ML Bot 8.01 is ready for MTGO v4

Hello Botters,

today we release ML Bot for Mtgo v4, please be sure to download and test it. You may continue to use ML Bot for v3 until July 16th, when Wizards will turn it off but please spend some time now downloading the new bot and make sure it works properly on your machines. You don't need to do exhaustive tests, you just need to make sure it is working and it is able to complete a test trade.
The v4 bot is stable and works the exact same way as v3. If you decide to use ML Bot v4 this week please report any issues to us immediately, possibly with a screenshot. You can reach us on our LiveChat directly on our website or email us at staff@mtgolibrary.com.
If you need an updated windows 7 64 bit VM with Mtgo v4 and all the updates installed you can use the following vmware 10 image http://176.58.109.146/WIN7WM.zip

Please don't leave the bot unattended, run it when you can watch it a little bit.

You can download the ML Bot "v4" installer from the homepage of www.mtgolibrary.com or from your Online Control Panel. The old v3 installer has been removed so now you can only download the v4 installer. 


There are some minor differences between the old v3 bot and the new v4 bot.

• First of all pricelist CardsMTGO3.txt has been renamed in CardMTGO.txt and the format has slighly changed. The old format was:

01 001 01 001 324 VMA R Volcanic Island# 14.780 29.900 9.900 20.030

while the new format is:

105#324#VMA#R#Volcanic Island#14.780#29.900#9.900#20.030

The new format uses "#" as separators and adds two code numbers (in the example 105 and 324) as first fields. Please do not change them otherwised the bot won't be able to load the pricelist properly. These two numbers are respectively the setnumber (VMA is "105") and the cardnumber (Volcanic Island is number 324). Till 16th July the bot you could download the old pricelist and the new pricelist: we added a button to do that.

• All the prices have been moved to the "prices" subfolder: there you will find CardsMTGO.txt, PersonalPrices.txt, PersonalPercentages.txt, CardsForAdvertisement.txt and SpecialBuddy.txt and the debug file CardsNeededAndCollection.txt. You can open that folder from the bot GUI too. If you have scripts that access these files, you need to code the "/prices" subfolder.
• Pause command is now "CTRL+P" instead of "CTRL+A", because "P" is supposed to mean "Pause"

There will be many updates this week. The new bot has been deeply tested but, like any new software, it is still "young" and some minor issues could arise. We will be 24/7 on Livechat, you just need to reach us there.

Please also make sure you read the previous articles about v4:
http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.com/2014/07/mtgo-v4-and-ml-bot-requirements.html
http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.it/2014/06/our-plans-for-switchover.html


Enjoy,
Albert

Our plans for the switchover

So, we are finally there. Mtgo v3 will be switched off 16th July and Mtgo v4 will become the only client for Magic Online.You can read the full announcement from Wizards here: http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/magic-online-v3-date-and-new-client-update-2014-06-26

Mtgo v3 served us well during the years, but now it's time to move to Mtgo v4! What will you need to do that? First of all, please note that v4 won't work on Windows XP: Wizards infact decided not to support xp:

"One of the decisions we recently made that will help us deliver a better and more performant user experience is the elimination of support for Windows XP at our minimum spec level. Like Microsoft, we have decided to discontinue support for the nearly 13-year-old OS in order to make better use of the upgrades provided by more recent operating systems."

You will then need our new bot for Mtgo v4 (that will be release starting next week) and you will need some more RAM: mtgo v4 uses more ram than v4 and it is computationally more demanding, hence you'll probably need to upgrade your machines a bit. Please install Mtgo v4 on your machine and all that comes with it (NET 4.0 and WPF).

We expect the market to slow down a bit, more or less like what happend with the switch from v2 to v3, but this will recover in a couple of weeks.

ML Bot for Mtgo v4 switchover

Hello botters,

As you probably already know, mtgo v3 will be retired soon and mtgo v4 will be the only official mtgo client. The announcement from Chris Kiritz can be found here and gives July as a date, right before the release of M15.

Our plan is to release the ML Bot client for mtgo v4 two weeks before the switchover so everyone will have the time to update their bots. This will not be a "beta", testing is no more required - this will be the official "first version" of the bot for mtgo v4.

