Site News [Forum] Card tooltips

[Eric Chan]

Card tooltips (the thing I've been calling auto-card this whole time, whoops) are here!

Use [c][/c] tags around the card name. If you have a bunch of card names, you can wrap the whole block in a pair of tags, and separate each card name with a newline.

This

[c]Bubbling Beebles
Bursting Beebles
Topsy Turvy[/c]

gives you

Bubbling Beebles
Bursting Beebles
Topsy Turvy​

There's also a button in the editor, in case you forget, or just don't want to type.

Any bug reports / questions / requests can be submitted here.

 

[Rob Dennis]

super appreciative

card test, strikethroughs are ones that aren't really "correct" but it's not a big deal at all
Fire <- half a split card
Blood Scrivener <- dragon's maze card
Fire // Ice <- full split card
Toil // Trouble fused split card
aether adept <- ascii representation of the name
jotun grunt <- ascii representation of the name
anger <- case insensitive match
Jeska <- a unique enough name can still give you what you want (legends mostly)
Braids <- multiples have one picked for you
Garruk <- multiples have one picked for you
jushi apprentice <- flip card top
tomoya the revealer <- flip card bottom
huntmaster of the fells <- DFC front
ravager of the fells <- DFC back
saint traft <- "unique" string but not at the front

 

[Jason Waddell]

Hooly crap, you can card tag an entire list of cards? Great work Eric!

 

[Eric Chan]

Thanks for the thorough testing, Rob. I see now why you're the coding expert that you are!

I'm using the super handy deckbox.org card database, so I'm a little bit at their mercy when it comes to what shows up and what doesn't. The Dragon's Maze cards appear to be in their database now, so the tooltips for those should work. It doesn't seem like they have the transformed side of flip cards or double-faced cards, which is weird, cause Gatherer lists those. As for incomplete card names, something like Assault gives you the right link, but with Fire, I suppose there's too many similarly named cards.

 

[VincePendrell]

Major thread necromancy here to ask for a couple features:

1. Is it possible to bind functionality from the card tag button to CTRL+SPACE or similar keyboard shortcut?

2. Would it be possible to make the card tag reference a string passed as a parameter to the tag?
Example:

I dislike the[c=Force of Will]free spells[/c] mechanics.

As it is, free spells will look for a card named "free spells".

 

[Eric Chan]

#2's a great idea! I'll add it to my to-do list. I've wanted something similar for a while - sometimes I just want to type Jace, and have it link to the correct version of the walker, rather than having it pick one for me.

#1's possible as well, though from what I've gathered, it's a little tricky to do with this forum software, so I may prioritize it a little lower. Out of curiosity, why do you prefer Ctrl+Space? It's always a little bit of an art form when it comes to picking good keyboard shortcuts, so I'm welcome to suggestions.

 

[Chris Taylor]

I agree on all points vince. The stealth card feature as with force of will is a nice one

Ctrl+Space is a fine one, but the only thing I can think of is don't bind it to anything which would override something from a web browser

Ctrl+Q is quit
Ctrl+W is close tab
Ctrl+N is new window
Ctrl+E is Search
Ctrl+F is Find on page etc

 

[Eric Chan]

#2 is ready:

I personally feel that cubes need [c="Dromad Purebred"]more camels[/c].

I personally feel that cubes need more camels.

 

[VincePendrell]

Neat

[c="tarmogoyf"]with " "[/c]
[c=Tarmogoyf]without " "[/c]
[c="Dark Confidant"]spaced with " "[/c]
[c=Dark Confidant]spaced without " "[/c]

with " "
without " "
spaced with " "
spaced without " "

I requested CTRL+SPACE because I wanted a key as close as possible to CTRL and Z, X, C, V, A and S are already default bindings for common actions in text editing (and Ctrl+D is bookmarking for Chrome). SPACE was pretty much the one key that hadn't much going on for it. I guess I also got pulled to this key combination because I use a lot of autocomplete whenever I am programming something and the autocomplete key is almost always CTRL+SPACE as well.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Good call. Been wanting this for a while!

