DotP 2013 Deck Manager (yet another editor) [2013-02-19]

[Threepwood]

It's gone through alpha testing, screw beta, I'm releasing it.
Yes, yet another deck creator for DotP 2013.

We've already got a few different editors for DotP 2013 to pick from on this forum (three, on last count), which work fine if you know what card you're looking for.
But if you're more like me, and don't know all the available cards' titles and abilities by heart, you might appreciate what this program has to offer.

For 2012 we had John Stauffer’s great Editor Revised program. With this program I was striving for similar functionality, though I won’t claim to be fully successful (man, I never realized how much was actually in that program until I had to code it myself).

Some functions DotP 2013 Deck Manager has to offer:

• Saving and loading your own decks.
• An overview of your deck's statistics (mana curve, colour distribution).
• Quickly adding and deleting cards to/from your deck simply by using the enter and delete keys. (Quite obvious, I know, but it make work a lot easier.)
• Search through your library with a text search (names, sub- and supertypes, abilities)
• Refine your search results with criteria (colours, types)
• Instant card preview.
• Automatically convert your decks to WAD files and (optional) export them to the game dir.
• The option to choose whether or not to include the card files and illustrations in the WAD file (in case you're using a core WAD which already contains these)
• Automatically adds the card files and illustration for tokens to the WAD if needed.
• Automatically import card files and card illustration from WAD files.
• Easy access to the decks details (ratings, AI personality images, etc.).
• The option to read the cards' names and texts in other languages. (Everything else will still be English though.)
• Open a card .xml file (using default program) or its folder. (I've found it quite useful when making my own cards and looking for a similar piece of code)

Screen Shots:

DotP 2013 DM requires .NET 4.0 framework to run.
It's been successfully tested on Vista and XP.

To get started, just download the .rar file from the following page, and unpack it.
http://www.2shared.com/complete/9umw-LfF/DotP_2013_Deck_Manager_2013-02.html

To start building your collection of cards, just open the import menu and select or drag and drop a WAD file containing the card files. The xml files and illustrations will automatically be imported, but to get the avatar and backplate images you'll have to unpack the WAD manually. Gibbed tools can be found in the Resources folder.
The deck manager will try to sort the imported card files, but eventually you may want to manually move them to the correct folders. Just place them in the library folder or any sub-folder.
The card illustrations should all be placed in the CardArt main folder.

All functions should be self-explanatory (I hope). There are only three menus, just look through them.

As a little extra I added some image files that should help you get started making your own box deck images, and one custom card as an example. (Yeah, I'm spoiling you :p )

Some things DotP 2013 DM can't do. (Perhaps in later versions.)

• Filter library according to mana cost or rarity
• Automatically generate the card image for a deck.
• Automatically generate a core WAD file, containing illustration and card files, but no decks. (For now you could use a dummy deck, remove it from the unpacked folder and manually pack it.)
• Support for custom card generation (nothing beats notepad anyway.)
• Adding a text_permanent file (for your own CARD_QUERY texts, for example)
• Finding new prime numbers.

Any further suggestions are of course welcome (as long as it doesn't make me overhaul the entire program).

Enjoy!

[Huggybaby]

This is fantastic, thanks Guy (Threepwood)!

[Amphok]

very good program, but there are 3 wad file that make the program crash

they are(they all come from the mods of this site):
deck_0621_st.wad
deck_1138_st.wad
deck_362801_st.wad

[Threepwood]

Did the program itself crash, or did gibbed.duels.unpack.exe crash, which in turn causes the program to close?
During testing I have encountered this when trying to unpack about two wads (which were made with this program). So far I haven't been able to determine what's different between these wads or the ones that do unpack successfully. I created the deck wad again (which should be exactly the same), and for some reason unpacking this one did work.
So it would seem to have been a g-glitch.

But of course you don't have the option of repacking the deck.
Have you tried manually dragging the file to gibbed.unpack.exe?
To test this you'de better copy the file to the gibbed folder (inside resources) first, to rule out a path-too-long exception.

If it is indeed the gibbed tools, I fear I won't be if much help. I don't really know how gibbed works, I just use it.

