Card Creation Software

Hi Everyone,

I've been working on some software with my brother that I use to generate print sheets for cards - for play testing and professional printing. It's pretty easy to use, and I thought it would be cool to try and make it good enough to be a real product that people could use.

I've set up a version of this software for external use.

How it works:
You create a BASE Card front in a PNG Format - like the Frame of a magic card - as an example
You create a Card Back in a PNG Format
You create a CSV file (tab delineated [MS] or space delineated [Google]) where each column is a standard - this is just a normal spread sheet.

For example - you might have columns like
Card Number | Picture | Card Name | Card Text | Cost |

Then just fill in the data in the rows of the spreadsheet. If what you want is to be an image, just put a unique name for the image (anything you want) you will attach a picture to that name later in the process.

Then choose "Create Set" from the top menu, and upload those three things.

Then go to "Edit Set" and select your set from the drop down box. on the right hand side you will see the columns from your spread sheet. You can click the Pencil to edit the properties (font, color, font size) or change it to an Image field. When you click the name and move your mouse over to the card front, you can drag out a box, this will be were the item in question will appear on all the cards. Each of the columns are in their own layer, you can drag them around to make sure the right thing is on top of whatever you want it to be. The top of the list is the top layer.

If you have images in your set, click on "Tag image" at the top, then choose your set. You will see all of the unique pictures from the columns you set to image in the edit set section. Select each one, and then upload the picture associated.

To make the pages, go to "Generate Set". You have a few options - to generate a single card, or a sheet of cards. choose the format you want (PNG or PDF) and the DPI you want (I recommend sticking with 300, the other's can take a long time to generate), and whether you are trying to get a sheet of the front side, or the back side of cards.

This is still a work in progress and there are MANY features we wish to implement, but I thought in the mean time this might be useful to some of you - and I'm sure you'll have ideas and thoughts I've not even thought of yet.

For right now, there is one common database that all the sets live in, that means that when you're logged in you will be able to see everything everyone has posted. If you ever wish to delete content you've posted, you can do this from the "Edit Set" option under "Edit Set". Please be respectful and don't mess with content another person and uploaded. This will change to individual accounts at a later date - likely with "shared" logins.

I have 20 test accounts that people can use, if you're interested, please PM me and I'll give one to you (first come first server). I used this to build the cards for my first produced game Orbit, and I think they came out really good (from a professional printer). One thing to note - we are hosting this site from our residence and we haven't purchased a security certificate yet. Due to the nature of our internet service, we have to put the site out as an https:// site - this means that IE (and others) will warn you that the certificate is invalid. There's nothing bad about this site - but if it makes you feel uncomfortable to continue to the site, I understand.

It works perfectly in Chrome, and for the most part works in IE, we haven't tested significantly in other browsers.

Feel free to provide feedback and questions in this thread, as well as e-mail me at Benj DOT Hamilton AT gmail DOT com.

https://www.infinyx.net/cardmaker_test