Author Topic: Cards: Part Two  (Read 8261 times)

Offline idolminds

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Cards: Part Two
« on: Tuesday, December 25, 2012, 01:13:23 PM »
Got a couple card games I want to remake/retheme. These particular games are nice because they use a tiny number of cards, so I don't have as much work to do. Hooray for laziness! Plus the games sound really cool anyway, so thats nice.

First game is called Coup. Even Rock, Paper, Shotgun talked about it. I've read the rules and the thing that stuck out to me is with all the bluffing going on it reminds me of liars dice or poker. Which reminded me of Red Dead Redemption and westerns in general. So lets dump this dukes and royalty kind of theme and make it a western!

First I had to think of different roles. The Assassin is now the Outlaw, the Captain is now the Saloon Girl, Contessa is the Sheriff (this makes sense thematicially. Sheriff stops Outlaws from killing anyone.), etc. One role I haven't totally decided on is the Duke. He takes 3 gold from the pot, and can block others from taking some gold from the pot. I thought a banker? Old western mayor? I don't know yet. Right now I'm going with banker. (EDIT: I'm also going to replace gold with poker chips.)

So anyway, there are only 5 roles, and 3 copies of each card in the deck. Thats it. So 5 cards. So then I started working up the design of the cards. My original thought was to steal the pause menu effect of Red Dead Redemption, that really high contrast red/black look. Find some old western photos that would match the characters and do that to them. Thats when I hit a snag...finding those photos. I just wasn't finding what I wanted and don't really have the patience to load all those photos, you know? So I threw that idea out (even though I did come up with a way to create that effect on photos. Kinda fun.) I also toyed with a wanted poster style of art but again, no photos.

So idea 2 was paintings, go look online for art that was like what I wanted. Ran into the same problem. If I found something that might work it was always a one-off piece of art so it was impossible to find something else that matched it. Bummer. If I could draw I'd do it all myself but hey...

Idea 3 was something I knew I could do: icons. Something that simply represented the character. Sheriff is a star, Saloon Girl a heart, the Gambler is a spade, Assassin is a target, and Banker so far is a coin. These icons are then put inside a circle, which is inside a square (you'll see in a second). I sorta prettied up the corners simply with copies of the icon again.

Ok, now the fun part. Can't leave these just the stock shapes out of the vector program. Would be too clean for a western. So I had to fiddle with a couple ideas. Going off the kind of wanted poster idea I first tried this:


Was just a quick test. Yes I know I misspelled Sheriff. It looked pretty nice but I wanted to try some more ideas out before I decided. I was thinking...what else gives you that western cowboy feel? Old fence posts, wood, leather, branding...

How about wood burning? Kind of like branding on wood. That would look good with the icon style. So here is attempt 2 (yes, I misspelled Sheriff again):


Ah ha! I like this one. I found a photoshop tutorial for the effect and have been doing my best to recreate it in GIMP. I think what I'm going to do is remove the name of the card at the top and shift the icon up to be big and bold on top. Then on underneath it make some old paper thats pinned/nailed up underneath with the card name and ability. Keep it readable. Once players memorize the abilities you'll only need to see the icons anyway.

So thats where I'm at. Once I have one card done, switching in the other icons will be easy and then just running the effects over them and changing the text. Then I can work on the 2nd game. And then the 3rd and then print em all off on one deck and have 3 games out of it!

Offline idolminds

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Re: Cards: Part Two
« Reply #1 on: Tuesday, December 25, 2012, 05:47:06 PM »


Outlaw. I don't know, I might drop the frame and just go with the symbol itself blown up a bit larger. I also skipped weathering this one just to see the difference. And yes I know the color is too light. I'll adjust it.

Offline idolminds

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Re: Cards: Part Two
« Reply #2 on: Tuesday, December 25, 2012, 11:41:18 PM »
Another update!



The text is still ugly because GIMP has pretty crappy text tools. I'll probably have to use another program to get that all in place.

Offline Quemaqua

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Re: Cards: Part Two
« Reply #3 on: Wednesday, December 26, 2012, 07:02:14 AM »
Looks awesome, dude! Seriously.

