Tinker 3.0 Release

lebenski

lebenski

CubeTutor Developer
From my Dev Blog: http://cubetutor.wordpress.com

Hello! It’s been three weeks since the last Cube Tutor release and I’ve got a ton of cool stuff in store for you this time around. For the most part these changes are “non-functional”, i.e they are improvements to the operation of Cube Tutor rather than entirely new features, with a view to making Cube Tutor as user friendly as possible.
First and foremost we have a new header courtesy of Belgian artist Nathan Gotlib! The artwork was hand drawn and if you look closely you’ll notice some sketches of iconic cube cards from the history of Magic! Check out more of Nathan’s work including the original art for this header at http://www.nathangotlib.com.

New Features
  • Card images now reflect the version of the card you’ve selected… Finally. If you change the set of a card on the Edit List page you’ll see the change reflected immediately. I know that a lot of people take great pride in the appearance of their cube so you guys can finally get rid of that M10 version of Birds of Paradise! To say this was a lot of work is an understatement. There is no one source of Magic card images on the internet so I’ve used a combination of Gatherer, Wizards “general” URL and MagicCards.info to source them. With ~23,000 in total there is a chance of a mistake or two so please let me know if you find a broken link or incorrect image. I’d also like to give a shout out to MTGSalvation user mrbrightside who helped me out with this. Why not give his cube a draft to say thanks? http://www.cubetutor.com/draft/266. A quick note on set codes. I use MagicCards.info set codes so if you want to see what set a code refers to please take a look at this page: http://magiccards.info/sitemap.html
  • Split cards are fixed. Up until now there have been two entries in my database for each split card (one for each side). This is annoying for many reasons, so I have consolidated the split cards into one card each. If you’ve got a split card in your cube please do check that it has updated properly. The converted mana cost for a split card is set to the cheapest side by default. This can of course be overridden on Edit List like normal.
  • The Edit List page is more mobile friendly. I am using a new technique to save the changes that has reduced the amount of Javascript required by nearly 100k in page size. This should improve the performance of this page on mobile devices.
  • The memory footprint has been dramatically reduced. I have decided to cache cube information less aggressively resulting in an overall reduction of memory required or heap size. In testing I’ve found that this has improved the performance in drafting and making updates on the Edit List page. It’s important to strike the right balance with caching so I will be monitoring this closely.
  • The Cube Index has had a facelift. It now uses the same grid as the Edit List page and can be filtered too. You can search for cubes by user name or property (Eternal, Standard, Heavily Pimped, Large etc..).
Bug/Minor Fixes
  • Removed duplicate cards for the Premium Deck Series sets (Slivers, Fire and Lightning and Graveborn)
  • Fixed the set codes for all Duel Decks, a lot of them were set to DDK.
  • Added some new fnm and release promos.
  • Drafting with just one pack was breaking after picking the last card. This is now fixed.
As ever, please keep the feedback coming in!

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/cubetutor
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/cubetutor
Riptide Lab: http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/tinker-3-0-release.221/
Email: ben [at] cubetutor [dot] com
 
lebenski

lebenski

CubeTutor Developer
Thanks to everyone who provided feedback for the Tinker 3.0 Release. A few of you mentioned missing card images to me and hopefully those should now all be fixed, if not please let me know. I also found some time for a couple of other bits and pieces…

New Features
  • Added FAQ Page.
  • New Rarity column on the Edit List page. If you have a Pauper or Peasant cube that is listed as Budget you can now override the rarity on the offending card(s).
  • Moved the Export function from My Account to View List to make it possible to export other peoples cubes. Added MTGSalvation ‘DECK‘ export format.
  • Added the Export function to the Deck page so that you can export deck lists. Supported formats are Plain Text, MTGSalvation and MTGO (.dec).
  • Added the filter to the Visual Spoiler page.
Bug/Minor Fixes
  • Added missing M14 Promos, Duel Deck cards, FNM promos and fixed FNM Life // Death image.
  • Packs with more than 15 cards are now draftable.
  • Fixed a bug where the line endings weren’t working when exporting on Windows and opening the file in Notepad.
  • Analysis page shows how many cards are being analysed which is useful when filtering.
  • There were a couple of edge case problems with Visual Spoiler ordering. The order is now more similar to the View Cube page.
  • Creatures with the Super Type ‘Summon’ (mostly Unglued and Unhinged) were appearing as ‘Artifact Creature’ on the Edit List page. This has been fixed.
Thanks!
http://www.cubetutor.com/contact
@cubetutor
 
Eric Chan

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
Sweet list of changes, Ben. If I could add a feature request, it'd be the capability to export cube decks to the Riptide Lab format. I know we're still a small community, but hey, gotta start somewhere!

The decklist format would look like this:

Code: 
[cubedeck="Simic Hexproof (kinda)"]Ones
1 Arbor Elf
1 Delver of Secrets
1 Noble Hierarch
1 Ancestral Vision
1 Ponder
1 Preordain
 
Twos
1 Gyre Sage
1 Looter il-Kor
1 Life from the Loam
 
Threes
1 Edric, Spymaster of Trest
1 Kira, Great Glass-Spinner
1 Ohran Viper
1 Troll Ascetic
1 Thirst for Knowledge
 
Fours
1 Thrun, the Last Troll
1 Garruk Wildspeaker
1 Jace, Architect of Thought
1 Mwonvuli Acid-Moss
 
Fives
1 Bribery
1 Overrun
1 Plow Under
 
Sixes+
1 Frost Titan
1 Pelakka Wurm
1 Simic Sky Swallower
1 Revenge of the Hunted
 
Lands
1 Halimar Depths
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Mystifying Maze
1 Shelldock Isle
1 Yavimaya Coast
5 Forest
5 Island[/cubedeck]

Which would output this:

Simic Hexproof (kinda)








 
lebenski

lebenski

CubeTutor Developer
Will do! Can I specify sideboard cards in this format? Presumably this would be just for decks and not whole cube lists?
 
