New template proposal

[Q_x]

This is yet another update from me. Template proposal this time, as I have promised.

What I have to show is a template I have done. File itself is a bit on heavy side, but, as I said to snowdrop – this is full resolution mockup. Or at least close to. Makes same work now and less work later.

I'd call it „frugal”, yet still, I hope it is more eye-catching than what we have currently. And more awesome. This is not the „AWESOME”, intense thing I wanted to make, it;s just awesome with small letters. If you like it, I can hold on that, make creature template and never continue towards „AWESOME”, cluttered template.

In this mockup I wanted to keep most of the features of our official template – that is, most importantly, slick, light look and distraction-free visual preception. I also roughly left elements in their previous places.

I've introduced some new qualities:

Hand-written drop cap letter emphasizing faction character (I can prepare thise separately for every card if needed, choose separate existing fonts or even create our own)

Eye-catching faction logo (says RB in some obscure calligraphy script and depicts a red banner at the same time), those logos would be in completely different character – RB are kind of Chinese-like, so I let them to have calligraphy-based logo. (Sidenote: gold cost is also handwritten, it was faster for me to do it than to install the font that uses same style - Essays 17something font would work just as well.)

Clearly visible, clutter-free, attractive threshold marks

Improved readability, higher contrast on card texts and marks

No bling-bling features (shadows, glows, 3D effects)

More space for card content than we used to have, used for big drop cap, bigger letters and big illustration

Less distraction, brighter background

The gradation and grouping of elements is featured – this is grouping set of information (needed when a card is played) in the corner in pretty visual form. All the rest is quite big and readable

I left white borders to give more sense of openness. Attractive, bright look also emphasizes our cute artwork more, It is much lighter on printer ink as well.

As for the template itself – it has really low element count – I think this is 21 (including 4 threshold marks) as opposed to previous 69 (that is the template that was official and still is in our repo, includes 3 threshold marks). I think I did a good job in creating maintainable template with this mockup. It was really easy for me to play with, for example, colors of the border. Or with bottom bar.

[snowdrop]

While I'm waiting for myself to reply, would you mind mocking up 1-2 creature cards and one additional "real" event card as well? Gaians and/or RB, doesn't matter. Would like to see them i sam size as your RB event template mockup.

[Q_x]

I'd rather wait for feedback first.

[aspidites]

Few comments, though Im not an artist, so they might all be invalid.

* With the old design, the disconnected border on either side of the background image worked well, and the foreground images assisted with the illusion. With this design, I find it distracting. Perhaps so because each side is of different visible length, or perhaps because, unlike the original design, the top border is connected with the sides

* I do, however, like the visible separation between the card content and the footer text

* I really like the colors. They are soft, but in contrast to the official template, more dynamic.

* I'm not sure if its because of the image used, or because of the slanting border used to encase the banner logo, but there seems to be too much space devoted to the title area. I'm only concerned because it seems there is less room for event text, and I can't imagine its a good idea to cover up the amazing art work with text-- would also reduce visiblility of that text

* The font choices are excellent. Contrasting enough to easily spot what type of text it is, but complementary enough to not feel foreign.

* I'm not sure about the diamonds. Placement may work, but perhaps a different shapre, or simply a different color?

* I really like how you didn't go over the top with things like shadows and stuff. Simplicity is beautiful.

[verbalshadow]

My first concern is that each new faction design quickly become labor intensive. I'm going to go down the Q_x's card design and point of the issues I have with it.

Border: This is much to pushed in it looks like we are using 6 mm, 3mm for each side. The maximum should be 4 mm, 2 mm on each side. For the top and bottom this can safely be set to 1 mm. The bottom of course will be covered by the new style bottom.

Card Title: The title is not lengthy by any means at only 18 characaters. This is mostly be cause of the oversized font. Reducing it 60-75% will allow it to be lengthy.
Card Type: Need size reduction to match above.
Faction Logo: This takes more space visually than the previous template. It forces the logo to be tall and not flow into the title area. Which they do in the wider current template. The number also become an inconvience for other factions designs.This brings me to the Large Empty Space between the faction logo and Drop Cap in this design nothing will ever end up there and is thus a waste of space.
Drop Cap: Much to large, reduces total number of possible lines for rules. Could be placed high saving even more space.
Rule Text: Should make every effort to not cover image.
Capstone on Bottom: Needs Minor adjustments.

It is impossible to maintain this continous level of redesign that we have be undergoing. I'm sorry but we can not keep spending time on redesign the card template. It is slowly the project down greatly. We have to focus a making a great game first and redesigning how the template looks doesn't achieve this. It can make things easier on player. I agree with this. We need more people the only way to achieve that is to have a good game to play. More Players = Much greater chance of the right people finding us.

