Cockatrice - intended as successor to MWS

[mbruker]

Hi.
First of all, as this is my first post on TMD: My name is Max-Wilhelm Bruker, I'm a German Vintage, Legacy (and pretty much everything else) player.

For about a year I have been working on a project called Cockatrice (like the 2/4 flying), which is much like MWS, but without the design flaws. Therefore, I intend it to fully replace MWS as the playtesting and online tournament application of choice, and I would like to use this thread to share the current state of development with you.
There are some screenshots of the current version and some further information here: http://www.cockatrice.de.
The major design criteria are:

• client-server approach, so any secret manipulation of hidden information is made impossible by design
• use of a modern widget toolkit (Qt4) for multiplatform deployment, so Windows, Unix and Mac OS X are natively supported
• open source development leading to less bugs (hopefully)

While Marcus and me would like to release a precompiled package, there is one major concern that needs to be addressed beforehand, and that is copyright law. Obviously, we are likely to run into problems if we release the full card database along with the program. Being totally unfamiliar with copyright and trademark laws, I would appreciate some suggestions on how to do that without Wizards having a problem with it. We currently have an external program that gathers Oracle files from www.crystalkeep.com and compiles them into the needed format. This program, however, contains small lookup tables with a small number of card names and extra pieces of information. Would releasing this program (and, along with it, its source code) be illegal? If so, could it be made legal by inserting copyright information or something like that?

Any help on the subject is greatly appreciated.

[MirariKnight]

Support for OS X = awesome

[Joe Indelicato]

Hmm. I'll download and use it. Only problem is that it looks kind of ugly tbh :/

[jro]

IANAL, but there's a difference between making something legal and making something that won't cause legal trouble.  Sure, maybe a judge might find that your program does not infringe on anyone's intellectual property, but would you be willing to fight for that if WotC actually filed suit?  You might want to look over the cease and desist letter sent to magic-league.com recently, which was reposted here on mtgsalvation.  You might also talk to the people who worked on gccg, which was another open source card game player that tried real hard to avoid directly using any of WotC's IP while still letting people play Magic.

The important thing to remember is that WotC wouldn't let you play Magic online with your friends over a webcam if they thought they had any legal chance of stopping you.  Tread carefully, because, as a Mac user who has no viable legal option to play Magic Online, I'd sure love to use your program.

[The Atog Lord]

Sadly, the potential legal issues are the main reason I never pursued a project like this.

As for OSX users, you can get MWS working on your Mac.

This project looks interesting to be sure. An Open Source MWS alternative would be very interesting and potentially awesome.

[mbruker]

Thanks for your answers. I read the letter to Magic-League some time ago, and it clearly shows that Wizards know about the existence of MWS and Apprentice. As they don't seem to have sued the authors of those programs, I think we're safe as long as we don't violate Wizards' copyrights any more than the other programs do.
Being open-source cannot have anything to do with that because if there are any pieces of copyrighted information that we include in our code, closed-source programs include them as well, regardless of the information not being human-readable.
I will try to clean up the Oracle importer code so it can be made ready for an initial release this evening.

[AmbivalentDuck]

The easiest solution is to ask users to find the appropriate the mwBase file and use it in place of a 'better' solution.  That way, you're only parsing someone else's legal transgression.  Ie. Mozilla isn't responsible for Firefox's ability to render 4chan.

You can even parse it, make a checksum, make sure it's "official," then stuff it into a database stored on the user's machine.

[mbruker]

ask users to find the appropriate the mwBase file and use it

This approach would make us dependent on MWS (its database file format is not known, is it?), which is not a very good idea IMHO. Remember that there might not be a reason to continue using it much longer

Only problem is that it looks kind of ugly tbh :/

Would you care to explain what could be improved regarding the user interface?
Btw, the current snapshot includes nice looking background textures for the play zones (e.g. this one: screenshot)

News:
I managed to remove references to special cards from the Oracle importer. All that is left is a list of all the sets, which hopefully won't be as much of a problem.
A binary release has been put online on http://www.cockatrice.de. Hope to see all of you soon on the server for some playtesting.
edit:
If you run the oracle importer as is, it will import only 10601 cards while at least 10602 would be correct. That is because Crystalkeep doesn't provide an Oracle text file for the Harper Prism Promos set, which, sadly, includes Mana Crypt. To correct this, you need to make a file called "promo.txt" in the "oracle" directory, containing the following text:

Mana Crypt
0
Artifact
At the beginning of your upkeep, flip a coin. If you lose the flip, Mana Crypt deals 3 damage to you.
: Add  to your mana pool.

After that, you can run the oracle tool normally.

[ReAnimator]

I'm on a mac so this is really exciting. I look forward to trying this out. Thanks for all the hard work.

[Charlie]

IANAL, but there's a difference between making something legal and making something that won't cause legal trouble.  Sure, maybe a judge might find that your program does not infringe on anyone's intellectual property, but would you be willing to fight for that if WotC actually filed suit?  You might want to look over the cease and desist letter sent to magic-league.com recently, which was reposted here on mtgsalvation.  You might also talk to the people who worked on gccg, which was another open source card game player that tried real hard to avoid directly using any of WotC's IP while still letting people play Magic.

The important thing to remember is that WotC wouldn't let you play Magic online with your friends over a webcam if they thought they had any legal chance of stopping you.  Tread carefully, because, as a Mac user who has no viable legal option to play Magic Online, I'd sure love to use your program.

They registered on a German domain. How could Wotc stop that?

[AmbivalentDuck]

Build fails on Ubuntu 9.04 with:

RCC: Error in 'cockatrice.qrc': Cannot find file 'translations/cockatrice_de.qm'
make: *** [qrc_cockatrice.cpp] Error 1

An alpha build of this is probably still less buggy than MWS.

