Collectible Card Game Headquarters

Hello,

Quite new to this site, I could not help but be amazed at the quality of work and time spent on releasing those HQ sets.

As a new visitor, I also got a bit confused by the energy needed to download packs.

I was wondering if people handling this project needed some online mirror to distribute files from, rather than rely on a hundred of different mediafire places

If interested, please contact me, I'd be glad to help.

Do you have any recommendations as to how to make things easier? I for one find it confusing as well but would like to hear any recommendations. I personally would like to see the main listing of picture packs updated to be a list with each set in link form ... something like this:

• Magic 2011
  
  • Cropped Scans
  • Full Scans
  • Tips (Front)
  • Tips (Back)
  • Tokens
• Magic 2010
  
  • Cropped Scans
  • Full Scans
  • Tips & Tricks
  • Tokens

deurk wrote:I was wondering if people handling this project needed some online mirror to distribute files from, rather than rely on a hundred of different mediafire places

How much traffic can you provide? At least 1-2 TB monthly is needed (based on my own MWSPA statistics).

Just saw I already asked this question 2 years ago... Guess my notifications were not set up correctly.
Traffic is not an issue, I think a well thought structure is the challenge

Nyth wrote:I'll be honest with everyone on here... I've got all the files safe and sound and am willing to reupload and categorise as necessary to create a new master server. All I need is the means to do this, and I don't mean money. I'd be glad to procure all the necessary hardware and software to set such a server up but as everyone has already mentioned, there needs to be a system in place that stops the server being raped and people direct linking.

If anyone has any suggestions, I'd be glad to work on this. The Magic Album torrent is currently the best torrent available (and updated regularly) but I know that people don't always want the directory structure of MA (even though it is the best way to keep things tidy). So... Any suggestions?

That is a good thing to know. At least the gathering part is solved.

I am willing to spend time on this as well, provide dedicated hardware and help back the great team that gathered all of those beautiful pictures.

How about starting with a Rsync type based service, with a few small documentations for users to get a grab of to use it? Then we can slowly work on providing direct http access with some leeching protections in place and lists of "official" mirrors? We can also work with round robin or more advanced DNS systems so that load is spread between several hosts if we happen to have more than one (I can see that at least both of us can provide one).

Ark wrote:Tips/Tokens are sometimes included in Fulls, sometimes not. Since I don't need them, I delete them when I unzip the stuff on my server. I use folders with the official Gatherer set names instead of MWS codes (which don't even match Gatherer's 3 letter codes on a lot of things anyway).

I can spend the necessary time to seperate tips and tokens from current full archives if needed.

I think archives filenames need to be revised. Something like this could be followed (comments more than welcome):

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ENG_DKA_HQ_CR.zip

Language_Set_Quality_Type

Language: FRA, ENG, GER...
Set: DAK, ROE, M13...
Quality: LQ, HQ, XL...
Type: CR (crops), FU (fulls), TO (tokens), TF (tips front), TB (tips back)

Ok... Now that we're here, let's go through the naming conventions.

The 3 letter language abbreviation is fine as is, but we may as well define all printed Magic languages while we're here.

Languages

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ARA = Arabic
ENG = English
FRA = French
GER = German
GRC = Classical Greek
HEB = Hebrew
ITA = Italian
JPN = Japanese
KOR = Korean
LAT = Latin
POR = Portuguese
RUS = Russian
SAN = Sanskrit
SPA = Spanish
ZHC = Simplified Chinese
ZHT = Traditional Chinese

Sets will follow the Gatherer 3 letter code where this exists. Exceptions will need to be discussed and agreed upon. I'm not sure if any exist but I'll put this rule into place just in case one does.

Quality is always an interesting one since we've technically not got anything Low Quality anymore as far as I recall. Regardless, we'll keep these abbreviations ready for use.

