MSE (Magic Set Editor) template

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wololo
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MSE (Magic Set Editor) template

Post by wololo »

If you don't know yet what Magic Set Editor is, check out their website: http://magicseteditor.sourceforge.net
MSE is a tool to make custom sets creation easy. It is extremely flexible and not limited to the "MTG" look and feel.

Below is an example of some of the gorgeous stuff you can achieve with Magic Set Editor (source)
Image

I've been recently in contact with Pichoro, one of the Template devs of MSE who kindly started working on a template for Wagic. In simple words, it allows you to create your custom set through MSE, and MSE will then generate a _cards.dat for you half-automatically.
It also means that if you find a custom set in the MSE format somewhere on the internet, you can quickly convert it to a wagic _cards.dat. Again, this is half-automatic and currently you still have to edit the file to add the "auto=" lines, but it does the most painful work for you.

This is a work in progress, but any feedback you can give will be highly appreciated. In the near future, this could be the best solution to quickly create new cards.

How to use:
Pichoro wrote: This version will only write a text formatted .dat file output with lots of Wagic formatting. I temporarily disabled the image output because it was annoying for my testing purposes. I'll re-enable it in a future release - when I do, it'll export a folder full of renders with proper names, except for tokens (which will always need to be renamed).

To use it, the user must have MSE installed, and a custom set they want to export. They should open the zip and place the folder inside it in their MSE data folder, commonly located at C:\Program Files\Magic Set Editor 2\data, but it could move depending on where they installed MSE to. The data folder will exist in the same directory as MSE.exe. After they install the export-template, they can export the set in Wagic format, and then open the .dat file that is created to do any further modifications that are necessary.
You can download MSE here: http://magicseteditor.sourceforge.net/download
And here is the template: http://wololo.net/files/wagic/magic-wag ... mplate.zip

If you convert existing mse sets to the Wagic format, please make sure to get the original author's permission before you do so!

Please give it a try, and again thanks in advance for your feedback :)
abrasax
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Location: Switzerland

Re: MSE (Magic Set Editor) template

Post by abrasax »

Huge,

I've been working for more than 2 week on an Star Wars kind of Core set... I've reached 173 cards but my goal was 255... (naturally only cards that can be coded with the current engine)... I'm still working on it but this option is great it will save me a lot of time to do the cards.dat at the end.

just as example (and for the curious amongst you) here is the cards.dat it produced...

[The extension zip has been deactivated and can no longer be displayed.]

What's incredible is that it can directly notice the ability line... (altough some mistake apears sometimes e.g. mountainwalk appears duplicated, some activated ability will appear as ability) but all in all a great tool..

How is the cards id generated ? Any way to ensure we don't ovverride some existing cards id ?

Thanks..

Abra
We need your Help !!!
New to wagic ? Be sure to check the following :

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Customize: Themes FAQ, All images thread, Abra's Mediafire folder
wololo
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Re: MSE (Magic Set Editor) template

Post by wololo »

I haven't tested it personally. The id is made of 2 parts: a 5 numbers prefix, and then 3 numbers automatically generated.
I *think* the prefix is randomized, but you can also choose it.
so, for example, if the prefix is 12345, then you'll have

12345001, 12345002,12345003, etc...
I think you can choose your own prefix.

There is no guarantee that there will no be any id overlap, but right now we're pretty safe at least for official ids, as they have at most 6 numbers currently.
Szei
Posts: 218
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Location: USA

Re: MSE (Magic Set Editor) template

Post by Szei »

This could prove extremely useful for people creating customs. I haven't tried using the template yet, but I can testify that MSE is a great program for making card images (it's the program I'm currently using). It has an intuitive interface with essentially zero learning curve. My only complaint is that the picture resizing feature seems rather limited. It's not a big deal though since one can just resize the pictures in an outside program.
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Pichoro
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Re: MSE (Magic Set Editor) template

Post by Pichoro »

Hey, I registered to participate in this discussion.

First, wololo's right about the number. On the options tab for the Wagic export template, you can specify a number up to 5 digits long, and it'll be used as a prefix for your ID, with the rest being the card's number in your set. If you don't specify a number, one is randomly chosen (the random number can't be chosen for the whole set, so its done for each card). In the future, when I enable image export as well, you'll have to specify a number to get the image names to line up with the ID for the cards.

There are indeed some difficulties with the "abilities" export. I need to work on it, but at the time I was having trouble distinguishing between the first strike in "Flying, first strike" and the first strike in "Target creatures gains first strike until end of turn."

Target lines are only partially done - I haven't added support for targeting in zones yet, only general stuff. The following should all work, for example: "target creature", "target creature or player", "target white creature", "target nonblue creature", and "target white or blue creature".

My eventual goal is to even do as much of the auto lines as possible. But I haven't even begun that task, as its a bit daunting to think about.

On the matter of resizing images - what size should they be for Wagic (in pixels, please)? When I add image export back in, I can actually have it resize the images for you. :)

One other correction - I'm not MSE's author, just a developer. Twanvl is the author.

I'm all ears for any other questions or bugs.
Szei
Posts: 218
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Location: USA

Re: MSE (Magic Set Editor) template

Post by Szei »

Pichoro wrote:On the matter of resizing images - what size should they be for Wagic (in pixels, please)? When I add image export back in, I can actually have it resize the images for you. :)
200x285 for big card images
45x64 for thumbnails

I'm glad to hear that MSE is still being worked on =D
Image
Takieda
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Re: MSE (Magic Set Editor) template

Post by Takieda »

Pichoro wrote:Hey, I registered to participate in this discussion.
Welcome! hope you have some fun here.
On the matter of resizing images - what size should they be for Wagic (in pixels, please)? When I add image export back in, I can actually have it resize the images for you. :)
Full size pictures are 200 wide by 285 tall. Thumbnails (which have the same name as the full size card art but reside in a folder aptly called "thumbnails") are 45 wide by 64 tall.
Takieda
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Re: MSE (Magic Set Editor) template

Post by Takieda »

I think I'm in love! This is powerfully awesome. Just messed around with it for a few minutes and, aside from lacking slight blending options that I'm using, this takes away SO much work that I've been doing on the free card art set. I'll have to create a new template across the board for the stuff I'm doing, but if a proper export feature is created, this will SIGNIFICANTLY reduce the work I have to do for the rest of the cards! *gleeful joyous abandon*
Pichoro
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Re: MSE (Magic Set Editor) template

Post by Pichoro »

Szei wrote:
Pichoro wrote:I'm glad to hear that MSE is still being worked on =D
MSE is alive and well. :) Its just that lately, the only advancements have been templates, so there hasn't been any need or motivation to release a program update. But I'm still keeping up with all the templates - Planechase and all.
Takieda wrote:Thumbnails (which have the same name as the full size card art but reside in a folder aptly called "thumbnails")...
That's a problem. Right now, the export scripts for MSE aren't advanced enough to let me write multiple directories, or to control the names of written directories. I'll probably have to build in a boolean option to let people choose a size. Then you would do two exports of your set, one at each size, and it would generate both sets of images.
Takieda wrote:... aside from lacking slight blending options that I'm using...
What is it lacking?
Takieda wrote:I'll have to create a new template across the board for the stuff I'm doing...
Now I'm really confused - are you doing something other than Magic? Why do you need a new template?
Szei
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Re: MSE (Magic Set Editor) template

Post by Szei »

Pichoro wrote: Now I'm really confused - are you doing something other than Magic? Why do you need a new template?

Takieda is working on a custom art set with non-copyrighted material for use in Wagic.
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