Tab A)

- Select another cube to go draft (Opening Tab C)

- Go back to Tab B (original draft)

- Click on another card (Tab B)

Expected: I can continue drafting where I left off in Tab B

Actual: The previous picks goes a bit weird; the image is there, but hovering over a card nearby then moving to remove the hover leaves a white rectangle where the hover was. If I click on another card, I am instead taken to the a new draft using the cards in Tab C (I had started drafting a Standard cube, opened another one, then saw older cards). This is while still using the /draft/XX of the original URL

Is this a bug? Or am I not supposed to open multiple drafts at once?

[Ben Titmarsh]

Ah that was you!  I noticed the error in my live logs.  Thanks for the nice formal bug report. 

I would need to move to a conversational state pattern instead of my current session usage.  It's a fairly fundamental change but certainly supported in the web app framework I'm using.  I will monitor the situation to see how many people try to do this (it's quite easy to identify this specific error) and work out whether it is worth the refactoring effort to support it.

Thanks for finding the issue.

Simon Baldwin said:

Saw someone post a link to this on the MTG Google+ community last night. 

Had a look at the list/index, most of them seem to be <Username> | <Username>'s Cube, I was looking for any interesting themes, but I suspect most are just good stuff/fun cards. Did spot a Ravnica cube though

Also, I opened a couple of drafts in different tabs to have a look at, opening a new tab messes up any draft I have started. 

Recreation:

- Have the index of cubes open (Tab A)

- Open one in a new tab to draft (Tab B)

- (I think this is optional, but it is what I did): Pick a card from that cube (Tab B)

- Go back to the index (Tab A)

- Select another cube to go draft (Opening Tab C)

- Go back to Tab B (original draft)

- Click on another card (Tab B)

Expected: I can continue drafting where I left off in Tab B

Actual: The previous picks goes a bit weird; the image is there, but hovering over a card nearby then moving to remove the hover leaves a white rectangle where the hover was. If I click on another card, I am instead taken to the a new draft using the cards in Tab C (I had started drafting a Standard cube, opened another one, then saw older cards). This is while still using the /draft/XX of the original URL

Is this a bug? Or am I not supposed to open multiple drafts at once?

[Daniel Royde]

This just got advertised by Bertoncheaty!