In order to make the transaction smooth, we will be online 24/7 on LiveChat and on Skype (our account is "mtgolibrary.support"). You will probably need to add more ram to your virtual machines because Mtgo v4 needs more ram than v3 (2gb per machine are recommended). We will provide some virtual machines in case you need a good starting point. Please make sure you can install and launch Mtgo v4 on your machines and that it runs without crashes - we are in fact aware of some users unable to load Mtgo v4 properly.

We will run some v4 bots next week (we'll give the names), feel free to trade with them and write us the feedback.

MTGO Library Bot 6.56

ML Bot 6.56 has just been released, fixing an important bug related to the loading of the wishlist. 

• on the computers with the "A:\" drive (the floppy disk, physical or virtual) one of the dropdown menus was "longer" than expected and ML Bot was unable to click there correctly. The bot selected the "$recycle" file instead of the "wishlist.dek" file, and this resulted in an endless loop (resulting, at the end, in trades aborted).
• opening the wishlist is now faster. If the C:\ drive is already selected, the bot won't click it. If "wishlist.dek" is already selected, the bot won't click it.
• the bot accepts the trades at the end of csv processing phase. This reduces the possibility of having a trade request window stucked in the "Collection" tab while you are in another tab (usually the "Classified" tab).
• removed the TeamViewer "Sponsored Session" message from the Login screen
• the bot now enters Buying Mode when the customers select an Event Ticket. The features had been broken with version 6.53 and the customers had to type "sell" to enter Buying Mode

Botters with versions < 6.53 and slow internet connections: PLEASE NOTE that ML Bot is not able to update automatically. This problem has been fixed in 6.54 but you need to update manually using the installer provided on your Online Control Panel.

The future of ML Bot - ML Bot for v4 online now

Hello to everyone,

I am glad to announce that we are finally there, we have a public ML Bot running on MTGO v4. The account is named "The_Kate_Bot", and it's available for trade now!

The account is not a real "business" one because the collection is poor and we stop it frequently for debugging reasons.  Still you can trade with it and see how the development is going.  Any feedback is highly appreciated and encouraged!

Please spread the voice and trade a lot! Try for example to purchase cards...... try to sell some, or try to trick the bot doing "strange things" :-) ....  spend 5 minutes and write us when done!

UPDATE***: thanks to all, we had many trades today! The_Kate_Bot will be online again on Monday!



Thank you!
Albert
staff@mtgolibrary.com

ML Bot v4 spoiler - Confirmed new features

Hello fellow botters,

there is a lot of attention about the release of the new ML Bot (for MTGO v4). I talked with Albert last week and he gave me some screenshots and an idea of some of the new features we will see.

We are at the point where we have a fully functional bot that works on the new beta client and have been running it online for a few weeks now. We will release the name of that bot as soon as possible so you will be able to interact with it and see its impressive speed.

Below are two screenshots of the new bot. The screenshots show the new loading bar (the one with the numbers 1, 2 and 3) and a lateral vertical info panel to help the user understand what happens. There you will read textual information. The lateral panel is designed to replace to actual "floating" splash screens and be a more organic place to read the information.

So what is new under the hood?

There have been a lot of rumors and suggestions out there about the new ML Bot, we would like you to know we listened.

Here are some new features:

1. Speed: the time to read the columns is currently 200 ms for every 25 cards. It is more than 10x the speed of the current bot.
2. Lateral info panel to group all the messages
3. Improved auto-transfer modes
4. The ability to change the buying and selling prices (%) for specific users. In a nutshell, give discounts for clan members or increase % for cherry pickers.
5. Ability to give credits on your bots for just cards, not tickets.

There are a few more new features too.
Albert will release the version of the bot before Magic Online moves to the new client, which we suspect will be sometime in September. I hope this satisfy your curiosity about the future of your botting business!.


 Happy Botting!

 -Teamstoge
Owner of MtgoTickets.com - Buying and selling tickets cheap. We are always in-stock.

