MTGO Library Bot 8.47

Today we release ML Bot 8.47, a major software update we have been working on for almost two weeks.

The updated bot client fixes a number of small & big issues, but the most important changes are under the hood: we redesigned and recoded the internal data structures to be faster and cheaper in ram usage. What does this mean in practical terms?

• First of all, the bot will easier to maintain and debug. This means a better sofware in the long run, exactly what happened in 2013 with the new website (the new site was easier to maintain than the old one, and this lead to faster development)
• Ram usage drops from 400 MB to 100 MB. The new bot version uses less ram (see image)

• Buying mode is slightly faster
• Next week we will introduce the reload of the prices in background so the bot won't be "stopped" for 1-2 minutes while reloading the prices. This is possible because of the new data structures - this was not possible before

Please note that the pricelist "CardsMTGO.txt" format slightly changed (see here for reference), you may want to adjust your software if you use automated price generation. PersonalPrices.txt and PersonalPercentages.txt did not change.

We hope you'll enjoy the release! 

Many Magic Online bots: Virtualization on Windows Comparative Benchmark

We host an article by Enrique taken from his blog: http://www.mtgeconomist.com/en
You can read the original article here: http://www.mtgeconomist.com/en/instalar-bots-de-magic-online-virtualizacion-en-windows-parte-8-2/

Let me say that the main reason for writing this series is the enormous difficulty I have found when trying to search for articles that compare the reliability of different virtualization utilities (in fact I have not found anyone good enough). Therefore, I decided to write my own experience and test the main existing applications so you can decide the program that best suits your needs for your Magic Online stores machine.

What is virtualization?

Virtualization consists of emulating an Operating System (from now OS) inside another one which is the hosting OS. This software runs a full OS inside a window, as if it was another computer. The window that contains that emulated OS is also called a virtual OS or virtual machine (VM in advance).

If you remember from previous articles, the bot gets the resources of the mouse and keyboard to interact with the Magic Online client, which prevents you to use the computer where it is installed. With this software you will not have that problem if you install both Magic Online and the bot in a VM, since all the commands in these input devices are virtually processed.

A VM consumes resources like any computer. You can configure these resources with the only limitation of your hosting OS, considering that it also requires a minimal amount of resources. Some virtualization software can overcome these limits but such software emulation greatly reduces the VM performance.

Of course, nothing but the limits of the hardware prevents you from running more than one VM on the same computer. Thus, you could have several stores in Magic Online using a single computer.

Minimum requirements for a virtual machine

Since each VM will consume a significant part of our computer resources, I recommend that you set the minimum requirements in order to run the Magic Online client. The general requirements are (this is valid for the current version 3.0 not for the beta):

• Operating System: Windows XP Professional SP2 “Lite”
• CPU: 1 kernel
• RAM memory: 1.5 GB
• Hard Disk: 20 GB
• Video Resolution: 1440×900

The OS is a very small version of the original one. You can create an installation disk from the original image and remove all non-required extra tools with a program like nLite. In my case, my version of Windows XP consumes about 60-70 MB of RAM.

The CPU can be configured with more cores, but I think 1 is more than enough to run the bot with the Magic Online client.

The minimum RAM memory needed is about 800-1000 MB. However, with this amount of memory the OS can remap the loaded programs to the Windows swap file, leaving the VM unusable. An amount of 1.5 GB is the minimum size I have set on my VMs with no problems.

The hard disk space of the VM does not have to be 20 GB, in fact all installed applications and the trades backup files will not take you more than 6-8 GB. Anyway it is always better to leave more capacity, because if you create a virtual hard disk file with dynamic space assignation it will not use more space on your physical drive than required.

About the last feature, the minimum resolution is 1280×800 but it is too limited and the bot may have problems. It is a good idea to set a higher size (1440×900 or 1280×1024 for example), and if you have a lower resolution on your hosting OS the VM will add navigation bars so you can see its entire desktop.

You must also consider that the VMs will have more or less available resources depending on the hosting OS. For example, it is not the same that the hosting OS consumes 1 GB of RAM rather than another one that only uses 100 MB. However, you should also keep in mind that maybe the first hosting OS runs special services for the use of hardware virtualization or other useful features for VMs that are not present for the second one.

The ideal hosting OS would be the vSphere Hypervisor ESXi platform by VMware, which has been specifically designed to manage VMs consuming as little as 32 MB of RAM. However, installation is complex and is not compatible with any PC. If you would like more information about this topic, you can have a look at this series of articles written by Thrillski.

Virtualization with Windows hosting OS: benchmark setup

Once you have viewed the settings for each VM, we will create them with the Windows virtualization software selected for this comparison. Two of the applications I have chosen are completely free and unrestricted: VirtualBox 4.3.4 by Oracle and VMware Player 6.0.1. I have also considered a paid tool, VMware Workstation 10.0.1, in order to see if there are relevant differences that justify its price for its use with a Magic Online bot.

