Drawcardlib revisited

[Sonic]

Been screwing around with the watermarks. Decided to create some dual colored guild watermarks with the later symbols.
Discovered the watermarks are actually composited over the rules text, rather than behind it.



Is this right?

[Korath]

Hard to tell from looking at scans of more watermarkery watermarks. Easy enough to change, though I doubt the text would be readable on the left side of that even when placed over it.

Edit: fixed for next version.

[gmzombie]

for a pic of that here is a link
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.magicspoiler.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Advent-of-the-Wurm-Dragons-Maze-Spoiler.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.magicspoiler.com/mtg-spoiler/advent-of-the-wurm/&h=370&w=265&sz=260&tbnid=68UUWdmxAtQl-M:&tbnh=99&tbnw=71&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dadvent%2Bof%2Bthe%2Bworm%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=advent+of+the+worm&usg=__ym-tWpuo9o3Di28_W44L_Nwf4WE=&docid=gv-BN7-FCae06M&sa=X&ei=XsICUqvEMM-BqgHan4HAAw&sqi=2&ved=0CDoQ9QEwAg&dur=444

[Sonic]

Hard to tell from looking at scans of more watermarkery watermarks. Easy enough to change, though I doubt the text would be readable on the left side of that even when placed over it.

Only originally noticed the watermarks were overlayed over the text when sections of the text took on a colored hue when trying to balance the opacity with the background.

I deliberately cranked the opacity up for that pic just to make the overlay more obvious.

[Sonic]

for a pic of that here is a link
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.magicspoiler.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Advent-of-the-Wurm-Dragons-Maze-Spoiler.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.magicspoiler.com/mtg-spoiler/advent-of-the-wurm/&h=370&w=265&sz=260&tbnid=68UUWdmxAtQl-M:&tbnh=99&tbnw=71&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dadvent%2Bof%2Bthe%2Bworm%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=advent+of+the+worm&usg=__ym-tWpuo9o3Di28_W44L_Nwf4WE=&docid=gv-BN7-FCae06M&sa=X&ei=XsICUqvEMM-BqgHan4HAAw&sqi=2&ved=0CDoQ9QEwAg&dur=444

We can't replicate the watermarks exactly, as it would need an individually colored symbol for every possible color variation in which they could appear on a card.
I was just experimenting with coloring each one as per their guild colors.

[Korath]

I'm going to add an option to draw artwork behind the frames (which, obviously, will need transparent holes cut into them) rather than continue trying to get the art outline hack right.

[Sonic]

I'm going to add an option to draw artwork behind the frames (which, obviously, will need transparent holes cut into them) rather than continue trying to get the art outline hack right.

That's probably a better solution all round. I'll edit the next set of templates with a transparent box and a black line around the inside of the artwork border.

[Sonic]

Hummm! These new Theros frames are gonna be fun to reproduce... Not!

[Korath]

WIP:
I made the first draft of my planar chaos timeshift templates before element sizes could be changed between different frame types. It shows.

I didn't make the same mistake with the Planeswalker templates. No loyalty boxes yet, though.

Creating Nyx overlays that don't look plain horrid is well beyond my meager artistic ability.

Fullcard font types and sizes can't be changed between frame types yet.

Smallcard title font, size, color, and placement can't be fixed easily because the DrawSmallCardTitle() api doesn't provide enough information to determine the frame type - it only gets the title text, a must activate/can activate/can't activate flag, and a flag to show whether it's controlled by its owner. It'll take significant effort to fix - there are a lot of calls to DrawSmallCardTitle from the exe to change, not to mention the ones from Deck.dll and Shandalar.exe.

An alternative would be to not change the title color when a card changes between must/can/can't activate, and draw some other image element instead. Maybe change the border color.

[gmzombie]

im drooling all over again bro..that is awesome!

[gmzombie]

Also I think those theros borders you have done arent bad so far. Just need to have the new modern format and I think they will look fine.

[Sonic]

Interesting. Have to wait for a new release to see how the new frames are constructed until I can make a start on some new templates.

The bad news about the Theros special frames is each mana color has a different background. And unlike the planeswalker backgrounds, which are essentially just a tinted texture, there are multiple separate colored elements to Theros backgrounds which will be an absolute nightmare to reproduce.

[Korath]

I'm keeping track of progress in this post.

Recent shinies:

Flashback tombstones

Transparency is configurable without having to edit the images

Futureshift frames

To do list for futureshifts: type indicator in upper left; proper power/toughness boxes; change text color for non-colorless, non-partially-white land cards' rules text, and non-land white and artifact cards' title, type, and power/toughness; mana symbol placement along the left; figure out why long titles are being cropped instead of shrunk. (Maybe because there's no mana symbols? The title on Blade of the Sixth Pride shrinks properly, for example.)

I can't do anything about smallcard title placement or color (unless it's the same for all frame types, as mentioned before), and don't currently plan to support the full-art Future Sight creatures.

I'll post a development snapshot once these are closer to done, and maybe after token frames. Right now, since they're not flagged as being in any expansion, all token and all transformed/animated variants of things show up with the classic frames. Which is pretty weird for, say, Celestial Colonnade, or spirits (whether colorless from Kamigawa block, or white and black from e.g. Beckon Apparition). At least the tokens should be easy to fix.

[Sonic]

Not sure what you think. But I've been working on adapting the paper stock card layouts to fit the element alignments of my current modern templates. My feeling is that the text boxes of paper stock cards is generally too small for the game.

[Korath]

I think it's more of a matter of the default rules text size being too large.