MTGO v4 spotlight

Today MTGO v3 will be closed for a couple of days and you will only be able to use MTGO v4 (it's the so-called "mtgo v4 spotlight").

Mtgolibrary will have some bots running on v4 - I will post a list as soon as possible. If you want to take a look at the future of ML Bot, just open trade and see with your eyes :-)

Quick update on ML Bot for Magic Online v4

Time has come to share some thoughts about ML Bot for Magic Online v4.

We started the development in September 2012. I remember that the Magic Online v4 client was horrible, slow and crashing every 10 minutes. The situation now is much better and the MTGO v4 client is "usable" - we managed to build a reliable bot on.

In general I am satisfied with the work done so far: the new bot is stable, better coded, smaller and faster than the current one (the one for v3).

We are now in a position where the bottleneck is the Magic Online client. Just to give an example, the new bot is able to read 25 cards from the "You Give" column in 200 ms. 200 ms means "real time" (it's 5x faster than the current bot) - as soon as the customer picks a card, the bot quotes. But...... if you try to input text in the chat, 99% of the times Magic Online v4 freezes. You can prevent this by breaking the text in small chunks.
In a nutshell, you can read the cards in 200 ms, but then have to wait 1 second for the chat to actually send the messages. At the opposite, v3 chat supports heavy text without any problem. I guess time will fix this and similar issues.

The new bot is also better coded. Having good code under the hood means that the software is easier to debug, it's easier to add new features, easier to deploy and adjust.... it's more or less the same difference we had between the old website and the new one (the one we released on February / March).

What I expect for the future? On July ML Bot for Mtgo v4 will be a good product. With the months, it will become an excellent product and will greatly exceeded the current version.


Albert
staff@mtgolibrary.com

Magic Online v3 will be down May 8th - May 10th

As you probably already know, Magic Online v3 will be down May 8th - May 10th for the so called "V4 spotlight".
Magic Online v4 will be live on July and mtgolibrary.com will not miss the chance to be the first bot there!

During the spotlight we will have some bots running, thanks to our beta testers. I expect many bugs to be fixed on the fly and a generalized slow behavior.... after all Magic Online v4 IS slow and every action there is problematic.
Anyhow, we managed to build a bot for V4 and all the team here is pretty excited about that!

Finger crossed for tomorrow!


Albert
staff@mtgolibrary.com

New Features for MTGO Library V4 (Part3)

In these series I will share my wishes (and yours) of new features that we want on MTGO Library V4. Some of these have been 'promised', others are yet to be revealed and 'requested'. Feel free to share  your ideas about these new features discussed or to give new ones for the next posts. Thank you.

Pricelist

What can be improved?

• Removal of the Buying Prices from price list
• Buying price becoming a set fraction of the selling price.

Is it possible?

 It would be easy to implement and to code. For example if Auriok Champion is priced at 11.67 and you had a buying price of 80% (-20%) , your bot would offer 9.336 for that card.

Pros and Cons? 

As pros we have the fact that would be easier to configure and understand the profit margins of your bot.

The bad side would be the cards that require bigger or smaller profit margins. Cards that have a more regular and stable value, for example, a card that as been always worth around 10 event tickets, is likely to have a buying price of 8 and sell price of 10.0, while a card that as a inconstant value will have a bigger margin like buying for 6 and selling for 10.

Will this feature be in the MTGO V4?

 I have no idea as this feature would bring both advantages and disadvantages.

What are your thoughts on this feature? Would it have any use for your bots? Any new features you would like to see discussed for next part? Leave a comment bellow!

Next feature Hint: Type of Buyer(Wishlist vs Reading Collection)

New Features for MTGO Library V4 (Part2)

In these series I will share my wishes (and yours) of new features that we want on MTGO Library V4. Some of these have been 'promised', others are yet to be revealed and 'requested'. Feel free to share  your ideas about these new features discussed or to give new ones for the next posts. Thank you.

Improved Auto-Transfers

What can be improved?

