Update: Beta 2!

After much toil and frustration, Beta 2 is complete!

I *think* everything works, but I couldn't test it a second time after some minor changes.

The program now requires the .NET framework and SQL to run properly, but it didn't tell me that until I tried to install it. I'll try to eliminate that requirement if it bothers anyone. Both are available for free, and the installer *should* handle all that automatically. Now that all the computers I have access to have those components, I can't test to see if the installer will do that itself.


>>>> Download Link <<<<

Beta Release

Beta is complete!

Feel free to download and give it a try. I'm still working out some bugs, but all the functional stuff works. Before I say anything else, let me stress this:


** The database does not yet save statistics on the cards you own**

It will soon. Just not yet.
I'm still making radical changes in the background in an attempt to get this thing as complete as I can, and I have no idea how that will impact it's functionality in this regard. I can just see someone spending +100 hours logging their cards, only to have it all wiped by an update. I wish to avoid that.
On a similar note, the options don't save either. Same basic thing with this.

As of now, the program has every standard printing of every card. I've left out special printings (player rewards, DCI, exc) for now, but I plan to include these in the future. All I ask of anyone who downloads this are the following:
1) Give me credit. I've been working on this for about 4 months.
2) Report any bugs you find. (include as much detail as possible)
3) Share/blatantly advertise to friends (assuming you like it. :P)

Credits
Thanks to WotC for giving a bored guy something to do during the summer, and for a pretty cool hobby.

Thanks to the http://magicseteditor.sourceforge.net/ crew, for the source images for about 90% of my card frames. If you enjoy creating your own cards, check their program out. It's pretty snazzy, and very powerful.

Thanks to http://magiccards.info/ and several other database sites that I forget right now, for your services. It was only through the work they started that I was able to get a reasonably complete database.MagicCards.info was also the source of ALL my card art.

Download instructions

===== Downloading Instructions =====

Part 1) Download the installer package
Download the zip file HERE. If you have installed the program before, simply uninstall the old version before trying to install the new one; I haven't figured out how to release 'patch' style updates.
Install by clicking the setup.exe tool.
Navigate through the download instructions (you will probably have to install the .NET framework and/or SQL for my program to work. Just click OK. )
You will probably get some angry firewall messages, which is normal (I am, after all, unregistered with Microsoft. :P )

That's it!

Part 2) Art Packages (optional)
Here are the links to more zip files with packages of card art. I have them grouped by set, and by their classification.

You can find this folder by starting the program, clicking the "About"option on the toolbar, and then clicking "Update Packages." This should open the Resources folder mentioned above.

Recent Sets - This contains all new sets, Mirrodin - Eventide. Alara comes pre-installed.
Old Sets, part 1 - All old-frame block sets, Ice Age - Prophecy
Old Sets, part 2 - All old-frame block sets, Invasion - Scourge
Starter Sets - This contains Beta, and 5ED - 9ED*.
Early Sets - Arabian Nights, Homelands, The Dark, Fallen Empires, Antiques, etc.
UN-sets - This package contains full scans of the unique cards from Unhinged and Unglued.

*Note that Alpha - 4ED all used repeat art.

How to install Art Packages
Start the program, then click on Help > About > Update Packages.
A folder should open up. Open the CardImages folder.
*For Full Card scans, like Unhinged, open Frames > Unique.
Unzip the download, and move the folders here.


A note on art packages.
The art for Card Tracker has been optimized, both to get the best scan of a particular piece, and to conserve hard drive space. What this means is that art files are used by several cards. This is particularly obvious for Alpha, 2ED, 3ED, and 4ED, which all use art from previous sets (mostly Beta).
This also means that downloading a particular file may/may not fill all the card art from those sets. For example, if you download the Old Sets file, an Ice Age card with Beta art will still be missing the art.
Whenever possible, I made the most logical choice for what art goes where. In general, the first printing of a particular piece gets priority. I did make an exception for anything in 10E, because that's what I'm already including in the basic install. This means that many Mirrodin cards that were reprinted in 10E, actually have their art in the 10E folder, despite Mirrodin's status as first printing.
The second exception is for cards with old art in a new frame.I could have used the same art, but I didn't feel that would be appropriate. Much of the art for the new frames was cropped differently, and in many cases was thoroughly recolored, resulting in some shocking differences.
The third, and final group of exceptions was when an old art was reprinted in an old frame again, but with a significantly higher quality. This occurred mostly in 5ED/6ED, when the printing quality of cards increased noticeably.Instead of giving the Beta art an errata, I went ahead and included another source file. The washed out colors from the early era of Magic is, after all, one of those card's most distinguishing features.

Update: Invasion, Frame options, Tokens

It's been a while since I posted an update, but I've been pretty busy.
Progress has continued, and I've made lots of subtle background changes, as well as very noticable front-end changes.