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LQ = Low Quality. This covers cards such as the Foreign Promos project and similar
HQ = High Quality. Our current release standard.
XL = Ultra High Quality (XLHQ). This is a new release standard and may take time to become the default as all scans will need to be redone to create these sets

Then moving onto the individual ZIP contents there are quite a few categories to cover. I don't think these are obvious to everyone and it may make sense not to abbreviate them. Having one full legible word in the file will really stand out. I'm open to suggestions but here's the list to be covered with some 3 letter abbreviations.
Content Categories

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FUL = Fulls
CRP = Crops. Not every set has these but we need to decide whether to create this for those sets as needed. Futuresight frames and any sets with split or flip cards will always remain anomalies in this regard. Naming convention for those individual cards has changed a few times over the years.
TOK = Tokens. This includes tokens in packs, Magic Player Rewards tokens and any other promo tokens such as the new FNM and League tokens
TIP = Tips. Any tip cards from older box sets and 10th Edition forwards will fall under this category
INS = Inserts. This is the catch-all category that all the adverts are included in
OVS = Oversized. This includes all oversized cards that are not technically "playable". So everything from Time Spiral block Akroma promos, Magic Player Rewards oversized direct mailers, original Arena League oversized cards and similar ones
NTR = Non-traditional. This includes "playable" non-traditional sized Magic cards. These are technically oversized as well however they're cards that are meant to be played with. These include Archenemy Schemes, Planechase Planes, Vanguard Avatars and all the recent Hellvault Promos and Commander foils.

I think that's everything for the time being. Feedback would be greatly appreciated. If we're all agreed, I can start the renaming and begin figuring out the upload schedule.

Oh and one other thing I've just remembered...

We need to decide on the actual file naming of the JPGs themselves. Will Full images still have the *.full.jpg ending? I'm not a huge fan of this and think that one of the many renamers can retrofit for those people stuck on using the decade old MWS. I think all such suffixes need to be dropped in favour of an accurate card name. This allows it to be forward compatible with all the new applications and card generators.

I'm for all that you mentionned (but then again, I'm not a MWS user so my vote doesn't count for much) except that the legible word in the archive name. Call it a personnal preference, but if you specify on the website/guides/archives what the abbreviation are, there is no need to put the full word in.

Regarding the current evolution of the HQ cards (XL version, DotP extracts), should we include somewhere in the archive name if the set has a scanner or a more "direct" source? How about the Card Generator "remastered" ones?

There's no problem if the archive names are verbose. What's important is that each archive extracts to a folder that is named only with a three letter set code. The original torrent uses the simple format "setcode.zip", because if 4ED.zip is in the Fulls folder, you know what it is already.

Fancy naming and versioning schemes are attractive, but don't fill a need in this case. Mame is always changing rom names, but we haven't had a problem with conflicting sets floating around. No one has ever asked which of two or three releases is the latest "legitimate" one.

The .fulls.jpg should be retained because 1) MWS is still by far the most popular app of its type 2) It allows crops and fulls to coexist in the same folder.

One thing has changed since the original torrent: Gatherer codes should now be used. I think a utility to rename folders to MWS and other formats already exists.

Set codes should be in a root folder text file.

I compiled a reference guide for set codes (MWS vs Gatherer) not too long ago. The Wikipedia entry for Magic: the Gathering Sets is also a good source for Gatherer set codes.

I agree that these should be named for compatibility with MWS since most people use these images for that purpose. It's probably not a good idea, but we could force people to at least change over their set codes if Goblin Hero would release the Master Base with the correct set codes.

I think we should anticipate the possibility of future game categories too, like YuGiOh, etc. (Even though it seems that people would have already started that project by now if ever they were going to.) Also, where should language fall in the categorization? The first example below seems most logical to me:

Magic / English / Core Sets / 7ED.zip
Magic / Core Sets / 7ED / Chinese Traditional.zip
Magic / Core Sets / 7ED-ZHT.zip

So what structure and file naming convention are we adopting? I now have all inok's files and would like to start crossing missing ones off.

Nyth, do you consider tokens and tips backs as INS?

I'd honestly keep tokens separately since they're usable cards whereas the others aren't. Most people have done this in the past and differentiated tokens from tips & other inserts.
Because of this, emblems are included with tokens since they're also playable cards.

Playable = Tokens = Tokens, Emblems
Notplayed = Inserts = Tips & Tricks, Adverts