Rob Dennis

Rob Dennis

Developer
lebenski said:
Will do! Can I specify sideboard cards in this format? Presumably this would be just for decks and not whole cube lists?
Click to expand...


I would say the intention is for just cube decks. Eric made the parser here, so even if there's not already a spot, it's possible you both could just agree on what it *would* be
 
Eric Chan

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
Right now, there isn't a slot for sideboard cards, and that's only because I couldn't really figure out a good way to lay out the cards visually. But it sounds like a good idea for future inclusion, so maybe we can go with a "Sideboard" category after lands. On my end, I'll ignore it for now, and then later I'll figure out how to lay it out properly.

Yes, this would just be for individual cube decks, as opposed to cube lists. We don't really have a good way of displaying entire cube lists on these forums - other than using CubeTutor, of course. ;) I'm not sure it's worthwhile for me to invest any energy there, actually, because it would just mean our users would have to maintain lists in two places (CT & RL). I like that at this point in time, most everyone in the cube community stores their "master cube list" on CubeTutor. No need for us on RL to encroach on that territory!

As always, we really appreciate your quick response and delivery, Ben!
 
Eric Chan

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
SWEET!

Just got an idea. Maybe if you added url as an attribute, I could link back the the page where the deck lives on your site.

Code: 
[cubedeck="eBrot's BantSurvivalPod from CubeTutor.com" url="http://cubetutor.com/cubedeck/18123"]
 
Eric Chan

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
Whoops, one minor revision. I think we'll have to eliminate the http:// in the url attribute, otherwise this forum software does some funky things with it.

Code: 
[cubedeck="eBrot's BantSurvivalPod from CubeTutor.com" url="cubetutor.com/cubedeck/18123"]
 
Eric Chan

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
Oops, took a bit more work on my end to get the forum software's rampant auto-linking under control. Should be working now.
 
lebenski

lebenski

CubeTutor Developer
This is now live! Let me know if you find any issues. Here is the complete update from my blog:

A small update that’s just about big enough to deserve a .1 increment! I’m working on the next major release alongside these minor fixes so stay tuned for news on that soon.

Updates
  • Added FTV:20 (set code v13), SDCC Planeswalkers (set code mbp) and Duel Decks Heroes vs Monsters (set code ddl).
  • Added a new deck export option for Riptide Laboratory Format so you can now post your deck lists here: http://riptidelab.com/forum/
  • FAQ page now appears in the menu when logged in.
  • New Decks and Updates now contribute immediately to your Activity Score on the Cube Index page rather than having to wait 24 hours.
 
Goober

Goober

Hi lebenski, awesome list of changes! Much appreciated, I'll be taking advantage of several of these as soon as I have the chance.

Are there any plans to implement a multi-select feature for the "Edit Cube" page? Just curious, as I think this would be an incredibly useful feature for a lot of users. (I also listed a few other suggestions over in this thread if you saw it :)) http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/multi-select-on-edit-page.226/

Maybe the most simple solution would be to have checkboxes next to each card, and then have the ability to change a specific attribute (say "Set" for instance) for each selected card?
 
lebenski

lebenski

CubeTutor Developer
Hi Goober,

I've been thinking a lot about multi select. The problem is a technical/UX issue. At the moment when you change the value of any of the drop downs on the Edit List page, the field only knows about itself i.e. it's own value and the card it refers to. Changing this so that it now knows about other fields under a particular circumstance (when multiple cards are ticked) is a bit of a paradigm shift. Technically solvable of course but I'm not sure if it's the right thing to do. I have been toying with the idea in my head of something like when multiple fields are ticked a new form appears at the top of the list where you can edit values for all of the selected cards. I think it could be a little clunky though and anything that adds extra javascript to that page adds another layer of complexity as it's already very JS heavy.

So yeah I really want to do it, but I haven't had a eureka moment yet about an ideal way to solve it technically.

Cheers,
Ben.
 
Goober

Goober

Would it perhaps be easier to simply have the .csv export include the entire table row for each card? (including set code, "pimp-level" etc.) This way we could simply export our lists, make the necessary changes to to csv, and re-upload the list.
 
lebenski

lebenski

CubeTutor Developer
At the moment the Bulk Upload doesn't mandate any particular file layout, this makes it easy for people to upload their current list in whatever format they have it. If I wanted to let people include set, pimp etc in the file it would mean mandating a particular format, for example rows like:

Name, setCode, pimp

That would make it more difficult to people with an existing offline file to get on to Cube Tutor because they'd have to convert their file to this format. This would be a very time consuming and error prone exercise that would likely mean that people wouldn't bother. I suppose I could export to a new file type (".cub") that only Cube Tutor understands, but it feels like a workaround for a problem that should ultimately be supported on the UI. I do realise that multi select is very standard UI functionality that people are used so as soon as I can figure out a nice way of doing it, I will!
 
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