First of all, the database includes cards from Alpha (the first set) to Eventide (the latest set), for a grand total of 14307 entries. While many of these are reprints of the same card, that's still quite a bit of information

Additionally, I've managed to get the art from all cards since Invasion (a solid 9 years worth of cards!)

I also added watermarks (from the guild cards), mana symbols (on the lands), a method to draw old frames, options to handle what frame to draw (giving you the option to view everything in the new or old style frames), and tokens.

Uniquely framed cards such as, Unglued and Unhinged, and cards with a complicated frame not worth programming (flip cards and Future Sight cards) are treated similarly, however I may go back and change that as time goes on. (the advantage of doing this, of course, would be giving users the fourth option of choosing "Future Sight Frames" as their prefered frame style)

But enough talk: more pictures!

Invasion cards
















Choose your prefered frame style...














...and make old cards look like this
















Tokens! With unfinished name text! ;)
















Lands! With big mana symbols!

Screenshots of progress so far

left-aligned toolbar (default)

















right-aligned toolbar
















center-aligned toolbar and top-aligned preview card
















Resized window

Objectives

Now that the introductions are out of the way, here are some of the goals I hope to accomplish with the project:

1) User-friendly layout and intuitive design. This has been accomplished mostly by basing the GUI off MOL 2.0's layout, with the only real changes being more and better search options than that program provided.
Primarily, the ability to search the total number of cards you own, instead of just the normal or foil ones at once. On that note, I plan to store the normal printings and foil version of each card together, so that each entry would have (at least) two numbers under it.

If you happen to also have some foreign-printings of several cards (I own about 4 random booster packs) the feature will exist to track 2 additional versions. If demand exists, I can add more, but I doubt more than 4 would be used.

2) Importing saved collections from MOL 2.0. For people who used MOL 2.0 like I did. I'll try to make it as simple as possible, but at the very least I'll probably need the user to perform a speciffic search in MOL 2.0 and save the resulting list in a CSV (comma separated value) format.
No worries non-techies: when I get the feature done I'll post a step-by-step guide.

3) Profile-saving feature. One of the most annoying things about MOL 2.0 was the need to reset your search settings every time you turned the program on. I hope to have a small profile saving option, so when you open it up it loads the default profile settings.

4) Advanced search options. The search engine for MOL 2.0 was functional, but had some odd quarks. First of all, any search checked every part of the card for a match, sometimes returning very strange results. A search for 'Boros' would often return cards with art by Zoltan Boros.

My plan is to have the basic search engine match color, rarity, card type, set, and some other options as well as searching the type line, card name, and text box for the entered field.

The advanced search feature would feature 'tagging' of cards by function, such as 'Mana Accel' or 'reanimation' or 'mill.' Additionally, I want to allow the user to check what fields to search for, as well as some dynamic options on how to sort the cards. Instead of limiting the user to five or six drop-down options, I'll provide 2-3 sorting fields, and each can be chosen independently.

For example, if you wanted to sort the search by something as unusual as artist name, you could sort by ARTIST > SET > NAME which would group the cards by the name of the artist, sorted by set, and finally sorted by name within the set

Eventually I want to add an uber-search, where I'll let the user enter SQL code directly and search based on that. I'll include a guide for it, but since the first parts of the query will be pre-built I doubt it would be too confusing.

5) Layout and viewing potions. Options to view the card as-printed, but the default will be oracle text. Options on how many cards to view per page (default of 18). Options on the layout of the binder and toolbar (toolbar as left/right/center and preview as top/botom)

6) Alternate Printings. I hope to include every printing of every card, but the last to be added will be special printings (player rewards, prize cards, exc), tokens, and booster packs and things like that.

7) Readable DAT file, and options to print checklists. The dat file for your collection will be readable in a text editor if you want. For example, Lorwyn cards would have the card ID "LOR-XXX" where XXX is the card's collector number.

ID normal foil
LOR-001 2 0
LOR-002 9 1
LOR-003 5 0

That way, if you happen to have your cards in a reasonably logical order OTHER than MOL 2.0 you can, with relative ease, open the dat file and manually enter your cards.

up next: screenshots!

Card Tracker - First Post

This blog is supposed to be a sort of central information center for the project.

Card Tracker is a program I started working on to keep track of my collection of Magic cards. After Wizards of the Coast 'upgraded' from Magic Online 2.0 to Magic Online III, they dropped the physical card tracking add-on. Much to my disappointment.

After looking around at other applications, which were mostly for card shops or other sale-related businesses I decided to create my own.

The highly originally named Card Tracker is the result of this frustration.

Also, I want to make it absolutely clear that Magic, the mana symbols, card art, and much other stuff is all (c) Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro. My goal here is not to infringe on their market, but to provide a service around it.

Final note: special thanks to http://magiccards.info/, for their great database and card art.