Cockatrice - intended as successor to MWS

[Gekoratel]

I'm not sure if you want people here or on the actual site their thoughts on the program but I was able to play with my friend who recently got it up and running on his Mac.

Pros

• Solid look and feel especially the cards themselves wherever they are used.
• The view deck in game and pre-match is awesome and reminds me of MODO
• Only having one instance of the card makes building decks much cleaner than MWS, also the smart-text feature in the deck editor is also a bonus
• Multi-platorm, obvious but worth stating
• Loading sets/cards/pictures is much easier than MWS where you had to jump to 2-3 different sites to find everything.  The check-box to show pictures on the fly is awesome

Cons

• I felt like most things were using double-click such as adding a card in deck builder which is fine but then when I was playing a game and double-clicked the next turn button it moved the turn twice.  I don't know if this is the only example but didn't feel the intuitive.
• Subtracting/Adding life one at a time, don't know if I was missing something but having to right-click 8 times because you lost 8 life is just annoying and would like a faster way of doing it.
• Hand displayed vertically, I know your defending this because it leaves more room but when you hold your hand IRL 95% of people hold them horizontally.  Also the human eye has an easier time tracking horizontally than it does vertically.  I really disliked this element of the UI, I don't mind the phases being on outside but the hand part is just bad.
• I wasn't really feeling how counters were handled, the numbers seemed overly large removing the text on the card and making them look uglier
• I would really like a paste-deck from clipboard option because when getting decks from the internet it is quite annoying to have to actually build them rather than running some process.

That's all I have after one session if I think of some more stuff I'll add it here.

[mbruker]

Thanks for your comments.

don't know if I was missing something but having to right-click 8 times because you lost 8 life is just annoying

If you middle-click the number, you will get a drop-down menu where you can choose how much life you would like to lose (gain). This also applies to the mana counters. An alternative way (the way I do it) is to press Ctrl + L and type in your desired life total. Third, to lose 1 life, pressing F11 is much easier than right-clicking the number.

everything else

The other points are good and will hopefully be considered very soon.

[mbruker]

http://brukie.de/cockatrice/screen26.png

Optional horizontal display of the hands, additional "cards in hand" counter.
Also note the box around the table that displays who the active player is (borrowed from MTGO ). Maybe it would look nicer if the cards didn't overlap with the box, but that would lead to even more dead space, so I'm still experimenting.
What do you think?

[mbruker]

Quoted from the Cockatrice website:

• First of all, I would like to welcome Marius van Zundert to our development team. Marius has already contributed a lot of useful ideas, and I hope there'll be many more in the future.
• This website is going to undergo some changes to make it more easily extensible and to provide a better communication platform for Cockatrice users. You may have noticed that the first change has already been made, namely the transition of the message board to a more advanced one. We are still working on further improving the integration of the board software into the rest of the website.
• There is a new Cockatrice version on the download page. This version breaks protocol compatibility, so all users have to upgrade. There is now an installer for Windows and also a DMG image for Mac. It may be entirely possible that those will not work like they should, so I'm looking forward to hearing about your experiences.
  This update features, among others, the following changes:
  
  • counter for cards in hand
  • multiple colored counters on cards instead of just one white one
  • card properties can be set (p/t, annotation etc.)
  • nicer looking active player display
  • deck list can be loaded from and save to the system clipboard
  • optional horizontal display of hand
  • phase buttons are accessible via F5...F10 (pressing the same button again untaps everything / draws a card when in untap step / draw step)
  Have fun!
  

[AmbivalentDuck]

Please update the oracle importer to use the sets.xml in the same directory by default.  It's really lame that if I hit "Start Download" without first selecting it, the program hangs.  Otherwise, awesome update and keep up the good work.

[mbruker]

Starting with this version, the oracle updater doesn't load any sets.xml file at all by default. This was changed because on each platform, the default ways to aquire the file are different. You see, the Windows and Mac packages don't contain the file any more as it's more convenient to download it on the fly (using the respective menu item) in case the file changes in the future (e.g. M11 release). Concerning the Linux version, once package maintainers start including it in their distributions, it's going to be scattered across the file system anyway so any reference to the application path should be avoided.
The fact that the program hung whenever you clicked 'start download' without having selected anything has now been fixed. Apart from that, 'check all' and 'uncheck all' buttons have been added.

[Marske]

First of all, I would like to welcome Marius van Zundert to our development team. Marius has already contributed a lot of useful ideas, and I hope there'll be many more in the future.

Thanks, great to be on-board. While I'm not yet ready (schedule wise) to actually develop modules for the main program I am going to try and be a force in the website restructuring (mostly conceptual to this point) and I'll take an active part in getting the Forums running and answering questions.