 

[Chris Taylor]

Interesting forum bug: Iona shows as Momir Vig

 

[Rob Dennis]

Interesting forum bug: Iona shows as Momir Vig

apparently it sorts Momir Vig, Simic Visionary before Iona, Shield of Emeria.

heh

 

[Eric Chan]

Decklists are here!

[deck="My Very First Jund Deck"]Creatures
4 Putrid Leech #LSV says don't play any, but...?
4 Sprouting Thrinax
4 Bloodbraid Elf #skill, amirite
2 Siege-Gang Commander
2 Broodmate Dragon
 
Planeswalkers
2 Garruk Wildspeaker
 
Spells
2 Bituminous Blast
4 Blightning
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Maelstrom Pulse
2 Terminate
 
Lands
9 Forest #who needs dual lands
9 Mountain
9 Swamp
 
Sideboard
1 Bituminous Blast
2 Deathmark
2 Duress
4 Goblin Ruinblaster
1 Great Sable Stag
1 Liliana Vess
1 Malakir Bloodwitch
1 Master of the Wild Hunt
1 Mind Rot
1 Terminate[/deck]

My Very First Jund Deck

Creatures (16) 4 Putrid Leech #LSV says don't play any, but...? 4 Sprouting Thrinax 4 Bloodbraid Elf #skill, amirite 2 Siege-Gang Commander 2 Broodmate Dragon Planeswalkers (2) 2 Garruk Wildspeaker Spells (15) 2 Bituminous Blast 4 Blightning 4 Lightning Bolt 3 Maelstrom Pulse 2 Terminate

Lands (27) 9 Forest #who needs dual lands 9 Mountain 9 Swamp

Sideboard (15) 1 Bituminous Blast 2 Deathmark 2 Duress 4 Goblin Ruinblaster 1 Great Sable Stag 1 Liliana Vess 1 Malakir Bloodwitch 1 Master of the Wild Hunt 1 Mind Rot 1 Terminate

I love Vince's idea of having the card images show up on the right side of the deck list, but I figured I'd release this first without that feature, and continue to iterate.

A couple of notes:

• If you want to break up your list nicely, use section names, like in the above example (Creatures, Spells, etc.). The parser will automatically tally up the number of cards in that section.
• Number your cards, even if there's just one copy. That's how the parser figures out what's a card name, and what's a section name.
• The section name "Lands" creatures a new column, as does "Sideboard".
• Use # to denote a comment after a card name. Vince, I don't know if this is what you meant when you said salvation has deck comments, so please let me know.
• No button in the editor yet, but that'll come. I'm tired!

Suggestions, bug reports, etc., post 'em all here.

 

[Jason Waddell]

Great work Eric! I would say the next thing we need is a "deck" button in the post editor (as well as a much needed "spoiler" button).

 

[Chris Taylor]

Sweet! while not the intended functionality of these forums, the card image off to the side is aweful for viewing large singleton lists (Eg commander) where the card remains up top but you're busy trying to remember which junk rare from betrayers of kamigawa (Hint: This one!) is at the bottom of this guy's artifact section.

I prefer the mouseover cards

 

[Rob Dennis]

Sweet! while not the intended functionality of these forums, the card image off to the side is aweful for viewing large singleton lists (Eg commander) where the card remains up top but you're busy trying to remember which junk rare from betrayers of kamigawa (Hint: This one!) is at the bottom of this guy's artifact section.

I prefer the mouseover cards

Agreed for me

 

[Eric Chan]

Ok, cool! Yeah, I hadn't even considered that since cube lists are singleton, they're going to sprawl off the screen a lot more than a Constructed decklist would.

Now that I've posted some sample cube decklists in the 3-0 thread, I.. kinda don't like how they're still effectively worse than Jason taking a screenshot of his decks in MTGO. In particular, laying out the curve and seeing that visually arranged in columns is how people actually build their cube decks, and it'd be great to see that reflected in the forums. The creature / spell / planeswalker / land split that works on the mothership for their articles and columns isn't as good of a fit for decks with singleton copies of upwards of 30 cards.

