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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[identity profile] stillarium.livejournal.com on August 20th, 2010 03:28 pm (UTC)
Ah, I'm late XD;

Well, I do think one color looks better, but that wouldn't really make sense since if they're special decks, we should be able to tell the difference! And I agree that the numbers look better in the corner... but the solid border instead of the dotted one seems like a good idea. And I think two colors would be unusual at first, but we would grow to it. Just now, on first glance it looked weird, when I looked at it again after a few times it was okay. XD

BTW, I was surprised at the deckname Gramayre. I would only associate the magic troupe with it (a few others work too), but some people like Daryan or Payne don't seem to fit in if you ask me! I don't think Daryan has enough cards for an own deck, unfortunately (I would collect him >D). He's probably more like Engarde or a few other guys, I think it should be possible to get 10 cards of them or maybe a bit more, but a full 20 of different motives seems a bit stretched.
Maybe there could be a special deck for police force / attorneys? I'm not sure right now if we'd have enough but there would be Daryan, Payne, Karma (if we don't make an own deck for him, but I wonder if someone would want to collect him? XD;; ), Jake and Neil Marshall, Maggie Bryde, Angel Starr, the two guys from Gyakuten Kenji, the one guy who always shouts... XD;;
Themes like "villains" would be kinda spoilerish.

Trading 2 crayons for 1 card sounds a bit strange to me when they're only supposed to be worth 1 card and you can get them out of randomizers! Of course, if there are special rewards for mastering special decks and they count as 2 slots in a portfolio it would be different again... but I'm still wondering how trades would work. I mean, if someone has a special deck card, even though it's technically worth only 1 card, I wonder if they would easily trade it for a "normal" card? Or maybe it would make more sense if you could only trade special card for special card like signature for signature? (Okay, I'm not even sure right now if signatures can only be exchanged for other signatures XD;;)

As for games, I'm not sure right now how it'll look when I start university with my two different studies, so the most I would take for now is one more game. But it shouldn't be something that requires a lot of time at once. I did like the Crazy Eight suggestion since it would be giving the prizes out steadily instead of in a bunch and it wouldn't require much preparation. Which means I can look at my mails along the way while I'm online like with masteries instead of spending some time directly for the games like with my other ones 8D
lucathia[personal profile] lucathia on August 20th, 2010 09:17 pm (UTC)
I went with Gramayre since it was the case that tied everything together. ^^ It's an AJ minor character deck. Not sure what else I'd name an AJ deck..."7 years later"?

A villains one would totally be too spoilerish, but attorneys would be possible....

Signatures can only be traded for signatures (I always thought this was clear, but I guess not, hence why I explained some more on the site!). Hm, the part about people possibly not wanting to trade special cards for normal cards makes me sad, because these cards won't really be any harder to acquire through the randomizer. >__> But I suppose there will be people who wouldn't feel like trading 1 to 1 like this. The reason why I'm putting them into the randomizer just like all the other decks and making them worth the same is so that we can pass out prizes more easily. If I make the worth different...we'd have to always watch what we're passing out (or plan games that pass out special cards from time to time). But I do want them to be different (and a little harder to get through choice cards), hence the crayon business. Maybe special decks are too much trouble...I did want things to be simple and straightforward! ^^;;

Steadily, do you mean passing out prizes as comments come in (instead of at the very end)? I hope you never ran into problems with LJ blocking you when you answer too many comments all at once. XD;