I'm going to try to be very involved with the Mac distribution as it's my preferred OS and Platform, so all Mac users, fire away any questions here

[theLastGnu]

Quoted from the Cockatrice website:

• First of all, I would like to welcome Marius van Zundert to our development team. Marius has already contributed a lot of useful ideas, and I hope there'll be many more in the future.
• This website is going to undergo some changes to make it more easily extensible and to provide a better communication platform for Cockatrice users. You may have noticed that the first change has already been made, namely the transition of the message board to a more advanced one. We are still working on further improving the integration of the board software into the rest of the website.
• There is a new Cockatrice version on the download page. This version breaks protocol compatibility, so all users have to upgrade. There is now an installer for Windows and also a DMG image for Mac. It may be entirely possible that those will not work like they should, so I'm looking forward to hearing about your experiences.
  This update features, among others, the following changes:
  
  • counter for cards in hand
  • multiple colored counters on cards instead of just one white one
  • card properties can be set (p/t, annotation etc.)
  • nicer looking active player display
  • deck list can be loaded from and save to the system clipboard
  • optional horizontal display of hand
  • phase buttons are accessible via F5...F10 (pressing the same button again untaps everything / draws a card when in untap step / draw step)
  Have fun!
  

I'm getting an error when trying to connect to the server about version mismatch: Protocol version mismatch. Local version: 5, remote version: 7.
I compiled this TODAY from git. Has the linux git version just not been updated yet, or am I doing something wrong?

[A_Outcast]

What server is everyone playing on?

[mbruker]

I'm getting an error when trying to connect to the server about version mismatch: Protocol version mismatch. Local version: 5, remote version: 7.
I compiled this TODAY from git. Has the linux git version just not been updated yet, or am I doing something wrong?

I don't know what you did there, but you certainly didn't compile the current code. How did you do the git pull?

What server is everyone playing on?

I think that at the moment, the only server is running on cockatrice.de, port 4747.

[coldcrow]

Just stumbled over an issue: Tokens still show up in another zone than the "battlefield". They should get properly removed.

[mbruker]

Tokens still show up in another zone than the "battlefield". They should get properly removed.

This has been reported many times, and I've never been happy with the idea of not being able to create something like a dredgeable Life from the Loam token (for example, when you cast Cunning/Burning Wish without having a sideboard). In my opinion, this inability has always been a major flaw in MWS. However, as everybody seems to want it, I've made a checkbox (which is checked by default) for it so you can now make tokens that disappear once they leave the table. Keep in mind that this doesn't work with the current version of the server as I don't want to force people to update for such a small change.

[coldcrow]

Oh. Well on a second a thought it is actually a rather small issue, since you can dump them into the exiled zone. While I am at it reporting "issues" :

the staple manipulation handling could be a bit improved. It is easy to accidentally drag a card out of the boundary of the subwindow and adding it to your hand/anywhere.
Also a "cloning" function would be a nice shortcut for some game actions.

[mbruker]

Oh. Well on a second a thought it is actually a rather small issue, since you can dump them into the exiled zone.

Too late, already coded

It is easy to accidentally drag a card out of the boundary of the subwindow and adding it to your hand/anywhere

Do you think this is a matter of getting used to it, or could it actually be improved? Problem is, I don't have any idea how.

Also a "cloning" function would be a nice shortcut for some game actions.

Yes. Also coded The code is not going to get into the git branch for some days though.

[AmbivalentDuck]

A quick wishlist:
-Option to undo a card draw.  Ie.  I draw a card but my opponent was just slow with an upkeep effect.  I counter but he can't trust that I had the card in hand during my upkeep.
-Discard random card
-Peek at facedown cards
-Prevent any two cards from completely overlapping.  Ie. I equip my creature with Skullclamp.  The creature should not be completely covered or vice versa.

[mbruker]

Thanks. The first idea is very good and has not been had before. The other things are actually already being worked on, especially the equipment thing. The problem how an equipped card should be displayed is not trivial, but I believe the solution is near

[AmbivalentDuck]

For peeking at facedown cards that I control, you could just show them in the card info pane on mouse over.

[mbruker]

This would give you additional information without your opponent knowing about it. You see, if you drag the top card of your deck onto the table face down for some reason, you shouldn't be allowed to know what it is (except if you explicitly look what it is, in which case your opponent should be informed about it). For that reason, the server doesn't even tell the client what the card is, so a query has to be issued anyway.

[AmbivalentDuck]

Could you make new right-click menu options for automatically duplicating a card or parsing it to make tokens automatically?