• Improvements on Start/End time: Allow to set the auto transfer for less than 1 hour. Such as starting at 1PM and finish at 1:15PM for example.
• Automatic Stop: if after 3 or 4 trades the bot is no longer transferring cards (just cancels trade) the bot could stop the auto-transfer until the next start time.
• Ability to Mark cards tradable at the start time, or, request the target bot to mark all tradable.
• Different picking up card methods: Such as using the "buying cards" methods, scanning the collection or wishlist (and picking 3 of a card if you need 3 and not 1 of each needed card per trade).

Is it possible?

Start and End times with 15 minutes or 30 minutes intervals should be "easy" to implement.

Ability to mark cards tradable should also be easy and the ability to ask another bot to mark tradable already exists (markalltradable) yet is not implemented into the auto transfers as it is just an admin command.

The buying scan methods are already coded so this could just be a new command such as "OBWhatYouBuy" (example)

The automatic stop might be a bit harder to setup as this would be a void to the "end time", but only the MTGO Library staff can reply to that one. 

Pros and Cons? 

Smaller auto transfer intervals are ideal for small bot chains which could benefit from more regular short auto-transfer intervals (such as 15 min every 4 hours) instead of longer and less regular intervals (such as 1 hour every day), no cons on this one.

The ability to stop automatically also sounds great to any bot owner, giving the freedom to set a 1 or 2 hour interval without worrying that the bot will be endlessly opening and cancelling trades, yet this would have to be set up as 2 or 3 trades in a row without cards as a "trigger" to auto-stop, as the first trade might have no cards at all (in the case of relying on the mark all tradable feature).

The ability to request or mark all the cards tradable at the start of transfer time is my personal favorite as my bots don't automatically mark cards tradable after every trade and this is something I currently have to do manually, yet, I cannot see any "cons" for this one aswell.

The buying cards picking up method would also speed up the auto transfer process (specially on wishlist mode), but this would have some a flaw, which is when the bot picks 75 cards (wishlist mode) that he needs but happen to be from different sets and remove them (not picking the ones he would actually need due to the small current trade limit), I don't think I could fault it on scanning mode.

Will this feature be in the MTGO V4?

I haven't requested anything like this for MTGO Library v4, but if you are interested in any of these features, please comment and give your ideas, because if this is on many of us, bot owners, wishlist I'm sure Albert will have a go at implementing these exciting features.

What are your thoughts on these features? Will they have any use for your bots? Any new features you would like to see discussed for next part? Leave a comment bellow!

Next feature Hint: Pricelist

New Features for MTGO Library V4 (Part1)

In these series I will share my wishes (and yours) of new features that we want on MTGO Library V4. Some of these have been 'promised', others are yet to be revealed and 'requested'. Feel free to share  your ideas about these new features discussed or to give new ones for the next posts. Thank you.

Clan Members / Buddy discounts 

Is it possible?

This feature is very much possible on the current MTGO V3, as the game as both a special icon for Clan members and Buddy.

The process of giving extra % on buying and a % discount on selling 'seems' also easy to code, would just be another percentage adjustment on top of ML Bot correction, personal percentages, etc.

It is likely that MTGO V4 will also have some form of indication of a clan member or buddy so this feature seems to be very much possible to add.

Pros and Cons?

This feature would benefit in some ways, such as getting your regular customer "stuck" into just using your bots, would also give long lasting loyal customers a reward. Between the "profitable" reasons you also have the help of boosting your clan's number of members and position on clans leader-board (which in a way, is free advertising).

Its not all good news, as this would also mean that Non-clan/non-buddy customers would feel left out if they knew someone else gets extra tix for their cards on your bot, resulting in the 'loss' of some potential new customers. This would also mean that a clan member seeing the bot's prices advertised on classifieds or Wikiprice will not see the real price he will get, Making him choose to get a certain card on other bot for 41tix because you bot sells for 42, unaware that with the discount would just be 40 or less. 

 Will this feature be in the MTGO V4?

As far as conversations about this gone with Albert (the maker of MTGOLibrary bots) it seems to be a very likely scenario that this feature will be present in MTGO Library V4 bots. 

What are your thoughts on this feature? Will it have any use for your bots? Any new features you would like to see discussed for next part? Leave a comment bellow!

Next feature Hint: Auto-Transfers