I have compared the performance by measuring the average times of a sequence of tests that any VM will run frequently. The three applications have been tested on two computers with the following configurations:

	Computer 1	Computer 2
Hosting OS	Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64bit	Windows 7 Professional SP1 64bit
Processor	Intel Core Quad Q8200 2.33 GHz	Intel Core i7-2600 3.4 GHz
Hardware Virtualization	No	Yes
RAM memory	8 GB	4 GB
Hard Disk	500 GB 7200rpm	500 GB 7200rpm
Graphics Card	nVidia GTX 285 1GB	nVidia GeForce GT 220 1GB

Although it is interesting to see the performance differences between these computers, the rigurous comparison is done for the virtualization software running on the same machine. The tests involve measuring the time taken for the VM to perform the following tasks:

• VM first boot. Measures the performance without using the cache memory, useful if virtualization software starts upon booting the hosting OS.
• VM second boot. While you don’t run other programs, if you reboot the VM you will see how its performance is improved.
• Simultaneous boot of 2 VMs (same software). The aim consists of testing how virtualization software manages computer resources among multiple VMs. This test is useful for measuring the performance if using more than one store.
• Simultaneous boot of 2 VMs (other software). This test is used to test how an virtualization tool manages the system resources without caring about other VMs from other software.
• Running Magic Online update tool (Kicker). As this application mainly depends on the communication with the server of Magic Online, I wanted to use it to get an idea of ​​how virtualization software manages the network connection.
• Running Magic Online client. This test allows to compare the performance of data loading of Magic Online as well as the management of the CPU computation performed by the virtualization software.
• Load the price list of the MTGO Library bot. This phase of the bot setup makes heavy use of memory, which is important during the execution of the store.

Results and discussion

Firstly I will detail the conditions under which I have done every test to ensure repeatability and a good comparison between platforms:

• The first 4 time trials start right after clicking the start button of the VM and end when the desktop is fully loaded (icons and Start bar are shown on the window).
• Kicker starts right after clicking the icon to run it, and ends just after the check for new updates is completed. Magic Online client has been previously updated in all tests.
• The Magic Online client starts right when the Launch button is pressed on the kicker tool, and ends just when the login screen appears.
• Finally, the test of the MTGO Library bot starts when pressing the Launch button, and ends just after loading the OCR and before launching the Kicker. For this test the buying list has been configured with 4 copies of all cards available up to date in both, regular and foil versions.

Each test was repeated 5 times and the result is the average time obtained from these repetitions. The virtual OS has just the required applications pre-installed (Magic Online 3.0, .NET Framework and MTGO Library), and its hard disk has been defragmented and optimized. The bot version used is 6.31. In the following graphic you can see the results (the lower the better value).

As conclusions, firstly it can be seen that the overall performance of VMware products is higher than the provided by VirtualBox. Oracle software only seems to highlight on the bot load list test with the computer that has hardware virtualization, something that shall be considered. But in general terms, VirtualBox does not seem to be a suitable product for bot virtualization in Windows.

Perhaps the only exception is when you want to run more than one VM. As you can see, the test for 2 VMs with VirtualBox and VMware show a signifficant improvement on performance over the use of only one software. This is an interesting result because one could expect that one virtualization program should better manage the computer resources, but this has been proven to be false at least on the computers of this benchmark.

If we focus on the free and paid versions of VMware desktop, we can see that the time differences between the two solutions are not very noticeable. At least they are not for the cost savings of using the free version. Therefore, in my opinion I do not see it necessary to use the payment application to manage Magic Online stores.

On the other hand, it is also interesting to compare the difference in terms of performance between both computers. As you can see from the results, the improvement of speed for the second machine processors is very relevant. Although the memory of the first machine is twice the second one, this fact does not affect the load times for 2 VMs even with the exact required amount of memory. Therefore, it seems clear that the processor will be a critical element for the proper functioning of our stores.

In conclusion, for computers with Windows as the hosting OS I would personally use the VMware Player application. If you have a more powerful computer with more RAM you can try these tests with more than 2 VMs, compare the use of this application together with VirtualBox and comment your results.

In the following article I will describe the tests I have done to test virtualization in Linux with the most relevant software I could find for this task.

Trade Duration in Trade Log

Starting right after the downtime, all the ML Bot 6.20 and 6.21 users will be able to view trade duration in the Trade Log.
The feature has been requested for a long time and it's finally there! Now you'll be able to see who keeps your bot always buys :-)
Withdraw are timed as well.

Bad to the Bone - Part 1

United Airlines to honor tickets sold for $0.
Computer glitch sending wrong bills for toll roads.
Hollywood condo owner receives $154,000 water bill.
Google flags the entire Internet as malware.

Each of the above is a real headline.  The news media loves stories like these as it breaks up the monotony of the local crime report and it also allows the media to subtlety pin the blame on an inanimate object instead of a real living human being. 

They are constant too.  This past Sunday, a Miami Marlins pitcher tossed a no-hitter, a pretty rare feat for baseball.  The Marlins organization allowed people to purchase the un-sold tickets.  If you chose the print-from-home option for these tickets, you’ll soon discover they were printed with the wrong date.  Computer errors are simply all too common.

Computers have deeply integrated into our society and will continue to integrate itself even more in the foreseeable future.  It is hard to imagine where society will be in a few years with technology like Siri and cell phones becoming more like personal assistants than an emergency communications device.

Yet we seem to forget that computers are nothing but tools.  Extremely powerful and useful tools but they are tools nonetheless, doing nothing of their own initiative, only doing what someone else has programmed them to do.  (Even Artificial Intelligence is nothing more than a randomization of a pre-loaded set of instructions.)

We all can agree that for the most part, computers have benefited society.  Who hasn’t been mesmerized by Wikipedia?  If you’ve ever used online bill pay, you appreciate not having to write a paper check once a month and making odd trips to the post office trying to get more stamps.

But as much good as computers have done for society, there are bad people in this world who also have computers.  These computers are programmed to do things which are judged by others as “bad”.  These exists a whole industry whose purpose is to protect your computer from the over 200,000 pieces of malware which is discovered daily.

Even we bot owners are not immune.  We’ve all profited from Library and we are satisfied with its operation.  However, there are those who think that their profits are not enough and will do unethical things to attempt to get those profits.  We’ll be discussing those in this series and we’ll start next time.

