http://beta.magiccards.info/uqc/en.html - These right? Yeah I guess they should be excluded, I will do that. Going to be a slightly off term "not:funny", but it totally makes sense.
"mana=RG" is actually "all cards that cost exactly one red and one green mana" = "I want to spend exactly one red mana as one red mana and one green mana as one green mana". {R/G}{R/G} can be paid as RG, so that's why it matches. Split mana do get special treatment here. But how is it strictly less?
As for the greater/smaller operators on mana, I think you're right, it's broken. "mana<=RG" should return all cards that can be paid for with RG in your mana pool, so RG, R, G, {R/*}, {G/*}, {2/*}, 2, 1, 0. I will have a look at this tomorrow.
"mana=RG" is actually "all cards that cost exactly one red and one green mana" = "I want to spend exactly one red mana as one red mana and one green mana as one green mana". {R/G}{R/G} can be paid as RG, so that's why it matches. Split mana do get special treatment here. But how is it strictly less?
Ah OK, that makes some sense then. By "strictly less" I mean it's strictly less in the natural partial ordering on mana costs, a<=b iff everything that can pay for b can also pay for a. {R/G}{R/G}<=RG but {R/G}{R/G}!=RG. You should probably lay out somewhere what definition you're using, since people seem to have different ideas about what this should do. I find it most natural to go by the obvious partial ordering, but I must admit this might not always be the most practical. Still it would definitely reduce confusion if <, <=, =, >=, and > were all actually compatible with each other in the usual way.
ADDENDUM: ...man, the more I think about it, the yuckier actually computing this partial order seems. Of course, no card in magic has a *horridly* complicated cost, the worst for now is Reaper King, so you could probably write a simple way that runs fast in practice, but I must admit that this is more complicated than I thought. It's easy to compute the ordering on mana costs not involving hybrids, and I don't even think handling {C/D} is too hard, but {2/C} really throws things off. So, worst case, you can always just try instantiating all hybrids in all possible ways and checking if everything above pays for something below... not very nice, but it shouldn't be a big deal in practice compared to the ever-growing library of cards, right?
Looking good! Some thoughts after playing with the advanced search:
- Land doesn't belong under Colors since it's, you know, not a color. Also, searching for "land" as a type gives 409 results, but the Land checkbox only gives 403 results.
- Can't search for something like "pow>3 pow<9" without entering it manually. I guess it's a trade off between power and simplicity. I'm inclined to lean towards simplicity here, but it's worth mentioning.
- For clarity, the "Land" rarity checkbox could instead say "Basic Land".
- Time Spiral timeshifted cards show up on a search for the new card face. They should be treated as having the old face.
- Future Sight timeshifted cards have their own card face category. Should the Planar Chaos timeshifted cards have their own category too? They're very similar to the normal card frame, so I could go either way.
- I like the funny/not-funny filters, but I think it would be even better to have it based on border color instead. I.e. white-bordered, black-bordered or silver-bordered.
- Printed card text: This seems to use rules text only. Maybe it should include the entire printed text so you could search for "summon goblins".
Sniffnoy: I will think about, and then write a little note on the "Syntax Help" about how it works. Thank you for your input.
KezzerdriX:
Five lands were mislabelled as Artifacts, I fixed that.
"pow>3 pow<9" I want to keep things as simple as possible. If I allow every combination, I end up with a search like Gatherer's, and well, that's what I want to avoid.
Renamed "Land" rarity checkbox to "Basic Land", very good, thanks.
Will move Time-shifted cards to "is:old".
The Planar Chaos time-shifted cards will get their new additional category at a later point (and will be linked to their original cards).
"not:funny, etc." -> Unglued/Unhinged/Happy Holidays have a silver border. You're right. What to do with the unique celebration cards? Border color is a good idea, maybe I will just add it extra.
Will consider the "printed card text + type" for a future update.
And I will try to fix the Art Game so "melissa benson" is a valid choice for "Melissa A. Benson".
Thank you so much for your feedback, it really helps.
This is just a small request, but it should be easy and not get in anyone's way. I use quoted strings a lot in search, and because I'm used to how Google treats them, I often leave off the closing quote. This makes the first word get searched for with the quote attached, which is nasty.
The nicest thing would be if the close quote was implied at the end of the line, but second best would be just stripping out unmatched quotes.