天才的な閃きと平均以下のテクニックやな。 課長有野

Offline idolminds

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Re: Cards: Part Two
« Reply #4 on: Wednesday, December 26, 2012, 02:33:58 PM »
Thanks! Since I had the base pretty much done, today I hunted down some fonts and tried to "finalize" the cards. I also played around and finally came up with a Banker icon I liked. After trying both with the square block look that I've been working with so far, and then just the main icon itself...I liked just the icon. So heres the set of cards as they sit right now:
[removed image to keep thread sorta tidy]

Now I need to come up with a card back and a "cheat sheet" card that explains all the cards and abilities you can take in a turn. In addition to the abilities on the cards themselves, there are 3 always available abilities.

Income: Take a chip from the bank.
Bounty: Take two chips from the bank. The Banker can block this.
Wanted: Pay 7 chips to put a bounty on another player, forcing them to lose a card.

Just not sure on wording. Trying to make it match the theme, but I don't think its a good idea to use the word "bounty" under Wanted because it doesn't mean the same as the actual Bounty ability. It's just sort of thematically works. Income is also sort of generic but I cant think of what to replace it with. Maybe I can replace the Bounty ability with Gold Rush. That kinda fits and removes the bounty problem.
« Last Edit: Wednesday, January 02, 2013, 12:53:54 AM by idolminds »

Offline idolminds

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Re: Cards: Part Two
« Reply #5 on: Tuesday, January 01, 2013, 03:21:01 PM »
I sorta took a break from this (and by break, I mean become horribly addicted to Borderlands 2), but I've been thinking about it. I wasn't totally happy with the Banker as a role and thought about what i would change it to.

I came up with Rancher, which will use wither a steer skull or horseshoe as an icon...depending on which one I can draw better. Place bets on horseshoe.

Anyway, ranchers would be the wealthier members of western society. They have a legit job to earn money, so taking chips from the bank would make sense. I then changed the always available abilities to help match him in, so the "take 2 chips" ability is now called Cattle Rustling (pays better than a Bounty, but its harder to pull off), which the Rancher can block. See? Makes sense.

Heres what I got for the cards and abilities now:
Quote
Rancher: Take three chips from the bank. Blocks Cattle Rustling.
Gunslinger: Pay three chips to shoot another player.
Sheriff: Block Gunslinger.
Saloon Girl: Take two chips from another player. Block Saloon Girl.
Gambler: Exchange cards with the deck. Block Saloon Girl.
   
Bounty: Take one chip from the bank.
Cattle Rustling: Take two chips from the bank.
Lynch: Pay seven chips to lynch an opponent, forcing that player to lose a card. (If you have ten chips, you must take this action.)
So just working on wording. Gunslinger has "assassinate" on the card now, but I might change it to "shoot". Not sure which one I like more, but a gunslinger isn't necessarily an assassin. He just...you know, shot a guy. Then the Lynch ability I'm not sure on the name. You basically pay a bunch for a guaranteed kill (unlike the Gunslinger which can be blocked or questioned). But I haven't thought up any better words to use for that.

EDIT: maybe I can just shorten it to Rustling.

Offline idolminds

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Re: Cards: Part Two
« Reply #6 on: Wednesday, January 02, 2013, 12:56:00 AM »
So here are the cards right now.



WANTED being the back of the card. At least temporary. Not sure what to name the retheme, actually. I was going to do a typical card back pattern but I don't think that really fits well with the wooden fronts.

Offline idolminds

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Re: Cards: Part Two
« Reply #7 on: Thursday, January 03, 2013, 08:23:43 PM »


Cheat sheet card so new players can see all their options at once.

Offline Quemaqua

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Re: Cards: Part Two
« Reply #8 on: Friday, January 04, 2013, 08:49:15 PM »
Lookin super sexy, dude.

天才的な閃きと平均以下のテクニックやな。 課長有野

Offline idolminds

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Re: Cards: Part Two
« Reply #9 on: Tuesday, January 08, 2013, 03:03:43 PM »
Good news! I found someone that posted the exact dimensions for the bleed and safe areas for the printed card!
Bad news! These cards are ever so slightly outside the safe area!

I thought I was leaving enough space around the card for that stuff, but I'm a handful of pixels off. Grumble. But some clever resizing and then dropping the full size background back in should do the trick. Thats the difference between raster editing (these cards) and vector editing (the other thread). The other cards? Select all, scale to size, recenter on page, export. Done. These? A little trickier.