I might play around and see if using column names such as Ones / Twos / Threes / etc. to denote mana costs would be more eye-pleasing for cube lists. I'd probably need to shrink the font to ridiculous proportions to display the seven or eight columns required. But before I do that, what do you guys think? Is what we have ok, or are cube decklists kind of hard to mentally parse right now?

 

[Jason Waddell]

Ok, cool! Yeah, I hadn't even considered that since cube lists are singleton, they're going to sprawl off the screen a lot more than a Constructed decklist would.

Now that I've posted some sample cube decklists in the 3-0 thread, I.. kinda don't like how they're still effectively worse than Jason taking a screenshot of his decks in MTGO. In particular, laying out the curve and seeing that visually arranged in columns is how people actually build their cube decks, and it'd be great to see that reflected in the forums. The creature / spell / planeswalker / land split that works on the mothership for their articles and columns isn't as good of a fit for decks with singleton copies of upwards of 30 cards.

I might play around and see if using column names such as Ones / Twos / Threes / etc. to denote mana costs would be more eye-pleasing for cube lists. I'd probably need to shrink the font to ridiculous proportions to display the seven or eight columns required. But before I do that, what do you guys think? Is what we have ok, or are cube decklists kind of hard to mentally parse right now?

Singleton lists are always mentally hard to parse. Visually it's much easier to grok with a picture. I don't know if there's an easy answer for that. It just takes a lot more time to process the text than the picture.

 

[Eric Chan]

Pie in the sky idea:
You type out your cube decklist, and it shows you card images of all your cards in the same order you typed them. No columns or formatting or anything, just as many card images as will fit into the width of your screen, and then it wraps and continues. Better or worse than text decklists?

 

[Jason Waddell]

Pie in the sky idea:
You type out your cube decklist, and it shows you card images of all your cards in the same order you typed them. No columns or formatting or anything, just as many card images as will fit into the width of your screen, and then it wraps and continues. Better or worse than text decklists?

Uh... I dunno. Maybe just make a post and see what that looks like?

 

[theCubeMiser]

Maybe for the ones-twos-threes idea you can have the deck formatter either auto-wrap to the next line as the columns need condensing, or specify a fixed number of columns and have it read downward?

Either:

Ones    Twos    Threes    Fours    ETC
Card    Card    Card      Card     Card
Card    Card    Card      Card
        Card    Card

And when it's too wide:

Ones    Twos    Threes
Card    Card    Card
Card    Card    Card
        Card    Card
 
Fours   ETC
Card    Card
Card

Or, a fixed three-column solution:

Ones    Threes  ETC
Card    Card    Card
Card    Card
        Card
 
Twos    Fours
Card    Card
Card    Card
Card

 

[VincePendrell]

One thing I really miss here is having a box separating the deck content from the rest of the post. Having some soft tint like the code boxes would be super neat!

A little test deck

Oozes (15) 1 Scavenging Ooze 2 Mitotic Slime 3 Acidic Slime 4 Mirror Entity #in your face, consumerist society! 5 Predator Ooze (is this a comment?) Creatures (301) 300 Memnite 1 Ornitopther #comment outside of the thingie (0)

Lands (1) 1 Island I have 10 linebreaks before this (1) 1 Island

Sideboard (8) 8 Naturalize (0)

Spoiler: source

[deck=A little test deck]
Oozes
1 Scavenging Ooze
2 Mitotic Slime
3 Acidic Slime
4 Mirror Entity #in your face, consumerist society!
5 Predator Ooze (is this a comment?)
 
Creatures
300 Memnite
1 Ornitopther
#comment outside of the thingie
 
Lands
1 Island
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
I have 10 linebreaks before this
1 Island
 
Sideboard
8 Naturalize
[/deck]

Hmm..I see that "Lands" and "Sideboard" auto-formats the decklists. Is there a way to manually select this formatting? Like having specific [column] subtags or something similar?