Also, all the "o:" it sticks in the search box makes it pretty unpleasant to fix mistakes there. Especially in the above case. Not sure how best to fix it though, since having a way to do advanced searches from the main box is very nice.
It looks awesome and I love the improvements. The one suggestion I'd have is more customization in the sort function. Like a box beside each criteria where you can put a number for sort order or something like that, instead of a few preset number of combinations. Other than that, I can't think of anything I'd like better.
I apologize if I'm repeating anything anyone has posted.
Here are some random thoughts:
Single Card pages are well done, I like that you moved all the menus to the top. very classy.
Browsing lists of cards is also a great improvement. View as Scans only == Amazing! One of my favourite features so far.
Advanced Search (This is my bread and butter for building decks) is too long. I really liked how on the original it fit on my screen perfectly. I relaize this way is more modular, but if there's anyway you could make it shorter, or possibly multi-column (kinda tricky, I know), I would give you the best high five ever.
Types - I kinda liked the list selection for this part. I don't really want to type out Instant each time I want to search for an instant. The single click was nice.
"Is" section is truly a godsend. The one thing I was going to ask for was the ability to search for vanilla creatures and BAM, you read my mind. Very very amazing. Oh, re-name "Funny" to "Un-cards".
Please make the Edition box bigger. It's very difficult finding what set you need at times. You can't even view two full cycles at once with it. Around twelve visible lines would be much better.
Lastly, Adding on a small reminder of how to write using the short code queries.
"t-type
r-rare"
etc. having that beside a small text box would be amazing for quick-complex queries.
All in all I am happy to see that you're still working on improving an already valuable service to Magic players everywhere. Thanks man!
Personman: Very good idea. I will fix that (missing quotes from advanced search automatically added, missing quotes from regular search box silently assumed).
The James: Which other sort order combinations would you like to see? I cannot really think of any other useful one. But I'm more than willing to add more.
echoswitch:
I will see what I can do about making the list shorter, wider... there are too many options!
Types list. Yeah, I understand. Too much typing. I will think about it.
The edition list is really bad, I know, I can make it a bit longer, but it's still really messy. I just can't think of a better way (check the Sitemap, there are SO many editions) right now.
Neither "un-cards" nor "funny" is actually correct, since it also includes the Happy Holidays cards and the Unique Event Cards. So I guess I'll leave it at funny for the moment.
A reminder for the search box, I have been planning that, but not found a good way yet to make it comprehensive and "not getting in the way" at the same time.
The James: Which other sort order combinations would you like to see? I cannot really think of any other useful one. But I'm more than willing to add more.
In particular, I was thinking Power/Toughness, either or both, in conjunction with other characteristics (mostly name/number and CMC)
I love that you can finally limit the search to cards that require no more than a set of colors to play without excluding too much. For example, one can now find all the cards that can be played with {W} and {R} without excluding {W/U} cards.
I hate that we can no longer sort results by converted mana cost, power or toughness. Mostly the first.
I have some problems with the layout of the advanced search page. Specifically, there are too many dividers on it. Most serve nothing but to needlessly stretch the page.
One can no longer place both an upper and a lower bound on mana cost, converted mana cost, power and toughness, although I must admit I rarely if ever used that feature.
Is the "Were you maybe looking for:" feature coming back? (for example, on mc.info "wheel of fortuen" returns a four-card list that includes wheel of fortune. beta says it didn't couldn't find anything.)
How do you exclude types? (for example, I want a list of non-creature artifacts with cmc <=1. Or, non-legendary creatures that contain the phrase "each other".)
The James: Ok, I will try getting those in before the release
ikegami: You can, you just need to enter the query directly, for example "pow>=2 pow<=5".
asw122: That's what I was going for!
mox: Try "t:creature pow<=2 o:destroy o:creature" it will match creatures with a power of less or equal than two that have "destroy" and "creature" in their text (in any order)
Hey there. I just want to say that I absolutely love the new interface!
As much as I like Gatherer, Magiccards.info has a few noticeable upsides - namely, comparatively little clutter on the screen, an inexplicable lack of ads, and so forth.
The new ability to search for CMCs, Power, and Toughness is much improved.
The fact that you don't have to select individual subtypes is also great. (How many Deserts are there? =P )
I also like the Art Game. I can never remember the artist though...