[mbruker]

You need to run "lrelease cockatrice.pro" before "make".

[AmbivalentDuck]

Got it working.  Clean interface, doesn't crash.  I suggest a mass exodus from MWS to cockatrice.  And maybe some prettier/better defaults.  I like the Ubuntu-ish notion that eye candy and ease of use by default is the way to win converts.

[mbruker]

There is a new testing release on the download page. It is not fully compatible to older versions because of a change in the layout of the table grid.
The most important change is that the row where you put the lands has a configurable style of laying out the cards, which should make it comfortable to use for those who don't like the overlapping ("economic") style that was used exclusively before. It is worth noting that you see your opponent's lands according to that setting as well, not just your own.
As the table tends to get full sooner when you turn off the "economic" layout, it now grows and shrinks dynamically according to its contents. This also enables you to have an arbitrary number of other cards on the board, regardless of how you would like the land row to look.
Mac and Linux users: Please pull the new version from the Git repository.

[Yare]

I don't know if this functionality is already in it because I haven't tested it, but if it is, I apologize. One thing I would like to see is a mention in the game log of when mana is added or removed from the mana pool (or, a way to at least toggle this functionality). In MWS when building up a big storm, sometimes the mana would get lost in the shuffle.

[mbruker]

Cockatrice doesn't know what mana is, so it obviously can't keep track of it by itself. However, changes to the little colored counters on the left are logged, so when you're playing combo, you can just use those for mana and storm---there's a reason for there being eight of them (life, wubrgx, storm)---and have everything in the text box at the end.

[Yare]

Cockatrice doesn't know what mana is, so it obviously can't keep track of it by itself. However, changes to the little colored counters on the left are logged, so when you're playing combo, you can just use those for mana and storm---there's a reason for there being eight of them (life, wubrgx, storm)---and have everything in the text box at the end.

Logging of the changes to the circles is what I wanted. Thanks for having this in.

[coldcrow]

This would have a major contender in octgn. www.octgn.net
Though this has not central server functionality and is just a tcg simulator.

[mbruker]

I have never heard of that project. Looks nice though. It's not open source, is it? Because if it's not, it's not a contender.
The central server functionality is what defines Cockatrice. Probably the two projects can coexist and serve different purposes.

[Almanomada]

This looks really good.  I just recently started an MTGO account mainly for playtesting extended decks and practicing my drafting while overseas.  Is it possible at all to make a draft simulator to work with your system?  I would love to draft with friends online without investing heavily into packs.  Just an idea. 

[Doomsday]

Will I be able to solo test non-mirror matches with this thing without paying for a premium service?  If so, sign me up.

[thecman]

I just downloaded it, but am having trouble getting started.  For instance when I go to the deck editor there is no list of cards.  I'm sure there is something simple that I'm missing.  I'm pretty inept at times.

Can someone write a quick step by step on how to get everything set up?  Just pretend I'm a total bone head, that way i wont have to keep asking questions.

[mbruker]

Is it possible at all to make a draft simulator to work with your system?

That is possible, although I don't know whether there might be another copyright issue. We'll look into that, but don't expect it in the near future.

Will I be able to solo test non-mirror matches with this thing without paying for a premium service?

Sure, that is being worked on.

when I go to the deck editor there is no list of cards.

You need to run the "oracle" tool to compile the card database. Then in the settings dialog of the main program, choose the newly generated file as your card database.
Proper documentation on how to get started is a good idea, though it's partly a waste of time because so many things are still changing that it would have to be updated frequently. At the moment, I'm focusing on the programming work

[Almanomada]

http://draft.bestiaire.org is a simulator i currently use and it is transferable with both apprentice and MWS.  I think if you could get with them and this could easily be worked into your system.  Great system anyways I look forward to playing you guys on it.

[mbruker]

Oh, I thought you meant drafting directly on the Cockatrice server.
I just did a test draft on that site. Apparently you can export your draft deck in either format and load it in Cockatrice without any problems.

[Almanomada]

Thats sweet.  I mean if you could build a draft simulator directly into cockatrice, that would be amazing.  The fact that the drafter is compatible works -- for now..   

[majikal]

This pushed me to finally register and post some instead of just lurking. I just downloaded this and updated the oracle file, but it doesn't seem to contain any of the early book promos like Mana Crypt. Is there any way to remedy this?

[jeek]

Debrand it, remove anything in the program that links it back to you, and release it on Freenet.

[jaeppel]

ok, so i am itching to get this running on my mac.  ive been cut out of the online loop far too long as a non-wondows user.  My pretty powerbook is non-intel, and i really dont want some jank installed to simulate running windows xp on a 80486. 

Has anyone else compiled and sucessfully run this on a mac?  Will it work on non-intel machines?  i suppose if all goes well i will soon test this out for myself, still need to dl and install Qt....

looks like fun

[mbruker]

There is a new version on the download page. Changes include a spectator mode, alphabetical sorting of zone views and some appearance improvements.
Please update as the old versions will not work correctly with the current server.

Has anyone else compiled and sucessfully run this on a mac?

Yes. However, you need quite a bit of extra software for it. If someone donates me a Mac, I'll make precompiled packages

Will it work on non-intel machines?

Yes, makes no difference.

I just downloaded this and updated the oracle file, but it doesn't seem to contain any of the early book promos like Mana Crypt. Is there any way to remedy this?

The problem is that Crystalkeep doesn't provide oracle texts for those cards. I'll try to ask them why that is. In the meantime, you can hack the cards into the database yourself (described somewhere at the beginning of the thread).