I would rather play a great game with a simple design like this:

Than a poor game with beautiful cards. I know we can make the cards beautiful but we just don't have the man power to do it correctly right now and focus on making a great game. That said I think using a simple template will make like the one above will help move the project along. And give our designers a chance to produce AWESOME designs.

[Q_x]

I'll correct the template after the weekend (offline at the time). And I have to agree with both of you.

As for the game, rather than template development - the situation is a bit tricky. I think "leave it for later" approach is more than right in this matter - this is going forward as fast as possible in game development. Next major milestone is playtesting two-faction gameplay with Gaians flavoured with Red Banner and checking out if tweaking resource system and card cost worked.

Problem is the template that needs to be tweaked - but IMHO even "RB colorization" actually can wait a long time, that is it can be introduced every time (open playtesting release may be the deadline). Scribus files are pretty easy to work with now (adding/removing/changing cards that is), and we will probably change the template few good times more before any changes will be mandatory to introduce.
This doesn't mean we should stop to work on the template, but the exact opposite - we can work, and it's nothing urgent, it can be just easily untangled from game development mess.

[snowdrop]

My thoughts on the template suggestion is that it is very refreshing, interesting and actually pretty good looking given it is newly born.

wisdom gained
What I learned from it is that current template would probably become fancier if it had more effects/textures on it to get away from it's "flatness", but, more importantly for me, that we maybe don't need to have such wide borders surrounding the card on the left & right.

the template suggestion

• Info too tightly crammed in top right corner.
• Simplistic hand made logo looks great, but is that what we want? I think that in this template it is really nice... that said, logo is still too crammed as described above.
• Textures and all is terrific: This really looks like it has been worked upon plenty already.
• White border surrounding the card: Don't know if it's intentional or not, but I would remove it completely myself. Also, white borders become dirty very fast when peope play with the cards (unless sleeved).
• Maybe the metallic parts/borders could have some more texture added. I would perhaps also not use metallic look for the orcs, but somethign more rusty or old or filthy organic instead. Metal I'd save for the Empire's template (that is, if each template would have it's own diff ornament depending on faction belonging...)
• Colours in general are very very nice in it.
• Title area and/or title font is probably too huge. It must also be static in size on all cards.
• Drop cap "L" looks lovely, but maybe would eat to much space as it is. Not sure though. Hrmm. At least I think it would be a mistake to let it span more than 2 rows.
• Overall, the hand drawness is great stuff.

What worries me is if the template is realistic: Can it solve the crammed problems and would it also look as good as it does now if it has smaller title area, is less crammed, and is supposed to host more text?

Given that the above would be solvable, the question is if this template would fit our games overall image better than the current template, and if we should switch to something like this or not?

I don't have the answer (yet), but am myself biased and fond of the stuff we already have. What's clear is that it can indeed be improved upon as this template clearly shows.

Given most issues are solved with both this and the old template, it comes down to being mainly a question about aesthetics. Or am I mistaken?

(Sure, the game can exist in a million different versions and people can release it using any template, but in the end we want one official one that all players will learn and recognize, that will be the games face)

[Q_x]

I have done some work in terms of "pushing things forward", so I thought I can make some things of lesser importance.
I did as many overall corrections as I could. I omitted only one - that is changing "metal" stuff to different texture. Reason behind this is simple - I think the template is already a bit on heavy side in terms of textures - there are some details in background, I have used parchment texture on top. Making similar thing on the bottom sounds like too much for me.
What I did:
Changing font sizes (main card description text is now 11 "inkscape units", before it was more like 12,3).
Adding brown/gray border where it was white.
Rearranging logo/cost/threshold group a bit.
Changing threshold color and shape.

I have noticed that vertical logo started to make troubles characteristic for vertical logo, so this may be a good symptom.

Now, I have an idea how to work a bit quicker with our current template, or any.
How about cloning whole template and doing thing that may be similar to "exploded view" in manuals - that is separating each element, so that it will be easier to edit part by part (in terms of color alterations)?

[snowdrop]

Now, I have an idea how to work a bit quicker with our current template, or any.
How about cloning whole template and doing thing that may be similar to "exploded view" in manuals - that is separating each element, so that it will be easier to edit part by part (in terms of color alterations)?

Could you explain that in another way? I'm not sure how that is done in current template in inkscape, but that's more because I'm not certain what you meant with "exploded view".

[Q_x]

http://www.offroaders.com/directory/pro ... d-view.gif
In our case that is without descriptions.
When objects would be cloned - all the gradients, colors (and even shape) are simple to select and modify and the change is seen immediately at the "assembled" template.