Cheaper than running yourself?

Renting a Server?

I upgraded my PC recently, and yet I am thinking of remaking a PC all together with more attention to energy efficiency.

As all of you know, to get into the botting world of MTGO, many of us are required to do some investments in hardware and waste many man-hours setting all up.
Most Botters PCs electricity usage range between 200 and 400 watt. This is because most of us did not build our pc's exclusively for botting and more likely upgraded our "everyday use" Gaming desktops into accepting (more) bots.

As Albert explained earlier in late August, building a Desktop to run bot(s) can cost between $500 to $1250+, depending on how many bots you wish to run. You might be mistaken that spending $500 on a PC to run, lets say, 2 Bots is a good idea, but there is a cheaper option.

A PC which is not designed to be energy efficient, running 2 bots, usually draws on average about 200-250w (average bots constant low load) while the monitor(s) are off, possibly up to 300-400w while they're on (depending if you dual monitor, screen size, etc). This means that, depending on wattage and your location, a Botting PC will use between $1 to $2 electricity a DAY. Might not sound much, but this is $30-60 on electricity a month, just to run 1-2 bots, which is definitely a number to consider, specially for newer bots with a very little amount of trades.

I am considering building powerful, energy efficient PCs to run more bots, but while I don't have enough capital to invest into a whole new card collection I was wondering if I could use my hardware/PC Building knowledge and software tweaking skills into something new and mutual benefit of me and other botters.

This is when I had the idea of possibly renting Virtual Machines exclusively for MTGO Library botting somewhere around $15 a month or less (while you would have full access to the PC remotely, to pause bot, edit personal prices, etc). This would remove a lot of weight of your shoulders, not having to worry about configuring Virtual Machines, not being able to play games on your PC while bots are running, having to sort out bot updates or quick adjustments while on holiday and so on.

While this is surely not great news for those who already run 6+ bots from 1 PC, but, it can be for the botters out there that run 1-3 bots on their personal PCs(with power hungry graphics cards or so).

Please share your thoughts and let me know if you would be the kind of person that would like to be involved in something like this.

Why So Sad Hybird? (Part 2 of 2)

Last time I had discussed flash drives and hybrid drives with flash memory and how they could really improve response time for our bots because flash drives would be much faster than platter-driven drives.  I had also mentioned that such drives have really not taken the market by storm.  This was not because of cost nor performance but of an underlying flaw: Flash memory has a life cycle of 10,000 writes.

What does that mean?  You can only write to a flash memory stick about 10,000 times before it simply will not write anymore.  Now, 10,000 writes is absolutely fine for that USB drive in your pocket attached to your keychain.  But for desktop computers, this is simply not enough. While servers would love the performance boost of using Flash memory, they are also not durable enough for such wear.

Then I came across this little article…
http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/memory/flash-memory-survives-100-million-cycles

So some researchers found a way to get around that nasty 10,000 write limit.  If this indeed is true, and there is no real reason why this is not true, then it should not be too long before flash drives in more reasonable capacities are created and at a price point which is attractive for the performance boost.  I suspect that these new drives could hit the market within a year or so.

For us bot owners, what does this mean?  If you are running a part-time bot or bots on older hardware, this will not mean much of anything beyond some advertising you will see when you shop online, watch television or visit your local bog box store.  But for those who run bot chains, or aspiring bot chain owners, having a dedicated machine makes sense.  When the time comes to contemplate purchasing new hardware, take a look at these new rugged SSD drives and see if the increased cost and increased cost is worth the financial risk and performance gain.

Why So Sad Hybrid? (Part 1 of 2)

There is a Chinese proverb; a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.  There is a similar saying when it comes to the speed of computers; its speed is determined by its slowest component.  In the past, the bottleneck would be the CPU itself.  It has also been the bus or pathway between various components.  Today, the slowest component is the hard drive. 

While other components are chugging along at the speed of light, hard drives have to wait while a spinning platter reaches its proper placement so a magnetic thingamajig can read some random 1’s and 0’s and attempt to make sense of it.  Various strategies have been developed in an attempt to solve this problem.  One attempt is to use multiple hard drives and combine them into one monster hard drive which while it increases the storage capacity linearly, the read and seek times increase geometrically.  But this RAID solution is fairly expensive and not really applicable in small servers, desktops or personal machines.  It’s just not cost-effective.

So you can imagine the cries of joy when flash memory was developed.  Not quite ROM (Read-Only Memory) and not quite RAM, but a memory which would hold its state like ROM but can be written to and hold its state, like RAM, and can hold its state without the need for constant electricity.  It is best known as USB drives, thumb drives or flash drives.  By whatever name it is known, this type of memory is found in all of these portable drives, and has allowed for the explosion of growth in the tablet market.

The next logical place for this memory is to try and make an entire hard drive based on this flash memory.  The technology is fairly simple.  RAM disks were popular in the early days on the personal computer and one could really detect the performance increase.  While no one really expected to replicate the performance increase, people did expect to see a performance increase when this type of flash technology was made into a stand-alone hard drive or even its cousin, the hybrid drive, a drive with an SSD partition as well as a traditional platter for additional storage.

Billions of dollars have been spent in infrastructure to build the drives that experts said there would be a demand for.  Yet SSD drives and hybrid drives have not really taken off.  It is not the cost of these drives, although that is a small factor.  It is not the performance as every independent test shows that these drives perform as advertised.   Why haven’t flash memory drives taken off and more importantly, how does this affect us bot owners?  I’ll discuss that next time.