Hey Hannes, love what you're doing with the beta. I did come up with an idea based on the Timeshifted cards. Would it be possible to have cards that produce tokens (like Dark Depths) link to the token they produce (Marit Lage)?
http://beta.magiccards.info/uqc/en.html - These right? Yeah I guess they should be excluded, I will do that. Going to be a slightly off term "not:funny", but it totally makes sense.
"mana=RG" is actually "all cards that cost exactly one red and one green mana" = "I want to spend exactly one red mana as one red mana and one green mana as one green mana". {R/G}{R/G} can be paid as RG, so that's why it matches. Split mana do get special treatment here. But how is it strictly less?
As for the greater/smaller operators on mana, I think you're right, it's broken. "mana<=RG" should return all cards that can be paid for with RG in your mana pool, so RG, R, G, {R/*}, {G/*}, {2/*}, 2, 1, 0. I will have a look at this tomorrow.
Ah OK, that makes some sense then. By "strictly less" I mean it's strictly less in the natural partial ordering on mana costs, a<=b iff everything that can pay for b can also pay for a. {R/G}{R/G}<=RG but {R/G}{R/G}!=RG. You should probably lay out somewhere what definition you're using, since people seem to have different ideas about what this should do. I find it most natural to go by the obvious partial ordering, but I must admit this might not always be the most practical. Still it would definitely reduce confusion if <, <=, =, >=, and > were all actually compatible with each other in the usual way.
ADDENDUM: ...man, the more I think about it, the yuckier actually computing this partial order seems. Of course, no card in magic has a *horridly* complicated cost, the worst for now is Reaper King, so you could probably write a simple way that runs fast in practice, but I must admit that this is more complicated than I thought. It's easy to compute the ordering on mana costs not involving hybrids, and I don't even think handling {C/D} is too hard, but {2/C} really throws things off. So, worst case, you can always just try instantiating all hybrids in all possible ways and checking if everything above pays for something below... not very nice, but it shouldn't be a big deal in practice compared to the ever-growing library of cards, right?
- Land doesn't belong under Colors since it's, you know, not a color. Also, searching for "land" as a type gives 409 results, but the Land checkbox only gives 403 results.
- Can't search for something like "pow>3 pow<9" without entering it manually. I guess it's a trade off between power and simplicity. I'm inclined to lean towards simplicity here, but it's worth mentioning.
- For clarity, the "Land" rarity checkbox could instead say "Basic Land".
- Time Spiral timeshifted cards show up on a search for the new card face. They should be treated as having the old face.
- Future Sight timeshifted cards have their own card face category. Should the Planar Chaos timeshifted cards have their own category too? They're very similar to the normal card frame, so I could go either way.
- I like the funny/not-funny filters, but I think it would be even better to have it based on border color instead. I.e. white-bordered, black-bordered or silver-bordered.
- Printed card text: This seems to use rules text only. Maybe it should include the entire printed text so you could search for "summon goblins".
Edit: Bah! Stupid art game!
KezzerdriX:
Five lands were mislabelled as Artifacts, I fixed that.
"pow>3 pow<9" I want to keep things as simple as possible. If I allow every combination, I end up with a search like Gatherer's, and well, that's what I want to avoid.
Renamed "Land" rarity checkbox to "Basic Land", very good, thanks.
Will move Time-shifted cards to "is:old".
The Planar Chaos time-shifted cards will get their new additional category at a later point (and will be linked to their original cards).
"not:funny, etc." -> Unglued/Unhinged/Happy Holidays have a silver border. You're right. What to do with the unique celebration cards? Border color is a good idea, maybe I will just add it extra.
Will consider the "printed card text + type" for a future update.
And I will try to fix the Art Game so "melissa benson" is a valid choice for "Melissa A. Benson".
Thank you so much for your feedback, it really helps.
There are promos that could easily get listed such as Deckmasters/FTV: X/FNM.
The nicest thing would be if the close quote was implied at the end of the line, but second best would be just stripping out unmatched quotes.
Also, all the "o:" it sticks in the search box makes it pretty unpleasant to fix mistakes there. Especially in the above case. Not sure how best to fix it though, since having a way to do advanced searches from the main box is very nice.
Thank you so much! This will make trading so much easier for me and my friends.
