Guide to Playtesting in Different Online Clients

Playing with MSE Custom Sets in Cockatrice



Pros

- Cockatrice is supported on Windows and Mac

- Process is well-supported and pretty easy



Cons

- Deck editor is not great as you can't really see multiple cards at once



Prerequisites

- Have MSE installed on your machine

- Have Cockatrice installed on your machine and your friend's machine

- Recommended: Have a better text editor (Notepad++, SublimeText, etc) installed on your machine and your friend's machine



How To Play Constructed With a Friend



Exporting a Cockatrice Custom Set XML

1. Open MSE

2. Make sure you are in the "Cards" tab

3. Select "File" -> "Export" -> "HTML..."

4. Choose the image for "Cockatrice Exporter ReUpdated"

5. Choose "Entire set" or "Custom selection" as desired

6. In the "Set Code" field, enter a unique set code; I will use "PSF" in this example

7. Ignore the "Images Location" field (I don't know how it works)

8. Click "OK" to open a save file dialog window

9. Choose a file location and a filename, I recommend "{YOUR_SET_CODE}_Cockatrice.xml" (mine is "PSF_Cockatrice.xml"), then choose "Save"



Exporting Images for Cockatrice

1. Select File -> Export -> All Card Images...

2. In the Format field, leave it as default or change it to "{card.name}.png" if you are using Advanced MSE

3. I would recommend Handle Duplicate Filenames option of "Overwrite Old Files" if you plan to iterate on the set and do this process multiple times

4. Again, choose "Entire set" or "Custom selection" as desired, just make sure that you do the same as above

5. Click "OK" to open a save file dialog window

6. Choose an empty folder or create one as necessary, I would recommend a new folder called "{YOUR_SET_CODE}_Cockatrice", mine is "PSF_Cockatrice"

7. Open up the folder and choose "Save"

8. If you have a regular-sized set, it will likely lock up the program during the export, so wait a few minutes



Importing Into Cockatrice

1. Open Cockatrice

2. Select "Card Database" -> "Add custom sets/cards"

3. Select your saved XML file, e.g. "{YOUR_SET_NAME}_Cockatrice.xml", and choose "OK"

4. Cockatrice will state that it needs to reload the card database

5. You will get a popup "New Sets Found -- 1 new set found in card database, do you want to enable it/them?" along with the set code your provided; select "Yes"

6. Scroll down and verify your cards imported correctly (probably easiest to sort by set code and scroll to yours); you will not have pictures at this point

7. Select "Card Database" -> "Open custom images folder"

8. This will open up a Windows Explorer folder called "CUSTOM"

9. Copy your images folder from earlier into this folder (I now have a PSF_Cockatrice inside of CUSTOM)

10. Go back to Cockatrice and click on your custom cards again - they should have images now!



Getting a Friend To Play With You

1. Zip up your set's XML and your images folder

2. Give your friend the Zip using Dropbox or whatever

3. Have your friend follow the instructions in the "Importing Into Cockatrice" section

4. Make decks and play a game using Cockatrice as normal



How To Play Limited With a Friend


First, follow the steps above to get your custom set working in Cockatrice, then follow the instructions below.

Playing Sealed with a Friend on Cockatrice

1. With MSE open, go to the "Random" tab

2. Set up the booster packs however you want to played Sealed (e.g. 6 booster packs)

3. Click "Generate Pack"

4. Select "Files" -> "Export" -> "HTML..."

5. Choose "XML: Formatted Data" option

6. Select "Generated Packs" as the "Cards to Export"

7. Select "Card Names" as the "Output

8. Click "OK" to open up the save file prompt

9. Save the XML file wherever, e.g. "{SET_CODE}_Sealed_PoolA.xml"

10. Repeat steps 3-9 to save a second XML sealed pool

11. Open up one of your sealed pool XML files in your text editor of choice

12. Copy all the text in the XML file to clipboard

13. In Cockatrice, select "Deck Editor" -> "Load Deck from Clipboard..."

14. Remove the XML tags at the top and bottoms of the window

15. Click "OK"

16. Now your cards are loaded into Cockatrice and you can build a deck (double-click to move them between sideboard and mainboard)

17. Provide your friend with the other sealed pool XML and have them follow steps 11-16

18. Play sealed!



Booster Drafting with a Friend on Cockatrice

- Would love suggestions on how to do this

Hi cajun , thanks for the reply!  Maybe you can help me clear something up.  I downloaded the Advanced MSE from here for this tutorial: magicseteditor.boards.net/page/downloads

In the data folder, I have:

magic-cockatrice.mse-export-template
magic-cockatrice-reupdated.mse-export-template
magic-cockatrice-updated.mse-export-template

In the HTML exporter, I've got:


(I also have the original "Cockatrice Exporter" plugin). However, the Images Location on both of these doesn't seem to do anything, maybe I am doing something incorrectly? Or are neither of these the "Full" exporter you're talking about?

Also, despite being referenced as 2.0.1 on the downloads page, my MSE still shows up as 2.0.0 on the About page... I even re-extracted the zip and opened that version fresh to make sure.

Thanks for your help!