magic-card-creator

A composition toolkit for creating custom Magic: The Gathering cards.

Travis does our CI:

The impetus was issues with the card generator at http://www.mtgcardmaker.com/

After a bit of hashing out a model on a Google Docs Spreadsheet and finding an online print service, we went to see if we could build a) something better, and b) a reasonable workflow for creating custom playable physical cards.

Usage

The general workflow is to run the compose command to create SVG documents (one per card) described in a descriptor file, and then to transcode those SVG documents into either PNGs (for the web) or PDFs (for printing).

$ java -jar card-creator-all.jar compose \
  --descriptor descriptor.md \
  --output-dir svgs \
  --print
$ java -jar card-creator-all.jar pdf \
  --output-dir pdfs \
  svgs/*.svg

Building

To build, you'll need Java 8 and Maven 3 available on your system.

$ git clone https://github.com/barneyb/magic-card-creator.git
$ cd magic-card-creator
$ mvn install

You will now have the full toolkit installed, with the executable JAR both in your local .m2/repository and in the ./cli/target directory.

Toolkit

The toolkit is packaged as an executable JAR file. It is the artifact of the 'cli' module (if you're building from source), or the release artifact if you're getting binaries. Note that for standalone execution, you need the one with the -all suffix. Run it for a list of available commands:

$ java -jar card-creator-all.jar 
Usage: CardCreator [options] [command] [command options]

A toolkit for creating custom Magic: The Gathering cards.

Commands:
    help      display usage information and exit
    validate  validate a cardset
    compose   compose cards from a descriptor
    stats     view stats about a cardset
    png       transcode composed cards to PNG (via docker)
    pdf       transcode composed cards to PDF (via docker)

You can get help for a given command by using the help command:

$ java -jar card-creator-all.jar help compose
compose cards from a descriptor
Usage: compose [options]
  Options:
        --cards
       Card names or numbers to process
       Default: []
  * -d, --descriptor
       Cardset descriptor
  * -o, --output-dir
       The directory to compose into
        --print
       If true, composed cards will be bled for printing
       Default: false
        --theme-descriptor
       A theme descriptor file, if needed
        --theme-key
       The key of the theme to use
       Default: dynamic

From Maven

If you've built from source, you can also invoke the toolkit using the maven exec:java goal in the cli module. The class you want to run is com.barneyb.magic.creator.cli.CardCreator:

$ cd cli
$ mvn exec:java -Dexec.mainClass=com.barneyb.magic.creator.cli.CardCreator
[INFO] Scanning for projects...
[INFO]                                                                         
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Building card-creator-cli 0.6.1-SNAPSHOT
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] 
[INFO] --- exec-maven-plugin:1.4.0:java (default-cli) @ card-creator-cli ---
Usage: CardCreator [options] [command] [command options]

A toolkit for creating custom Magic: The Gathering cards.

Commands:
    help      display usage information and exit
    validate  validate a cardset
    compose   compose cards from a descriptor
    stats     view stats about a cardset
    png       transcode composed cards to PNG (via docker)
    pdf       transcode composed cards to PDF (via docker)
    md2xml    convert a Markdown descriptor to an equivalent XML descriptor
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD SUCCESS
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time: 0.991s
[INFO] Finished at: Tue Jun 16 08:08:36 PDT 2015
[INFO] Final Memory: 15M/300M
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Descriptors

Each set of cards is described by a descriptor. Two formats are supported: Markdown and XML. Markdown descriptors are easier to read and write, and more naturally support previewing the cards, but do not have the richness needed to cover all cases. XML descriptors are rather move verbose, but allow for complete description of all card attributes. For example, the Markdown format is not rich enough to describe Planeswalkers or Fused cards.

As an example, the Blitz Hellion (from the Alara block) can be described in Markdown like this:

Blitz Hellion 3RG
-----------------

![Anthony S. Waters](artwork/hellion.jpg)

Creature - Hellion

Trample, haste

At the beginning of the end step, Blitz Hellion's owner shuffles it into his or her library.

*Alarans commemorated its appearances with new holidays bearing names like the Great Cataclysm and the Fall of Ilson Gate.*

7/7

And in XML like this:

<creature title="Blitz Hellion" casting-cost="3RG" subtype="Hellion" rarity="rare">
    <artwork>
        <src>artwork/hellion.jpg</src>
        <artist>Anthony S. Waters</artist>
    </artwork>
    <rules-text>Trample, haste</rules-text>
    <rules-text>At the beginning of the end step, Blitz Hellion's owner shuffles it into his or her library.</rules-text>
    <flavor-text>Alarans commemorated its appearances with new holidays bearing names like the Great Cataclysm and the Fall of Ilson Gate.</flavor-text>
    <power>7</power>
    <toughness>7</toughness>
</creature>

In general, starting with Markdown is probably easier, though if you have a good XML editor, the assistance provided by the XSD may be beneficial. The toolkit provides a tool for automatic conversion from Markdown to XML, so you can switch later if needed/desired. There is not a tool to convert from XML to Markdown, as not ever XML descriptor can be represented as a Markdown descriptor.

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