Making your own power cards

eloquentaction · Dec 10, 2008

Black Plauge said:
I'm going to suggest against using a symbol font for icons and using choice fields rendered as images instead (much like I did on my set). Symbol fonts are inherently cumbersome to use (though easy to program) because they require knowing the letter to symbol mapping. Even when that is made as intuitive as possible, that's still a whole bunch of user overhead that makes using the style more difficult.

The one situation where symbol fonts make sense (and the primary reason MSE has them) is in situations like the mana cost of a Magic card where you know you are going to have several symbols appearing in the same field in arbitrary combination. Most of the places where MSE styles for D&D cards have used symbol fonts, it has been in a field that contains only one icon (such as action type, range, damage, etc.). In those cases a choice field that is rendered as an image makes far more sense from a user interface point of view. Heck, even in cases where multiple icons might be needed (as in damage for some powers) it's possible to use a multiple choice field to handle that (check out my set for an implementation of that).

This will also make it easier to swtich from style to style as a style using a different set of icons would simply map the choice selections to the images it wants to use instead of having to write up a whole new symbol font.

There's a solution that solves both problems.

First - there HAS to be a symbol font or no symbols can be included inside the rules or flavor fields. There's a way to automagically add a drop down symbol selection list to the Insert Symbol tab in MSE and I've added that code to this symbol-font.

Second - I'm planning on including the same set of symbols as an mse-include with optional code that they can include in their STYLE file that allows them to use it as a choice field, as you're suggesting. I'm trying to figure out a way where I don't have to include the same set of symbols as a font and then as an include and I think I've found a solution (but I've got to try it out).

-- Hirahito

Black Plauge · Dec 10, 2008

First - there HAS to be a symbol font or no symbols can be included inside the rules or flavor fields.

This is true, but neither the flavor nor the rules field include symbols in any of the published material. There is no need for these fields to have symbols in them.

eloquentaction · Dec 10, 2008

Black Plauge said:
This is true, but neither the flavor nor the rules field include symbols in any of the published material. There is no need for these fields to have symbols in them.

Technically true.

But I can see using symbols in the Magic Items and they are semi-required for Monster cards.

Plus, it's nice to have the option.

But you're right - technically they don't need to be there.

-- Hirahito

DennisB · Dec 10, 2008

I would like to put my 2 cents in this, if it is ok.

having symbols for powers is useless, however, symbols for magic items is still a good idea. if you look at the magic card i posted on here, i think that would be a good symbol style, i can not remember where i got them but i love them. it covers every category of magic items there is.

tempor · Dec 10, 2008

Thindaraiel said:
Here is the second version of this template, with a new name, and to avoid another confusion I named it "Thindaraiel 1.0".
You can download it here (no french package this time, it will come later) : Thindaraiel1.0.zip

Hi Thindaraiel... I downloaded the ZIP file, extracted as per ReadMe file, but I see that there are at least two missing files: sheet-menu and sheet-script from Thin-locale.mse-include.

Am I missing something?

Thindaraiel · Dec 11, 2008

tempor said:
Hi Thindaraiel... I downloaded the ZIP file, extracted as per ReadMe file, but I see that there are at least two missing files: sheet-menu and sheet-script from Thin-locale.mse-include.

Am I missing something?

No. I discovered that the english version of the template (I work mainly on the french version and report code on the english one) was incomplete.

I will send a corrective patch on the forum on tuesday (I do not have the file at hand for the moment).

Znax · Dec 11, 2008

Maybe I missed something...
Is it a "standard" card (mse-set file) to plug on different template ?
If yes, cool, good,
If not, is it possible / interesting ?
Possible : yes, I can change a little my card selector, and we could have generic, multilingual card generator

DennisB · Dec 11, 2008

There is a basic set of MSE when you download the main program and if you want other styles you download that style.

DennisB · Dec 12, 2008

OK boys and girls, after 2 months of making and remaking power cards and with the help of the other players and there inputs for which I would like to say thanks too, I have finally finished the first deck of power cards including the paragon path powers from the players handbook as well as Dragon magazine. now mind you this is version 1.0 because of the impending release of the arcane powers handbook as well as upcoming dragon magazine releases, plus I am sure there is small mistakes here and there and if you see mistakes please let me know so i may correct them for the next version. the first deck to be released is the wizards powers. here is a sample of the cards below. December 12th I am not making any power cards and taking a break. it takes 2 days to make 1 deck, but i would like to know what deck you would like to see next. the most request will be made next. I hope you enjoy the deck at least until the universal deck is completed. All cards can be sent to you either in MSE format or Paint format, please let me know when you request the deck. you must download the magic full art cards format to use this in MSE.

Siberys · Dec 12, 2008

Inspired by the above, I made my own power card set for mse.

The coding is heavily based of of Ander00's, and I wasn't quite sure what I was doing, and I know a lot of the code is extraneous - so any suggestions on how I can clean it up'd be appreciated.

The frame is a heavily modified planeswalker card from Magic, recolored to fit my needs. I did not use a space for flavor text or for the boxes on Ander00's; I felt the got in the way, personally.

I also did not code auto-formatting; It's something I've been trying (though admittedly not very hard) to figure out for about a year now. I can get by with manual bolding and so forth, though.

I did add one additional symbol, to separate the upper portion of the power from the hit and effects; a simple horizontal rule, keyed to h, though as I said I didn't set it to auto-format.

Let me know what you think!