Bots: costs and initial strategies

So far in this series of Magic Online bots, you have learned the economic fundamentals of the digital card game. We have also reviewed how to create a bot store that automatically manages your collection so it gets benefits for you. If you decide to start this quest and build your own store, it is important to know some marketing strategies that can determine a great success and a better relation between cost and benefits.

Initial costs and maintenance for Magic Online bots

You should not create a Magic Online stores without wondering how much the initial and maintenance costs will be. Besides, you have to take in mind ​​the benefits you will get from each store depending on what cards it will have in stock. First off, you must know that for every digital store on Magic Online that you are creating, it will have the following rough expenses:

Description	Value
Magic Online account	$9.99
Compatible computer with CPU Intel x86	~$400-$1200
Windows 7 Professional OEM license (allows a Windows XP license)	~$125
Virtualisation software (optional)	$40-$70
Energy consumption for a PC of 100W with fee of 0.2$/kWh	~$15/month
Investment on initial stock	$100 or greater
MTGO Library account and software	FREE
MTGO Library renting fee	2.5% or Lite/Pro license

Except the Magic Online account, all prices are estimations and may vary depending on where you live. With Magic Online version 3 you should use Windows XP as it consumes fewer resources than their successors. The problem is that official licenses for this windows can no longer be officially purchased. The only way is to buy Windows 7 Pro OEM and request a downgrade to Windows XP (this is supposed to be valid until 2014), although I have not checked this because I use my old operating system licenses.

Additionally, you can see that there are some initial fixed costs and others for maintenance. To decide how much you should spend on the computer I will write a sepparate article, because I think it is a very important topic to ensure the smoothness and scalability of your future chain of Magic Online bots.

On the other hand, you can check that I have highlighted the possibility of buying virtualization software. These applications allow you to run more than one operating system on the same computer, and they are the basis to have several Magic Online bots on the same machine. Although there are some companies that offer free versions, sometimes you may prefer to use the payment option in order to gain extra performance. Like the selection of PC, I will make a comparative analysis for a future article that will allow you to choose the program that best suits your needs.

Previous suggestions to plan the setup of your Magic Online bots

As you have seen, the initial cost of a Magic Online bot is relatively affordable. For this reason it is very important that you plan the growth of your business based on the resources you have. Below I give you some tips that may save you some time and money.

1. If you have an older computer, certainly this is the cheapest option in the short term to start testing bots Magic Online. Of course, this PC will probably have high energy consumption problems, it will be outdated and with limited hardware expansion capabilities. These factors reduce the capacity expansion of a bots chain in the long term, but it would be useful for you to take some practice with bots at almost zero initial cost.
2. You might also have the Windows XP license of any old computer you no longer use because probably your current PC will be updated at least to Windows 7. However, if you are planning to setup several stores this initial cost increases linearly. Therefore, you should only create the stores you really need or you will be losing money.
3. For virtualization software, there are some free programs but with the disadvantage of being slower than the payment option. For this reason you should choose it depending on the number of stores that you are going to install on your bots machine. 
4. You will need an initial investment for each store. The greater the value, the higher the growth rate of stock but you will also spend more money. If you make a large investment on each of your stores they may evolve rapidly, but if that investment is low in the short to medium term, then you will spend more money on the maintenance of your Magic Online bots than the benefit obtained, because initially the flow of customer will be low.

The relevance of having a strategy for the future expansion

From the tips mentioned above, I will give my recommendation assuming you want to create a chain of Magic Online bots for the long-term. Everything will mainly depend on how many tickets/cards you are willing to invest for the initial stock of each of your stores. In this way, you have two options:

• Low initial stock (~$100 per store): In this case you should have 1-2 stores. The main one should have a Pro license (buy/sell any card with unique prices) with 2.5% renting fee and buy/sell cards just from the latest expansion available in Magic Online. This limitation is very favourable because that set will be the most drafteable one, so there will be huge quantity of cards at a very good buy/sell rate. If you choose to have a secondary store, it should buy cards in bulk through a Lite license (all rarities at same prices) also with a renting fee of 2.5%. This second store must buy the cards cheaper than the main one, and it should be configured to refill the main stock because clients are more interested on pro stores that are always full of stock. As new sets are becoming available, your store should accept them to slowly go expanding your business. 
• High initial stock (~$500 or more per store): For these quantities the store should not have many problems to grow quickly (obviously with a good marketing). With amounts between $500-$1000 I would start buying/selling standard, and from there I would include Modern and even Legacy. The Professional version is required for these types of stores, but it would also be a good idea to have one or two Lite stores to maximize profits. Use the monthly license fee or better when you move amounts greater than 90 tickets/day (these licenses cost 63 tickets/month or less), and 2.5% commission per transaction otherwise. One strategy that can combine any of the above options is to use, for each store you are planning to create, two stores instead: one that exclusively buys cards and another that only makes sales. As this alternative would double the computation costs of your computer and limits you to create new stores, this strategy is only recommended whenever you have a high traffic of customers. Thus, you avoid your Magic Online bots from being always busy (remember you can only trade cards with one customer at once, so if a customer is waiting for trade he would probably go to another store).

Final thoughts

Although the growth stock of the strategy (a) is slow in time, it is also safer and with a relatively low initial cost. Therefore, this solution is favorable for those who cannot afford high investment and for those who will not spend much time maintaining their Magic Online bots.

Unlike (a), in case (b) the growth is much faster but you have to be careful and keep the prices updated. If you have cash, your stores will be targeted by customers who hope to also make some profit with the most expensive cards. The problem is that those cards leave your store/s without tickets and until sold you do get zero benefit (in fact it is a temporary loss state). The main problem is that those cards can vary greatly over the cheap price and generate losses due to these fluctuations. Thus, with this strategy you must be much more aware of your store to avoid short term buys/sells that may provoke loses.

