16 August 2010 @ 12:00 am
Special decks  
I've yet to pass out mod pay. Will be doing that after I calculate everyone's! Thanks for all the great game suggestions. I'm going to think some more about them. Take this time to consider if you'll be able to run a new weekly game (suggestions for monthly and other more involved tasks are on the backburner for now). Whether or not we can add a new game depends on your long term availability after all, so I wouldn't want you to make a decision right away. I'll round up the suggestions and make another post next week. If there are any suggestions you're interested in, feel free to express your interest in the previous post.

That aside, I tinkered with the card template a bit. I've been tinkering with it since last month, but I've yet to settle on a template I like for special decks. =/ Here are the latest versions. I'd like your opinion! And, what are your opinions on special decks? Because this is a "individual character" TCG, these special decks aren't meant to be series decks, but rather themed decks, and each card should ideally only feature one character (with no repeats in the deck if possible). In my mind, these are mostly for minor characters who don't have enough images for their own deck. It would have been much nicer if I could make our randomizer work with different amounts of cards in a deck, but I don't know how to code that, so sadly even these decks are currently slated to be 20 cards each. (unless someone knows how to code a clean randomizer that randomizes cards of different amounts!) I mean, I can put in each card separately, but that would make the randomizer messy and way too long.

I made 4 variations. These are minor characters from Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney (only because the images were easy to get. If this ever becomes an official deck, I'm not sure if I would keep Daryan in here since he might have enough images for his own deck, anyway, that's not important at the moment...)





So here we have a solid white line to match our Signatures. I moved the number next to the deck name because it looked kind of weird in the corner when the color was different from the border. It's two colors because I was thinking that special decks would be harder to acquire because you'd need 2 crayons of 2 different colors in order to trade for them in the Art Shop, but cards are still worth 1 and you can get them just like any other card as a prize from games and such.






Here I'm being wishy washy and thinking maybe we should stick to a dotted border, but then it wouldn't match our Signatures.






Here I'm thinking perhaps two colors is way too gaudy. And I do think one color looks a lot better and cleaner, but maybe it's only because this is blue.






So I flipped the colors around (the shades changed a bit). Not sure if this makes a difference.

So, thoughts? ^^

Some others:

Keeping the number in the corner. Might help our eyes since we're used to looking in the corner now, eh?


Inverted dark and light colors. (I think this just makes the card look dirty...)


Inverted dark and light colors with a solid white border + number w/ deck name.

...I really don't know anymore since I tried so many different things out. Can't keep track of what I've done anymore!
 
 
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lucathia[personal profile] lucathia on August 16th, 2010 07:58 am (UTC)
Hm, yeah, and I was even going to change the colors to one color with the dotted one and went...wait, it'd be exactly the same then!!

The cards would be the same as other cards in terms of chances of getting it as a random card, but they'd be harder to get with crayons. So yeah, it'd be best for people to get them through trading. I have yet to think about what impact this would have on portfolios. ^^;; Perhaps they'd qualify for both color slots if the player chooses so (but only for one portfolio).

I just wonder if it might be hard with some series to pick 20 characters since some characters will probably end up left out. -___-; Being constrained by a number is hard!

Mm, here's the 5th variation with the number in the corner.




[identity profile] ratiosu.livejournal.com on August 16th, 2010 08:40 am (UTC)
Making one special deck count as two decks in a portfolio sounds good! It can be an advantage to make up for the higher crayon exchange rate.

I can see characters being left out being a potential concern. :c And then we have series with really massive casts like Detective Conan. Even for the first three PW:AA games, we already have more characters than there are cards in one deck. xD

And this template is looking good! =3 I like!
lucathia: fishbones: ring[personal profile] lucathia on August 16th, 2010 09:00 am (UTC)
I guess in the case of series with a lot of characters, they could be divided by themes (instead of just considering minor characters) to make sure they're all represented. Like...a deck of Black Organization characters...though decks like these would be spoilerish for people who don't know the series as well, hm.

Hm, I think having the deck name centered like this does look better. :3 The numbers kind of pushed the name off center the other way. I think the double colors are growing on me too. XD; They looked very strange to me at first. I'm going to try it out with another series. Any suggestions? ^^;;
[identity profile] ratiosu.livejournal.com on August 16th, 2010 09:20 am (UTC)
Ooh, I like the idea of dividing groups of characters by themes! I guess we'll have to be extra careful about choosing themes to try and avoid spoilers. But in the case of Black Organization, there really isn't any other specific theme tying that certain group of characters together. ;; And using something as vague as 'villains' brings us back to the problem of too many characters again haha.

Yeah, somehow having the numbers with the deck names made the cards look like they're from another TCG altogether! It's weird. And let's try a themed one: Megane characters from TeniPuri. o/
lucathia[personal profile] lucathia on August 16th, 2010 12:21 pm (UTC)
I am amazed by how many characters I managed to round up, though some are so minor that I think if this were an official deck, I might consider a repeat of a character instead...(like 16, do you know who that is, haha?) 18 and 20 are technically sunglasses...

So here's another example, megane themed Prince of Tennis.






Hm, might be hard to decide what colors to use for these decks since the characters don't really share colors, hence why the final deck might not look as nice as the character decks since these are less uniform.

But anyway, themes can turn out quite cool. I suppose the next thing would be deciding what gets made. Perhaps winners of some kind of contest would be able to suggest a special deck.
[identity profile] ratiosu.livejournal.com on August 16th, 2010 12:36 pm (UTC)
I've been out of this fandom for so long that I don't actually recognize a lot of the characters. xD Like 09 and 10. 16 looks like a referee though. In any case, I really like how this deck turn out!

And allowing winners to suggest special decks as opposed to everyone being able to donate for these decks make sense. Otherwise, we'll have special decks growing at an exponential rate like our normal decks. xD; Somewhat randomly, I thought that this could be a chance for a new activity where after the winner decides the special deck, people be allowed to contribute pictures - people whose pics get made into cards earn prizes, and people who contribute pics but didn't make it in get smaller prizes. On the other hand, I can see this getting pretty messy, and now the winner who suggested the deck has less say over which pics are included, so I'm probably getting ahead of myself here. ;;
lucathia: fishbones: green background[personal profile] lucathia on August 16th, 2010 12:46 pm (UTC)
09 and 10 are from Shin Tenipuri, which means they're new characters that showed up within the past year, and yeah, 16 is a random referee. I don't think he has a name, haha. XD;

Hm, well, having everyone pitch in to contribute pics works for general theme decks (like if we had a theme deck of red haired characters). Divinity and Trading Academy both ran such a game, which I liked. :3 But for decks limited to a series, it'd be best for one person to be responsible for all the pics. X3;;
[identity profile] orechibisama.livejournal.com on August 16th, 2010 02:48 pm (UTC)
.......Do I see some meganes......and from PoT;;; I reallllllly want that Muromachi card and Irie;;;
lucathia[personal profile] lucathia on August 18th, 2010 10:04 am (UTC)
Your eyes aren't deceiving you. XD; Have you ever come across a colored image of #19? I want an image of Niou holding Yagyuu's glasses like that in color...