Card Text Project

[drathe]

File updated. See first post.

[Maike05]

Nice project! How can i participate ?

Is it possible for someone to generate cards based on this excel sheet ? This would speed up the project and won't require to create every single card with photoshop!

[Patroclus]

Nice project! How can i participate ?

Is it possible for someone to generate cards based on this excel sheet ? This would speed up the project and won't require to create every single card with photoshop!

Yes, off course it’s possible. I could do that if I had the images of each card (the square picture inside the card) as filenames like cardtitle.jpg (e.x genie.jpg) and the images of the background picture in each language (e.x. Potion_of_Healing.jpg with the label saying “Treasure” and Μαγικό_Φίλτρο_Γιατρειάς.jpg for Greek saying “Θησαυρός” on the label)

The good is that if we make it we could easily add more new cards by just adding the texts in the excel file and putting the image in the right folder.

The bad is that all these needs a lot of time, and it is not a work for just one person, needs teamwork... I could help only for the program.

[Maike05]

If it's possible for us to use collaborative tools like google docs for the excel sheet, I would gladly help !
drathe, you just have to import your excel sheet into google docs and make it public so everyone can modify it and SEE what othes have already done. The idea is to spare time if two person translate twice the same text. (eg: Gravaillon and me for french)

Now for the folder organisation, I'm not sure how we could make it collaborative ?

[drathe]

Sorry, I've been out of town for near several days. Now I'm trying to catch up on everything at home, plus a hundred new posts to skim through.

I've never used google docs before, but will look into it later this week, perhaps on the weekend. (reminder please )

[cynthialee]

My sweety loves google docs. Speaks well of it.

[Patroclus]

About the project I need to say more details if more people want to contribute with work or ideas.

The main thought is a program to read the excel file and create png files with cards on them ready to print. I have kids and after some years they will grow up ready to play the game but in a language they don’t know. Also, many members here have a lot of fantastic ideas but we don’t have the standards to print and play them (e.x new spells, skills, or encounter cards). So, I believe it will be very useful.

There are two versions (European/American) and two type of cards (monsters/all the other) that complicate the things up. Also there are questions as “should I put the cards as sandwich (the frond and the back are joined side by side), or in one page for the frond and one for the back?”, “how many pixels should the picture have?”. Questions that I can’t answer by myself.

Also, the format of the excel should change
Each card in HQ has:

Title
Image
Subtitle
Text
Caption (the “© 1980 MB co” at the bottom-left corner of the American version)
Front Image (the papyrus of European format)
Back Image

These information are what I need in order to have the wanted results.

The current format in the excel now is:
Type (airspells)
Title
Text
While other cards have no Type rows, but only Title and Text.

I have no problem if the subtitle is in the same cell with title like “Spell Scroll(Genie)”, but the sure is that I need the data.

The rows should be:
Title (the text of the title. When the card has subtitle put in parenthesis e.x “Spell Scroll(Genie)”… the text in parenthesis is the subtitle)
Image (the filename of the image. the images should be in the same folder of the excel, in a folder named “cards”)
Text (the main text of the card)
Back Image (the filename of the image. the images should be in the same folder of the excel, in a folder named “cards”)
Front Image (the filename of the background image. the images should be in the same folder of the excel, in a folder named “cards”)
Caption (the “© 1980 MB co” caption at the bottom-left corner of the American version)

If you have any other suggestions or disagreements, I want to hear them. The excel can’t be changed all the time, so if you have an idea for now or for future use, you can share it before we start the changes. For example, if you want a numeric value in the right corner of the card for any reason, it is better to leave an empty row for each card from now.

[Maike05]

Hello my idea to solve it : create two column saying format wished (eu/us) and print format (foldup or recto/verso)

Then you create a IF event in the program. This way, everyone can tailor the card creation to their need.

[drathe]

First post updated with links to google docs spreadsheet and image storing folder.

[Patroclus]

I’ve start the program and it’s in a nice stage of development. I’ve tried to make it as more flexible as possible with the option to have the normal original sizes but also more custom sizes (e.x. the small cards of “talisman the board game”).

As I am focused on programming it could be nice if someone (or many) could start to edit the excel file with the new format which is necessary. The main idea is that a column will be added on each sheet. In this column the most important key word is the “Title”. Each “Title” separates the data between two cards.

The program reads that column, between two “titles” and tries to find more data for the card, as the “image”, the “text”, etc.

An example of how the excel should have to look like is the following screen shots.
The filenames of the images are taken from the google docs of drathe



ps: also, I need more suggestions to choose some good ideas.
ps2: we have a lot of artists between us and it is good idea to try to cooperate... who knows? Maybe one day we could release something.