Now that you have a long-term idea of ​​how you are going to expand your chain of Magic Online bots for profit, in future articles I will comment more technical aspects related to mount your stores, such as the required hardware and software.

A comprehensive guide for the aspiring botter (Virtual Machines) Part 9

Virtual Machines:

Last week we talked about some basic things to keep in mind when setting up your bot server and installing its operating system. This time I'll talk about setting up your virtual machines.

I assume you've already installed your host operating system on your computer.
First I would recommend you to get the very basics ready, like installing your web browser of choice and making sure you have internet connection and maybe installing an anti-virus software before we start.

Installing your virtual machine(s): 

It's time to install and set up your virtual machine(s), for this I would recommend using VMware Player which is free to use or VMware Workstation. You'll have to purchase a license to use this one though and I think it's pretty unnecessary for what we're going to do.

1. Start by installing whichever version you prefer.

2. Start VMware and press "Create a New Virtual Machine".

3. Choose either "Installer disc" if you have your OS on a DVD or "Installer disc image file (iso)" if you have a .iso file of your OS on your computer.

4. Type your Windows product key and your name and password (you need a password to be able to connect to your botting computer with Remote Desktop).

5. Choose a name of your virtual machine. I would recommend choosing the same name that you're going to use for your bot so you don't mix them up.

Also choose to install your virtual machine on your SSD if you purchased one and make a folder called something like Virtual Machines to keep things organized.

6. Choose how much disk size to allocate for your virtual machine. I would recommend something between 5 and 10 GB and choose "Store virtual disk as a single file", then click next and finish and the virtual machine will start up and start your Windows Installation.

You only need to do this once as I'll show you how to copy your virtual machine later to use for more bots. It's best to do it later when it's set up and ready so you don't have to install stuff like MTGO again.

7. After the installation is done power off your virtual machine just like you power off any Windows installation and then right click it in the list in VMware Player and click "Virtual Machine Settings".
First choose "Memory" and set it between 2-3 GB for Windows 7. This can easily be changed later so you can see what works best for you. This totally depends on how slim your Windows 7 installation is and what applications you choose to run.

8. Next select Processors and select one processor core.

9.(Optional) Then you can delete devices you know you won't use but this is not necessary. I for example disabled the CD/DVD reader as my server doesn't even have one.

Setting up your pagefiles:
 
This is instructions for those who have chosen to use more than one hard drive.

1. Start up your virtual machine.

2. Go into the Control Panel and click "System".

3. Click "Change Settings" to the right Click the "Advanced" tab and then "Settings..." under "Performance" and then the next "Advanced" tab and then "Change..."

4. Now select your C: drive (which should be your SSD if you have one) and then select "Custom Size" and  write 1024 in the initial and maximum size and click "Set". Then select your second hard drive and choose "System managed size" and click "Set".

This will give you two pagefiles, one for the OS (windows requires around 1gb) and then a larger one for the rest of your applications that lies on your second hard drive where it doesn't slow your computer down.


Final installs:

After this you should install service packs and drivers using the windows updater and then you just need to install .Net Framework 4.0 from Microsoft's site and DirectX9 (to be able to run MTGO) and of course install and update the MTGO client itself and the MTGO Library Bot.
After that you should install any other softwares you want to use, a backup software for example and then you're almost ready.

Multiple Virtual Machines:
If you're planning on running more bots you can now follow these short instructions:

1. Shut off your virtual machine and then shut off VMvare.

2. Locate your virtual machine on your C: drive and then just copy the folder and rename it to something fitting.


3. Start VMware again and choose "Open a virtual machine" and locate it on your hard drive. When you power it on click "I copied it" and that's it. Now you have an exact copy of your first virtual machine to use for your second bot, now you can do this for any number of bots you want to use.

This was all I had for today.

Next week I'll talk about setting up your bots and getting them ready for action.
As always I'll gladly answer any questions you might have in the comment section.
Cheers!
-Tom (Sitrec)
Archbot MTGO Store: ArchBot, ArchBot2, ArchBot3, ArchBot4 & ArchBot5

A comprehensive guide for the aspiring botter (Setup 1) Part 8

Putting together the pieces:

This article will go through some things to keep in mind and some basic instructions on setting up your botting server. I can't go too in-depth as things like installation of hardware and operative system will vary a lot depending on what you have purchased.
I'll assume you've decided what hardware to buy and now it's time to set it all up and get it ready for botting. I will also write this focused on helping you install Windows 7 as this is the operative system I would recommend for someone with basic to no experience. You can find more information on available operative systems in my previous article.

Installing your hardware: 

First of all you obviously need to put your hardware together and get the computer running. You don't need any special tools other than a normal screwdriver.
Your hardware should come with instruction manuals that I would recommend you to read.
I would also recommend searching Google and Youtube for articles and videos on how to set up each part.
When it comes to building a computer, as long as you have purchased parts that are compatible with each other it's very straight forward and you can't really do it wrong as most(if not all) cables only fit in one slot, it's almost as easy as building a jig-saw puzzle. Just make sure to read the instruction manuals before you start building.

When building a computer a good idea is to wear an antistatic wrist strap that you attach to something grounded like a sink or a radiator.
This is a safety measure that prevents you from discharging static electricity built up in your body into sensitive computer parts, which could potentially break them.

These straps can be purchased cheaply at shops that sell computer hardware.

If you're hesitant to build your computer yourself there are plenty of computer shops that offer to build it for you, but these often charge quite a lot. You could always ask a friend or acquaintance that have more experience to build it for you. I would however say that anyone that can read and follow simple instructions can build a PC.

