[Feature] Proxy Card and Deck Generation

[Omniscient Sean]

Well, this is sort of a conglomerate of things, so I'll run through the list.

First, Athena now has an extremely simplistic proxy card image generator. You might be thinking to yourself, "You've already gotten the source images for every card in First Edition and Beta from Dylan; why would you need to generate proxy card images?" And the answer to this question is, "Because those images are full color; the point of a proxy deck is to consume no ink while printing but still have recognizable cards." The Athena Proxy Images are strictly black and white with almost no framing; almost all ink usage on printing them goes to printing text, which is admittedly larger than it has to be, but that is more to address the fact that text on web-resolution (72 dpi) images degenerates quickly. The result is something like this:


Second, Strategin's sealed product generator now has support for printing all your virtual product with proxy images. There is a new "Generate Images" link at the top of all the product viewing pages that'll pop up a new window with all the proxy images. If you print it portrait, you'll get nine cards per page. Then all you need is a paper cutter and a sleeved deck.

Third, there is now a constructed proxy deck generator. On the search results page, you will now see a link proclaiming, "Add this card to your proxy deck." Click it and the card will be stored (in a session variable, for the tech savvy out there), and the link on that card's entry will be replaced by "Edit proxy deck." This link will take you to the proxy deck editing page, which will allow you to set the quantity of each card in your deck, to add new cards to the deck directly, to clear the deck, and to generate images. (There's also a link to this page on the Athena index page.) For adding cards, you must enter a query that returns exactly one card; for example, "arcana" is no good because that returns "Arcana Department" and "Arcana Experiment," while "security" is good because only "Securitymajig" has that specific term in its title. Your proxy deck should persist as long as you keep your browser open. Also note that the image generation page looks at the session variables rather than form contents, or if you prefer that in non-jargon, you have to click the "Save Changes" button if you've changed the quantities of cards before you click "Generate Deck."

[Froto]

If you do it 'landscape' you get 10 per page.

[Hordak]

You guys are awesome. This is a great idea. Impromptu draft/sealed at any time!

[Omniscient Sean]

I only have one problem with the impromptu draft as implemented: in this setting, you print your three booster packs, seal them, and then go to draft with your friends. The problem is that this allows you to see the contents of all three booster packs, which can alter your picks for the first two packs based on what you know of your last two packs (e.g. which rares you'll get in your last two packs). The best way to do it would be to have an objective third party print up a bunch of booster packs, seal them, then not participate in the draft generated from them, though this does require that someone not participate. The main other solution I can come up with is to play your draft near a printer, and to only print off one booster pack at a time. That is, everyone prints one booster pack, drafts it, then everyone goes back to the computer and prints a second booster pack and drafts it, and so on.

This problem does not exist for the sealed deck generator (since you get to see all your product simultaneously) or the constructed deck generator (since you've hopefully put a lot of thought into it), at least.

[Hordak]

I meant in a casual environment. It's more cost effective to get draft practice in with fake cards that don't cost anybody anything. Or, have a guy volunteer to sit out and he prints up all the packs.

[Omniscient Sean]

Printing them up one pack at a time is a fine solution too.

[Froto]

I meant in a casual environment. It's more cost effective to get draft practice in with fake cards that don't cost anybody anything. Or, have a guy volunteer to sit out and he prints up all the packs.

I dont know, ink and paper. Ink being the big deal here, you know how expensive that crap is?! Now I suggest using a schools or uni's printers for that. paper is just cheap.

[strife27]

maybe, instead of having these links at the bottom of the page, and covered by the copyright material, you can move these links to the top of the page, in a landscape fashion, much like the links at the top of The Spoils webpage. It would be appreciated. I can't access the booster generator, as it's covered by the copy-right material.

Just a suggestion. Great job, we really appreciate it.

[strategin]

strife27: What you're seeing is a bug. Athena has only been tested in Firefox 2 and Internet Explorer 6, both on Windows, as well as on AOL (don't ask!). Please let me know what browser, version, and operating system you are using, and I will look into fixing it.

[strife27]

looks like I am using Firefox 1.5 on XP. I read the layout problem thread, and will upgrade to 2.0. Didn't realize I wasn't up to date on that.

edit: just updated to version 2.0, still have the same issue with the overlapping.