[Amphok]

unpacking 621.wad with gibbed work, there are two xml file in it that cause problems, maybe there is something incorrect in the code
xml are:
banishing stroke and bonifire of the damned

[Threepwood]

Ah, that's quite possible.
Indeed the program is not resilient at all to faults in .xml files. In my experience it is usually something like a missing end element.
Do these cards work in the game? (Often faulty xmls aren't loaded, or, at worst, cause a crash).

Perhaps you could see the program crashing as a warning system :p

I think I'll build in a fail-safe while reading xml in the next version.
Thanks for the notification.

[Whizard]

WADEdit will tell you the line where the error is. I fix the errors and repack the wads then they work. Its usually syntax error. Thank you for the Deck Manager. Have a nice day.

[Necropotence]

you can help me? I wanna download, but get an error, says you can not download the file!

[Threepwood]

Indeed, got an error, though I can't see what's wrong.
Anyway, I re-uploaded it. The OP has a new link which should work.

[Necropotence]

it's working! thanks! I'm very grateful

[ChaosCom]

Threepwood,

kudos and thanks for releasing the software for everyone. Could you please release a mini-guide on how to use it though? I pretty new to Magic (in fact I just bought the game yesterday and was looking for a Deck Manager because the ingame deck manager is a piece of... Anyway, I was under the impression that with your tool I could circumvent the Deck Manager nightmare built into the game, is that correct?

I literally selected every WAD file in the 2013 folder there was (including the CORE files) and ended up with all sorts of cards, but what I am looking for is a means of editing a deck and be able to use it in-game as i progress through the campaign (and supposedly online at some later point), however i find it confusing that cards can be found in several folders... for example, Captain's Call is contained in "DECK_0007_ST" as well as in "DECK_0067_ST"... which for me is quite confusing as it's the same card.

Also, did you consider of probably open-sourcing the software (e.g. on github / codeplex / sourceforge)? I find the drawing of the cards pretty slow and would consider taking a look and try to fix it.

[Threepwood]

The editor is intended to mod the game, creating you own new decks, not so much editing existing decks. Admittedly, the name 'Deck Manager' is a bit ambiguous. In its current version it's not possible to rip a deck from a .wad file, just the cards it contains.

Indeed, when you just import all the WAD files you end up with a bit of a mess. Each deck (the normal/playable decks, but also the AI 'revenge' and encounter decks) has its own file in 2013, each containing card .xml files and illustrations. So you end up with A LOT of duplicates.
With the original cards its pretty safe to just chuck them all into a single folder and let duplicates be overwritten.
When you start downloading cards from this forum (start with the Firemind's DLC. It's got a crazy amount of new cards and really opens up a new world of creating your own decks) or writing your own, I suggest keeping all the cards sorted in a separate folder per author.

If you got a legal version of the game you might have to add a dll file in order to get the new decks to show up: http://www.slightlymagic.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=7341

The drawing of the cards should happen almost instantaneously (though loading the library does take a while sometimes).
I hadn't considered making it open-source. I'm by no means a programmer and didn't really feel it was worth bothering others with my congealed lumps of code I'm not familiar with the mentioned sites other than their names. Perhaps I'll look into it.

But if you're having troubles with my program, try out Riiak's version.
http://www.slightlymagic.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=99&t=10470
He posted it a few days ago. I haven't tried it yet, but it looks like it's got all the features my program has to offer and more. Matter of fact, it looks like most of the features I was planning to add have already been realised in Raiik's version while I haven't even begun coding them (and probably won't in the foreseeable future either, with the knowledge a perfectly good version is already out there).

[mrslam]

Hi masters of magic!
I just created my own deck and make a .WAD (by Threepwood deckbuilder) but when I put it to main DotP_2013 folder and run the game my own deck pack remains invisible. Help me please. Where my mistake???
I got Steam version "Magic 2013 - Complete Bundle" with all unlocked content.
Please help me integrate my own .wad into the game.

[thefiremind]

Hi masters of magic!
I just created my own deck and make a .WAD (by Threepwood deckbuilder) but when I put it to main DotP_2013 folder and run the game my own deck pack remains invisible.

Did you add the DLL from here?

[mrslam]

Will I have possibility to play from Steam ??? after use this DLL