Installing your operative system: 

Remember to install your OS on your SSD if you decided to purchase one for your bot.
There are two ways I would recommend when installing your OS.

First one is the most basic, simply install it using a DVD that will be included if you purchased a physical Windows License. If you purchased a digital version simply download the .iso file from your digital distributor and burn it onto a DVD.

If you do not have access to a DVD burner or don't have a DVD reader for your server you can use Win7 USB/DVD Download Tool and follow the simple instructions on the site to turn a USB drive into a bootable Windows installation. There are similar softwares available for other operative systems you might prefer but I won't name them all here.

To install simply insert your DVD into the DVD reader and follow the installation instructions on the screen.
When installing using an USB drive you might have to choose it as your bootable drive do this by going into the BIOS. You can see which button takes you there on the screen when starting your computer (this can vary depending on your motherboard) then choose USB as your bootable drive. You can easily find instructions for this if you search Google using the name of your motherboard and something along the lines of "change bootable drive".


This is as I said earlier, very basic. I would recommend slimming down your operative system before installation using RT Se7en Lite for Win 7 or nLite for Win XP. This could potentially save you tons of computer resources to dedicate for the bots instead of running unnecessary services and other stuff that comes with your OS that you don't need. This will however take some time and can be a bit tricky so I would recommend looking for guides online on how to do it. I will not go through how you should do it mainly because everyone use different components of their OS and also completely different operative systems so this is pretty much up to you how you want it. But there are great guides that will help you slim down your own custom Windows installation that suits your needs.

This was some very, very basic information about setting up your hardware and operative system.
If you have any questions I will gladly answer them in the comment section bellow.

Next time I'll go through setting up some softwares you need and getting your computer ready for botting.
Ta-ta!

-Tom (Sitrec)
Archbot MTGO Store: ArchBot, ArchBot2, ArchBot3, ArchBot4 & ArchBot5

A comprehensive guide for the aspiring botter (Softwares) Part 7

Softwares:

Now we've come to the time to start looking at what applications to use and which licenses to purchase.
I'll recommend what I think you should use and I'll also try to give you at least one alternative that doesn't require you to purchase a license. I will not give you definite prices or links to where to purchase required licenses as these will vary depending on your location, etc.


First of all you'll have to decide which operative system to use: 

While I think Windows XP is the best alternative at the moment I would still recommend getting Windows 7 even though it consumes more resources, simply because the v4 version of MTGO that should be released shortly will (most likely) not run properly on Windows XP. This will probably force you to upgrade to Win 7 when v4 is released which seems unnecessary.
Now this is not something we're completely sure of, it might very well work on Windows XP but from what we've heard it won't, due to some rendering issues.

Windows 7 costs quite a lot and you will need one license per virtual machine plus one for the host PC.
A virtual machine is considered by Microsoft as being a separate computer and will therefore need a separate license. There are however plenty of ways to get these licenses cheaper than normal retail price.
Consider checking if you can get a student's discount or maybe the family pack of 3 licenses, which is way cheaper than buying separate licenses. You could also try it out before you purchase by using their trial period, this gives you some time to think about which OS you want to use.
The same applies if you decide to go with Win XP, you'll still need separate licenses that you have to pay for so I would say it's better to future proof by using Windows 7.

You might want to use Windows 8 and it should work fine. There are guides elsewhere on the blog that will help you with this but it's nothing I have any experience with.

If you're on a really tight budget and can't afford paying for licenses you could always give ESXi a shot.
ESXi is developed by VMware and was made freely available a few years ago. It only requires 32 MB RAM and uses almost no resources at all. It is however not as easy to use as the Windows operative systems and will most likely require you to follow a guide to get to work. User Thrillski on this blog is writing an article series about ESXi and I would recommend checking out his articles for more information. I myself have no experience with ESXi and can't really help you with this.

Other softwares you might want to check out: 

Virtual Machine:
I would recommend using VMWare Player or Workstation to set up your virtual machines.
The reason you have to run bots on virtual machines is simply because MTGO won't run more than one copy at a time on the same computer and the bot uses the mouse to navigate.
Therefore we install separate, virtual installations of your operative system of choice on the same computer.
VMWare Player is free to use and works well for botting purposes. Workstation however requires you to purchase a license and have a lot more settings that you can use but it's not necessary.

Backup software:
I've been trying out a lot of free backup softwares and ended up using SyncBack Free by 2BrighSparks as I find it to be the most suitable and lightweight of all the backup softwares I could find.

It's always a good idea to back up your virtual machines and/or MLBot settings so SyncBack is a good sollution that won't drain your recourses too much.

I would also recommend running Dropbox if you want to keep files synchronized between your virtual machines and bots. For example you could use SyncBack Free to backup files such as CardsForAdverticement.txt and the like into your shared Dropbox folder where the other bots can use it to update their own files using SyncBack. Sure Dropbox is not the most resource friendly software but it's a breeze to use so I think it's worth it.

Other than these you'll of course need to install .net Framework 4.0 and DirectX9 to properly run Magic The Gathering Online. And then there's the bot and the game to install.

I'll be back with another article next week, and in the meantime feel free to ask any questions you might have in the comment section.

Cheers!
-Tom (Sitrec)
Archbot MTGO Store: ArchBot, ArchBot2, ArchBot3, ArchBot4 & ArchBot5

A comprehensive guide for the aspiring botter (Hardware 3) Part 6

More on hardware 2/2:

Yesterday we started off this post with some basic things to keep in mind when buying hardware for your botting computer. The post got a bit long so here is the second part, continuing with some recommendations and a bit more in depth information on what hardware you might actually need to buy.