Token creation parsing (from English oracle text):
- As a regular expression to match: "/uts? (\S*) ([\d\*]{1,2}/[\d\*]{1,2}) ([\w]) (.*?) creature tokens? (.*?) into play/"

That should grab in order:
A quantity (by quickly comparing against English number words up to, say, ten) that defaults to one matching the pattern against quantity words fails.
A power/toughness
A color
A creature type
An annotation line describing abilities, you'll probably need to trim "with" from the beginning of the string whenever this subpattern matches.

[mbruker]

Duplicating a card is already working in my git branch
The parsing thing requires a bit of deliberation as it pushes us very much into a Magic specific direction while also being sensitive to even small oracle text changes. I think that if we were going to do something like that, it would be better to implement the entire Magic rules system so we'd be getting features like the one you're asking for as a side product. This isn't your first idea pointing towards that, so would you be interested in doing it? I find the idea very promising, but I'm also aware of the amount of work that would have to be invested, and I don't have the time to do it.

[AmbivalentDuck]

90+% of Magic's cards affect only a few resources.  It's not actually that big a deal to automate them.  Ie. Parsing Ancestral and watching where you point your arrow is no big deal.  The problem comes in when we "oops" and change the gamestate in a way that cannot be reversed.  Automatic token creation *on demand* can never permanently damage the game state; automatic card drawing/discard/etc can.

[mbruker]

Because of a strange bug (or feature?) in Gatherer, I thought they just hadn't put up the M11 cards, while the cards were in fact there and were just not displayed if your browser language wasn't set to English. Now that I know, I've added M11 to the sets file that lies on the web server. The new cards can be retrieved via a full oracle import.

[The Atog Lord]

Does this enable 2-fisted testing when not online? That is a feature I have been using MWS on my MacBook for while traveling, and would like to try Cockatrice if it also has this feature.

Thanks.

[theLastGnu]

Does this enable 2-fisted testing when not online? That is a feature I have been using MWS on my MacBook for while traveling, and would like to try Cockatrice if it also has this feature.

Thanks.

Seconded, if I could figure out how to do this on cockatrice I'd likely switch completely from MWS

[mbruker]

Strangely, I had written a reply to Rich's post, but it's not there. Maybe I forgot to actually click OK.
Anyway, what you want to do is not possible with the current version (only if you open two instances of the client and a server on your machine, which is possible, but in no way fun). Since there's only very little work left to do to make that work, I hope it'll be in the next version. As of today, auras/equipments work, as does targeting a player with arrows.

[The Atog Lord]

OK, sounds good. Thanks for the reply. If you do get that working, please send me a message.

[AmbivalentDuck]

Having tried and failed to find a game on cockatrice a few times over the last couple of days...I'm going to present an idea:

Write a module that translates between MWS's craptastic communication strategy and cockatrice.  Basically, nobody will use it enough to generate a critical mass until there already is a critical mass.  So, enable us to use cockatrice in place of the existing crappy MWS client until there's momentum, and then let people go over to the cockatrice communications protocol on their own since it's infi better if only in terms of stability.  I'm craptastic as a network engineer, but I'm willing to help however I can.

If nothing else, the MWS client has poor pointer handling so using Cockatrice as a more stable client could catch on quickly.

[SiegeX]

I think this is an excellent idea and makes a lot of business sense.  It's the only good way to break the catch22 situation you find yourself in.  Being able to tap into the establish userbase that is the MWS crowd will get word-of-mouth of your program going like wildfire.  Also, if you can somehow non-intrusively highlight features that are disabled during a Cockatrice/MWS hybrid match, you'll give people an incentive to move over to your platform.  The fact that a new version of MWS being released has a statistically significant chance of happening after the release of Duke Nukem Forever means that most will stick around once they switch; I know I would.

[mbruker]

This idea is certainly good, however I don't know if it can be done (and if it can, I don't know how). As far as I know, the MWS protocol is not known, so it would have to be reverse engineered.

[AmbivalentDuck]

The program appears to have been poorly coded in the most minimal way that worked.  The communication is event-driven and probably not particularly well obfuscated.

My thought is to pull Windows up in two virtual machines and just TCP dump the traffic between them.  If every time I play a forest to the same on-screen location, similar packets are sent, then we should be fine.  I think the MWS server is just a relay, too.  It doesn't seem to play an active role like the cockatrice server.

I'm extremely short on free time right now, but I fully expect almost all communication to be brain-dead: integers and strings.  I can put a few hours into cracking the within-game communication.  No sure how much work it would take to get the harder (and rarer) parts: the client-server communication and client-client handshake.

The hardest part for me is that I'm not a hacker.  I don't know how to inject data into a TCP stream, so it's not like I can easily test my beliefs about the data structures being sent.  The only thing I could do with my knowledge of communication over networks is send a copy of a handshake I'd previously seen and then try sending engineered data from there.