Deck Generator, Draft Parser and Hover link generator

Magic: The Gathering is a card game that requires us to present information in some form, sometimes textual, sometimes visual. Readers need to know what we are writing about without the need to look elsewhere and in order to have the information ready on your own page I decided to write several tools that could help authors writing about Magic: The Gathering.

Deck generator

I was trying to figure out how to easily generate decklists for a while and I ended up having one written in Google Sheets but that is not particularly easy to use and takes time to generate the code since it is also linked with database. By accident (posting the output on my Facebook wall) I found out that Paul Leicht created his own decklist generator to use in his articles on PureMTGO, written in JavaScript. He let me scavenge the code and I decided to use it and create a decklist generator that everybody could use.

I created two versions. One that can be used online and one offline version. The difference between the two is that the online version doesn't sort cards and the offline one does. Both generators can be accessed from http://stsungalters.com/deckgen/index.html

The decklist generator can produce a visual deck view and a text view (on the screenshot).

Magic Online's Draft log Parser

When I tried to write an article about of my drafts I took zillions of screenshots from Magic Online and put that up. It took ages though so I thought that something that can show the picks in a visual way would be neat too. I had no idea how to do that so something was suggested to me. If you wish you can use this to show your drafts. To navigate to it go here

Hover links generator

The last thing that I was using on PureMTGO is something that generates links and hovers for cards. It seems to be the Standard for many Magic sites and there is no reason why you wouldn't want to have that on your site too. I used it from time to time on this blog and will use it in all my following posts. What it does is that if you hover over a card name (which is a link) it will show you the card's image. If interested in that you can try it out - Hover Generator.

Big thanks to Paul because without him I wouldn't create any of this. Thanks to Aspallar who was so kind answering my dumb questions about JavaScript. Thanks to April King for writing PDF Decklist generator from which I got the idea how to do the deck gen linked above.

Trueside.cz

I was asked to create a webpage by a company named Trueside. I said yes, hoping that they would pay at least a bit for it (The CEO of the company is my colleague's boyfriend). I wanted to help them start somewhere and eventually get paid but I learned that in this country nothing like that actually works out. I was forced to work during weekends and was also told that is 'just a small thing', 'easy to do' and 'doesn't take long'. One that wonders why they didn't do their webpage on their own, right? I was also accused of not following their instructions even though the ones I received showed to be the wrong ones because someone sent me not updated instructions. This is not how professional work looks like and especially as someone who decided to do this of their own volition I'd expect some respect from their side.

Nevertheless all this led to me creating their website that is currently still in use. I kind like it. If they will ever ask me for help, they won't get it though unless they give apologize or pay for what I did. (if you click on the screenshots below it will take you to their site - trueside.cz.)

MTGGoldfish

Since I play on MODO more regularly than before which was more of 'rarely' I needed a site to check on prices.

I started using MTGGoldfish to see the prices of a larger amount of cards. But with time I started using the site for more things. I added some decklists I wanted to share in a text form (because it clearly shows the prices in tix and one can see price of each card at once). Later I ventured on and read some of the statistics articles and became hooked. I don't usually read Magic articles unless it is something very strange usually not talking about Magic but rather its players, psychology or such. But when seeing numbers and reading some of the analysis I realized that this is something my brain can actually work with and interests me. Even the interpretation of the data is a completely different chapter.

MTG Goldfish has become a site I most of the time have opened in my browser I check the new content. I still do not watch Magic videos but I might actually start doing that. I sometimes watch games on MODO so I don't see a problem why I couldn't watch something that was actually screen captured for the audience.

One of the things that I actually like about MTGGoldfish is the fact that it is mostly plain text and shows all the data well unlike other sites (and exports decklists in plain text!). So if someone decides to make the site more graphically pleasing I hope this clarity will be maintained. (the webmaster is certainly someone who knows what he wants and can formulate what he wants).

While being on the site I accidentally clicked on some link and I ended up on MTGGoldfish Facebook page. I clicked on 'Like' because they deserve it and then noticed that they were looking for a graphics designer. So I decided to sent them an email with something like my portfolio and see if they would contant me.

A bit later I received an email asking me if I could do what they envision. I found out that what they plan to do is have some nice visualization of decks that they can post on FB, Instagram etc.

I decided to do it no matter what they give me (not so much work at work so I was glad to work on anything). During the process of coming up with a layout and design I certainly learned few things (since I really did not expect doing graphs and using zillion of layers...).

I wanted to do the first draft functional and I wanted to have an idea how something like a visual deck view could look like and I wanted to keep the MTGGOldfish orange color present. It turned out functional but not 'awesome' or anything. The second draft was an attempt to make it look better - in terms of visually pleasing. But I struggled a lot with showing the data. I was trying to figure out what kind of graphs could be used and what graphs wouldn't look dull. The second draft wasn't good enough but it lead me to the final draft which finally started looking nice and flashy actually a fourth one). Textures and graphics was added, more icons and figuring out how to make it look coherent (I spent way more time doing stuff in illustrator than I would expect. I spent hours doing something that I don't even know was worth doing that). In the end the simplest solution showed up to be the best and the visual deck view for MTGGoldfish was done.

So I thank MTGGoldfish for letting me do this and hope the players enjoy it.

Draft no. 1

Draft no. 2

Draft no. 3

Final generated version

Intranet design

Few weeks ago I got employed (great news!). I work for FN Motol (Hospital) as a graphics designer. This means that I started creating stuff be it print documents or digital media.

There is intranet that I don't really have access to yet but I was asked to prepare a design for it. I've done something fast in Photoshop which ended up looking more or less ok (because I did not have access to intranet, otherwise I would use the code) and it was redelegated to the IT department. When we all saw the final result they produced later we were shocked because it did not really copy my style. When I had some spare time I decided to log on a machine actually connected to their network and use the code and restyle the page.

When doing this I realized that even small things matter and that my eye still catches so many things that are 'graphically' wrong. Often there can be awesome ideas and graphics but it would be nice if people could use the space in a better way. Especially now when there is so much space on our screens or the magazines/posters etc we see everyday. All those small changes count and can make something look great or at least acceptable and good.

This post is here to remind me that not only creativity is needed for a good design or a good looking page/advert etc. After struggling with a very let's say 'artistic' advert this was actually quite a revelation and it helped me finish it keeping this in mind. My design follows (not sure why the quality of the image is so bad..I actually saved the file in MS Paint because there is nothing better on the computer I could use)

STsung Alters

Today I launched a site showcasing some of my Magic: The Gathering alters, custom playmats and custom tokens. You can view some of my paintings and drawings there too.

Magic Alter

During my last year at school I tried to figure out how to alter Magic: The Gathering cards and in the process learn how to paint. To some extent it worked. Now I accept commissions for Magic Alters. Here is a video how such a thing is done and the final result.

To check out my other work visit my personal blog and the category Magic Alter -> http://stsu.blogspot.cz/

And here's a time lapse of the alteration

Custom Playmat time lapse

I started drawing and painting custom playmats. Here is an example of such a work.

A timelapse of me doing StoneBlade playmat. Processing 14GB of Windows Media Video was a pain, but hopefully it ended up well.