Individual Parts: 

When it comes to botting MTGO CPU and RAM is the most important parts so you'll want to focus your budget on these.

CPU (Processor): 

You'll need a CPU around these lines. (These are just quick estimates and not necessarily completely correct)

    •   1-5 bots - Intel i3 Quad Core / AMD 2 - 4 Core
    •   6-9 bots - Intel i5 Quad Core / AMD 6 Core
    •   10-14 bots - Intel i7 Quad Core / AMD 8 Core

I for one decided to buy an AMD CPU mainly because they're cheaper, my main computer runs an Intel i7 and I didn't feel like spending a lot on another one. The slight advantage an Intel CPU will bring is usually not worth the extra cash in my opinion. Just make sure to compare benchmarks you'll find online, don't listen blindly to what each brand tells you.

Ram (Memory):

Running Windows XP you'll need around 1.5 GB RAM down to 1.1 GB per bot if you have an extra HDD to put the pagefile on (I highly recommend this and will be talking more about this in future posts)  and 2 GB+ for Win 7.

The speed of the RAM Isn't really important, any 1333 MHz + will do just fine.

GPU (Graphics Card):

MTGO have a GPU system recommendation of 128 MB video RAM (not to be confused with normal RAM) and support for DirectX9, which is nothing.

The GPU must also support 1080x1024 resolution which also isn't much.

Most motherboards with integrated GPU will be powerful enough for MTGO so you might not need to buy a separate GPU at all.

PSU (Power Supply):

When it comes to PSU it only have to support wattage of as much(or more) as the rest of the parts consume.

You can easily calculate how high wattage you'll need using: eXtreme Power Supply Calculator Lite
Just input your other computer parts and click calculate.

When it comes to PSU you're better off buying a quality one with 80+ certificate than a budget one as it will consume much less power.
It'll also last you much longer, which is important for a machine that will be running 24/7.

Motherboard:

The motherboard only has to support the other parts and isn't going to cost you much.
Just make sure it's compatible with the rest and have enough slots for your RAM.

You might want to buy one with an integrated GPU so you don't have to buy one separately.

Hard Drive/SSD:

I would recommend running your bot and Operative System on an SSD.
It's not necessary but will greatly increase the speed of your bots if you're running multiple.

I would also recommend getting a regular HDD to backup your bots on and run the pagefiles on.
Each bot needs around 5-10 GB space.

Unless you're planning on overclocking you won't have to spend on extra, fancy cooling (unless you want your computer to be quiet) the case fans and stock cooling will likely be enough to begin with.

When it comes to brands I would recommend not to buy the cheapest, generic crap.
This computer will run 24/7 so you'll want to spend a little bit extra on getting parts from brands such as Corsair, Samsung, Kingston, ASUS and the like.

The dvd-writer, case and a backup HDD doesn't matter much though, any brand will most likely do.

My dedicated botting computer runs the following hardware: 

    •    16 GB (2x8) 1600 MHz Corsair RAM

    •   AMD FX-8320 8 core 3.5GHz CPU

    •   Asus M5A78L-M/USB3 Motherboard

    •   Corsair CX 600W 80+ Bronze PSU

    •   Samsung 840-Series 120GB SSD

    •   500GB Samsung 7200rpm HDD

On this computer I run 5 bots with lots of room for expanding and upgrading to MTGO v4.

When picking your parts I would suggest using: PC Part Picker to make sure your parts are compatible with each other.

Just remember that these estimates are based on performance of MTGO v3 and Win XP, things will change a lot when v4 is released but we can't know for sure until it's time. I'll get back to this in a new article when v4 is released.

More next week and feel free to ask questions in the comment section.

Cheers!
-Tom (Sitrec)
Archbot MTGO Store: ArchBot, ArchBot2, ArchBot3, ArchBot4 & ArchBot5

A comprehensive guide for the aspiring botter (Hardware 2) Part 5

More on hardware 1/2:

Last week we talked some basic hardware for the new botter.
This week we'll go a little more in depth into choosing hardware, this is going to be an article mainly for the aspiring botter who doesn't have a suitable computer lying around to run his first bots on, but also the botter who's looking to upgrade from his old attic computer. I'm not going to tell you what to get, since that is totally dependent on your budget, plans and so on and so forth but I will give you some tips and stuff to keep in mind when buying hardware.

Tips and thoughts: 

Always when buying a new computer it's best to buy each individual part and build it yourself, or to have a friend build it rather than buying a complete package. These packages will almost always include stuff you don't need, and they will also charge a lot extra for setting it up for you.

When it comes to computer hardware it's the absolute latest parts and the oldest parts that are going to be the most expensive ones, so you're better off buying new but not the absolute latest parts to make sure you're not spending too much.

I would say the only reason to just buy a computer that only can run one or two bots would be if it only cost a few bucks second hand. If you're going to buy brand new you're better off at least leaving some room for expanding later on, or you'll end up wasting a lot of money.

What lies ahead: 

You also have to take into account that Wizards Of The Coast is going to release their new MTGO v4 client (which is now in Beta) soon, which will require more computer power and won't run on Win XP.

Windows 7 requires more resources than XP even slimmed down so a computer that at the moment runs 5 bots might only run 2 or 3 in a few months when v4 is released.
I'm all for future proofing and find it silly to spend significant amounts of money on something you'll have to upgrade in a few months, so I would recommend spending some extra on a computer with room for expanding and room for the v4 client.

Part 2 of  'More on Hardware' tomorrow and feel free to ask questions in the comment section.