Here are some random thoughts:
Single Card pages are well done, I like that you moved all the menus to the top. very classy.
Browsing lists of cards is also a great improvement. View as Scans only == Amazing! One of my favourite features so far.
Advanced Search (This is my bread and butter for building decks) is too long. I really liked how on the original it fit on my screen perfectly. I relaize this way is more modular, but if there's anyway you could make it shorter, or possibly multi-column (kinda tricky, I know), I would give you the best high five ever.
Types - I kinda liked the list selection for this part. I don't really want to type out Instant each time I want to search for an instant. The single click was nice.
"Is" section is truly a godsend. The one thing I was going to ask for was the ability to search for vanilla creatures and BAM, you read my mind. Very very amazing. Oh, re-name "Funny" to "Un-cards".
Please make the Edition box bigger. It's very difficult finding what set you need at times. You can't even view two full cycles at once with it. Around twelve visible lines would be much better.
Lastly, Adding on a small reminder of how to write using the short code queries.
"t-type
r-rare"
etc. having that beside a small text box would be amazing for quick-complex queries.
All in all I am happy to see that you're still working on improving an already valuable service to Magic players everywhere. Thanks man!
Bakert: I will fix that!
Fractius: You mean this one? http://www.deckcheck.net/ I will check on that!
The James: Which other sort order combinations would you like to see? I cannot really think of any other useful one. But I'm more than willing to add more.
echoswitch:
I will see what I can do about making the list shorter, wider... there are too many options!
Types list. Yeah, I understand. Too much typing. I will think about it.
The edition list is really bad, I know, I can make it a bit longer, but it's still really messy. I just can't think of a better way (check the Sitemap, there are SO many editions) right now.
Neither "un-cards" nor "funny" is actually correct, since it also includes the Happy Holidays cards and the Unique Event Cards. So I guess I'll leave it at funny for the moment.
A reminder for the search box, I have been planning that, but not found a good way yet to make it comprehensive and "not getting in the way" at the same time.
Hygiene: Which browser are you using?
Thank you so much for all the feedback!
In particular, I was thinking Power/Toughness, either or both, in conjunction with other characteristics (mostly name/number and CMC)
I love that you can finally limit the search to cards that require no more than a set of colors to play without excluding too much. For example, one can now find all the cards that can be played with {W} and {R} without excluding {W/U} cards.
I hate that we can no longer sort results by converted mana cost, power or toughness. Mostly the first.
I have some problems with the layout of the advanced search page. Specifically, there are too many dividers on it. Most serve nothing but to needlessly stretch the page.
One can no longer place both an upper and a lower bound on mana cost, converted mana cost, power and toughness, although I must admit I rarely if ever used that feature.
Thanks.
I totally agree. It's a great site to use. I'm also a big fan of seller websites that use advanced search features.
How do you exclude types? (for example, I want a list of non-creature artifacts with cmc <=1. Or, non-legendary creatures that contain the phrase "each other".)
You do good work.
B/G in Legacy
The James: Ok, I will try getting those in before the release
ikegami: You can, you just need to enter the query directly, for example "pow>=2 pow<=5".
asw122: That's what I was going for!
mox: Try "t:creature pow<=2 o:destroy o:creature" it will match creatures with a power of less or equal than two that have "destroy" and "creature" in their text (in any order)
illagong: The "Did you mean" will be back. You can exclude types by using "not". For example: "cmc<=1 c:c not t:creature" and ""+t:creature+not+t:legendary&v=card&s=cname">o:"each other" t:creature not t:legendary".
kudos to Elysium for the sweet banner
As much as I like Gatherer, Magiccards.info has a few noticeable upsides - namely, comparatively little clutter on the screen, an inexplicable lack of ads, and so forth.
The new ability to search for CMCs, Power, and Toughness is much improved.
The fact that you don't have to select individual subtypes is also great. (How many Deserts are there? =P )
I also like the Art Game. I can never remember the artist though...
GAYMER
XXBRG ~~ Kresh Necrophilia ~
WXBXG ~~ Doran Defense ~~~~~
Really? I haven't noticed it being terribly forgiving with that so far.
I mean, not that anyone's life is hanging in the balance.
kudos to Elysium for the sweet banner
Udnam7am: It's hard to balance it properly. And there's cards with the famous "Æ", and so on.