Projects

This is the list of projects I have in mind to expand and improve our sites, in no particular order. Please enter a comment with your favorite ones so that I start working on the most wanted features.

Small-medium scope:

• Detect card names in posts and other submitted content and replace them with links to the cards details. Probably instruct people to mark the card names with , or [card=card_name]. If there is no card with that name, or more than one card matching it, then an error would need to be reported and the post not registered until it gets corrected?
• Allow certain users (Premium?) to have a background image on their online gaming tables as a playmat, to choose among several available with nice images from the game characters.
• Keep track of the games a user is interested in and take them directly to the latest one in all the sections without having to go through the game-selection page. There would be a drop-down selection on each page to let them change to another of their favorite games, or to the selection page in case they want to visit a new game. The games they are interested in could be selected by the user in their profile.
• Trade binder displaying all cards from all sets at the same time? And option to sort by game-specific parameters, like Attribute in YuGiOh, or Color in Magic.
• When building decks, the number of copies of a card that can be included is limited to a fixed maximum number according to the game’s rules, but it should also allow for different limits depending on the card type (or any other card stat, even name). For example Lands in Magic, or Army cards in VS.
• Option to remove references. List references you have given in the ‘references’ section, with links to remove each of them.
• Add buttons in the ‘cards you have’ section to transfer cards from your collection to your haves and the other way around.
• Let users upload images for cards that do not have them yet. Then show the images to other users and ask them to indicate if the image corresponds with the card or not (or they don’t know/care). After three users have confirmed it is correct, the image would be shown on the site.
• Let users report errors on card data. Then show the corrected data to other users for confirmation before accepting them and updating the database. Similar to the card images.
• Option to search in your messages for a given text. Option to classify messages, by assigning labels to them, for example.
• Establish some kind of ranking of players based on the games won and lost online. Don’t know yet if just subtracting the losts from the wins or a more complicated evaluation.
• If a player in an online game gets disconnected, allow him to return to the game and continue playing it.
• Include a chat window in the gaming room so players can talk before challenging each other.
• Allow sorting of results in ’search for trades’ and on the matching of lists in the message form. The parameters would be Set and Number, Name, and Rarity.
• Allow uploading of haves and wants with just a list of card names in a file (or even a text box), by previously selecting the corresponding set from a drop-down list.
• Add the options ‘Not in your wanted list’ and ‘Not already in your haves’ when adding cards to your haves. Add the option ‘Not already in your want list’ when adding cards to your wants.
• Allow the creation of a new card based on an existing one, so that we only need to change one or two data. For example when the same card is printed in more than one set.
• Search cards/miniatures by number? Would it be useful to include the number among the parameters in the Card/Miniature Search form?
• Allow for an optional message when giving a reference
• Make the main menu slide-down and contract to occupy less space and be more organized (each of the four main sections should also have their own page with options in more detail)
• Do not show the foil option in card lists for games where it is not optional. Do the same with language? so that it is displayed also for some miniature games, and maybe hidden for games we know are not being published in multiples languages?
• Hide private decks in the deck lists, except for their authors.
• Limit the number of dream cards a single user may create (e.g. 10 each week)
• Show (through a search interface) the postal address of confirmed bad traders
• Allow blank values for amount, foil, and language when uploading haves/wants lists.
• Allow sorting of users lists by number of references and by last-login date/time.
• What game are you? Personality test that tells you what game you are (are you a Magic type? a Yu-Gi-Oh! kid? etc), and gives you an html code to show off your results on your web page.
• Page the movements in the money accounts
• Add an information page about publicity on the sites
• In the references section: Add the list of people you have given a reference to.
• Allow sorting by date of the references in the public user page.
• Option to export collection/haves/wants to tab-delimited (or cvs) text files. Maybe only for Premium members.
• Select all or check all in card lists
• Extended error info when uploading haves/wants lists (similar to when uploading expansion sets)

Large scope:

• Allow adding cards to your lists by just entering names (or part thereof) in a text area and, optionally, selecting a set. It implies two steps: If any of the names match more than one card, the system would have to show a radio-button list of matches and let you choose one.
• When adding cards to your collection, include the option to remove these cards from your wants. The idea is that when you get some of the cards your are looking for, then you can add them to your collection and remove them from your wants in one go. A user has proposed to do it the other way around: from the list of wants, to be able to move items to your collection (or to your haves? I guess this does not make sense). Which way is best? Should both be offered?
• Related with the previous one: allow the use of the Card Search engine to search among the cards in your list (haves or wants) so that you can delete (or modify) the cards you find instead of having to browse the complete list.
• Option to verify whether you have all the cards needed to build a given deck. From the deck page you’ll have a link that says ‘Can you build this deck?’. This link will check if you have in your collection all the cards in the deck. If not, it will show you the list of cards you are still missing, and it will give you the option to add those cards to your wants (if not already there). If you have some of the cards in your haves, then it would also give you the option to move those cards from your haves to your collection so as to use them to build the deck.
• Related with the previous feature: give the option, when adding cards to your deck, to choose only among the cards you have in your collection (maybe even visually from the binder view).
• Registering and managing trades in a way similar to Protected Trades
• Add more options to search for trades: include miniatures/cards, include a single game, minimum number of matches, only new matches (from a given date?), users to ignore, etc. Also, allow collapsing of the users with whom you don’t want to trade to clean up the list.
• Add section for card combos.
• Add spell-checking to texts in card reviews (and dream cards?)
• Generate images automatically for dream cards (the author would provide the image for the card art, if any) based on the stats and texts entered.
• Add a link on the detail window of each card to decks using that card
• Check on email messages that bounce and deactivate the corresponding user
• Give the option to delete dream cards, decks (and card reviews?). When deleting a deck we have to make sure it does not affect games already played with that deck.