Cheers!
-Tom (Sitrec)
Archbot MTGO Store: ArchBot, ArchBot2, ArchBot3, ArchBot4 & ArchBot5

Magic Online Profiles

We host the first of a series of articles from our friends blog http://www.mtgeconomist.com , a top blog dealing with mtg and mtgo economics.
You can read the original article here: 
http://www.mtgeconomist.com/en/perfiles-en-magic-online-parte-4



Magic is a game that allows you to have different experiences depending on the priorities of each player. Some people like to make their decks from a random card pool whereas others prefer to select the cards in his deck. There are also casual players whose main goal is collecting. In this chapter of the series I will introduce the importance of the profiles on Magic Online to have a strategy that will minimize your expenses in cards.

Firstly I will discuss what these profiles on Magic Online are about. Then I will advance how you can get benefits regardless of what sort of Magic player you are.

Limited Players

These players are often specialized in drafts so they are so-called drafters. Magic Online launches 8-player drafts queues constantly of the latest sets. Occasionally, older expansions are also added to the drafts queues. There are three main different queues, which differ in the prizes you get and the number of matches you can play:

• Swiss: You play three games by Swiss system, always against opponents with the same victories as you. You win a booster for each win at the end of the draft.
• 4-3-2-2: Elimination system where you leave the draft if you lose a match. The first qualified wins 4 boosters, the second 3 and both third-fourth win 2 boosters each.
• 8-4: Like 4-3-2-2 except for prizes. The winner wins 8 boosters and the second 4 boosters.

Normally, the boosters won are from sets of the draft you play. A draft usually costs 2 tickets plus product (the boosters you open in the draft), or 14 tickets. In the prereleases the price usually raises up to 20 tickets (it is not possible to buy product in this mode). Although you can buy directly from the store of Magic Online, it is usually better to exchange them for tickets on the secondary market because they are cheaper.

A drafter wants to fund their drafts with prizes of previous drafts so they are for free (infinite mode). To do this, the best method is 8-4 which gives you three boosters and another one for the tickets required to play another draft. Of course, you should have to always reach the finals, to be a very good player, to perfectly know the sets and have much luck drawing.

If you like the draft, my suggestion is to start with Swiss for better knowing the cards and play some matches (low risk). When you feel you have learnt the set it is time to change to 4-3-2-2 (medium risk), and if you see you win consistently and have became a master of that draft sets, then move to the 8-4 (high risk). Note that the top players are 8-4 so winning matches here will be quite harder.

Also, you have to consider that you keep the cards you use to create your deck. Thus, you can sell them after the draft and get some extra tickets that makes easier for you to play on infinite mode. Unless it is a very expensive card, I recommend you draw cards to improve your deck before a card with a value of 1 ticket or so that you will not be able to use on your matches (it is better to win a match rather than a ticket, isn’t it?).

Magic Online has recently added the Phantom sealed queues (you build a deck with the cards opened from 6 boosters). The difference with the normal mode is that you do not keep with the cards. The price is much more affordable (4 tickets) and prizes are not bad: winner (3 matches) gets 3 boosters and if you win 2 matches you keep one booster. However, as you do not keep the cards you play this extra value of drafts are lost.

Drafter strategy: use the rewards to keep playing and as profit. Sell ​​drafted cards to exchange for tickets and/or boosters.

Constructed Player

Constructed player prefers to create a deck built with legal cards of a particular format (Standard, Modern, Legacy …). For this purpose, firstly it is required to make an initial investment in order to buy the cards of the deck. Then, this deck can be used on different tournaments as long as you like. The only extra payment for joining tournaments is the registration tickets. There are two main possible constructed tournaments:

• Constructed Queues: For 2 and 8 players, they are 2 and 6 tickets respectively. The first one prize is a booster for the winner. In the second one prizes are distributed as 5-3-2-2.
• Scheduled Events: Usually for 16-256 players with a cost of 6 tickets. It consists of four rounds on Swiss mode, and prizes are 11 boosters if you win 4 games and 6 boosters if you win 3 games.

Constructed player usually play on scheduled events rather than queued events because prizes are quite better for the same entry option. You can firstly play on the Tournament Practice section of Magic Online for training against other players.

Constructed strategy: buy the cards for the deck at the best price possible. Earn as much as possible to amortize the deck or as profit. When changing the deck, sell old cards to the maximum value to minimize losses.

Collectors

There is also a third type of casual player who does not devote much time to the game. However, he likes to have all the cards in order to get any deck or simply because he wants to keep. The goal of this player is to get all the cards of the desired collections and redeem them if he prefers to have them physically.

Collectors are probably those who invest more money in the game. Thus, they need more than anyone to find a way to get the letters with the lowest price. Magic Online offers a fast way to make trading, buying and selling the cards on your collection. The market usually puts a buy price of a card around 10-15% lower than its sell price for highest rarities, and up to 50% difference in the most common ones.

A collector can be a real merchant and go make profit from each transaction. For this purpose he needs two things: a lot of time in front of the computer and an initial investment to start making trades.

Collectors Strategy: get the cards at their buying price and sell quickly to their selling price, gaining profit. Buy the cards in your collection with this benefit.

How to trade cards and get profit without loosing time and with no effort

 All the three profiles of players at Magic Online have this common goal. Drafters want to sell their cards quickly and keep playing. Constructed players want to buy or sell their cards at a good price. Collectors do not want to be waiting in front of their computer waiting for the bid of another player.

The solution? Using a robot software (so-called bot) to work for you day and night getting the benefits of buying and selling cards on Magic Online. In the next chapter of the series I will explain what this wonderful software is about, how it changes the strategy of each player profile and will give you some details on the application that I will use for this purpose.