Pie in the sky idea:
You type out your cube decklist, and it shows you card images of all your cards in the same order you typed them. No columns or formatting or anything, just as many card images as will fit into the width of your screen, and then it wraps and continues. Better or worse than text decklists?

Call this "image spoiler" or something and release it along the [cardimage] tag for single images It's neither better nor worse then the decklists, just fits a different purpose.

 

[Eric Chan]

Vince -

I'm not sure I want to get into sub tags at the moment. It's the trade off of power vs ease-of-use. I know that you're a software programmer by trade, so extra tags and markup come naturally to someone like you. But I also want people who haven't read this thread to be able to simply type the deck tag, paste in their list, and hit Post. If we can come up with a compelling use case for customizable column names, I'm all ears. But it would also have to be intuitive and natural for non-technical folk. I feel like I'm already toeing the line as it is.

A surrounding box is a great idea, though. I'm rubbish at visual design, so you might not get nice coloured hues, but I can put some sort of border around the decklist. And you're right, a card image tag could be an entirely separate thing from the decklists, and could be used in different contexts.

Brian -

I like your suggestions. I think I'd want all the column categories in a single row, to mimic the natural deckbuilding process as much as possible. But it might look like rubbish. I'll test a few things out when I get back home tonight, and if any of them look remotely passable, I'll post some screenshots here for people to evaluate.

 

[theCubeMiser]

I'll second the "background tint" to make it clearer where there's a deck in the post. You could make a colored header bar with the deck name or change the font for the deck name as well.

 

[Eric Chan]

MUST.. LOOK.. MORE.. LIKE.. MTGO SCREENSHOT...

[cubedeck="Grixis Control"]Ones
1 Duress
1 Thoughtseize
1 Wayfarer's Bauble
 
Twos
1 Epochrasite
1 Condescend
1 Mind Stone
1 Prismatic Lens
1 Remand
2 Rune Snag
1 Ultimate Price
 
Threes
1 Shadowmage Infiltrator
1 Vendilion Clique
1 Compulsive Research
1 Threads of Disloyalty
 
Fours
1 Dungeon Geists
1 Falkenrath Aristocrat
1 Murderous Redcap
1 Olivia Voldaren
1 Cryptic Command
1 Into the Roil
 
Fives
1 Thundermaw Hellkite
 
Sixes+
1 Cruel Ultimatum
 
Lands
1 Blood Crypt
1 Cascade Bluffs
1 Creeping Tar Pit
1 Desolate Lighthouse
1 Faerie Conclave
1 Polluted Delta
1 Shivan Reef
1 Steam Vents
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Wooded Foothills
4 Island
1 Mountain
2 Swamp[/cubedeck]

Grixis Control

I wasn't really happy with how difficult the decklist tag is to mentally parse, because a text list of singletons just doesn't read very well on a forum page. It turns out that arranging a list of card names by their mana cost, like I suggested above, doesn't do anything to address the problem. I think the best thing to do is to show partial card images - it's the easiest for the human brain to grok.

• The section names are now Ones, Twos, and so on, up to Sixes. The parser can't actually tell what you're putting under the section names, so you could list Primeval Titan under Ones, and it would just show up there. It's just a way for you to format your columns.
• The number of columns maxes out at six. Any more, and we would run into formatting issues on narrower screen widths. So put all your seven, eight, and nine drops together with your Kokushos.
• As before, number your cards, even if there's just one copy.
• "Lands" creates a new row at the bottom for all your lands. No room for "Sideboard" anymore, but I figure that's not as critical with cube decklists.
• No more embedded comments after card names. Just no room!

This is something of a work-in-progress, so throw your suggestions and bug reports out there. I'll leave the existing decklist tag around as-is, because that might still be useful for regular Constructed lists and stuff.

And yes, editor buttons are coming. Soon. I promise!