Library card redesign

Lönkka wrote:

The only thing that bugs me is the thinness of the left sidebar (which also causes the card cost to look in awkward position ie. not -centered).

Yes, I wasn't initially convinced by this — until I actually printed and used the cards. Now I think it works really well. Not only do you clearly see the sidebar in your hand, you also have a hint of the artwork.

The artwork now dominates ( ) a good portion of the space and takes precedence over the card "Frame". It's not about the card frame; the frame should serve its function and help present information and the artwork prominently — like a good art gallery. When printed it retreats into the background; as it should.

666Raziel wrote:

1) It seems that the discipline icon is not always shown in "As above..." sentences.

This has been fixed.

666Raziel wrote:

Having "+1 stealth action" in black box feels wrong because it creates many incoherence.

Currently it does so when it applies to all discipline effects. It could also be expanded to also cover clan / non-disciplined actions. But I think in the majority of cases it works better as bold in these scenarios. ie. Atonement, No Secrets, Legion, Siphon... Pretty much most of them also require X.

666Raziel wrote:

There is something wrong with Bestow Vigor and Black Hand Ritual

Thanks, fixed.

Ke. wrote:

BenPeal wrote:

You expand the text box into the side bar, but the space you gain is spent almost entirely on displaying the requirement icon.

Yes, it's now consistent with other requirement icons. It's much simpler to say to new players "Match the icons in the white box to your vampire/s to use that effect".

I like the idea of the visual "have this -> do this" approach. However, I'm concerned that we're losing something by moving the requirement icon out of the "cards fanned out" visual space. I think it also causes layout problems.

BenPeal wrote:

- "Master", the pool icon, and the requirement icon are not properly aligned.

It's aligned and positioned in the same manner as the blood cost icon — which is to align with the left most part of the box. There will not always be a clan or discipline icons to align to, so aligning with these makes no sense as it would lead to inconsistency across different cards. It's current alignment also minimises the impact on the Artwork.

Here's where it runs into trouble:





The sidebar of the official library layout serves useful purposes. It reserves space for certain types of game information (card type, requirement, cost) and it allows for the display of that information to be tidy and orderly. I agree that in the multitudinous zero-cost cards there's a lot of space inefficiency which you're trying to address. There's also the matter of the sidebar wiping out visual card type information (the card type background) which you're also trying to address.

Additionally, there's the matter of how the text is aligned on the card. In the official layout, the center-justification is tidy and orderly. In your layout, the requirement icon appears to be forcing you to use left-justification, resulting in an uneven look. In addition, the requirement icon also creates an offset from the text of the black box, again contributing to an uneven look, particlarly when compared to cards without a requirement icon.

The thing is, the official layout does its job pretty well. I think if the sidebar was replaced with the card type background, the art and text boxes could be made larger and made flush with the right edge of the sidebar. While it doesn't fully address the space inefficiency of the bottom left of the card, at least that space would then be displaying visual card type information instead of a green stripe.

BenPeal wrote:

Also, "antitribu" is not italicized, though I suspect that's because you're working from the .csv and haven't added automatic italicization logic to your text processing yet.

Yes, just haven't accounted for it — it's obviously a thing. Out of curiosity, why?

I'm really not sure apart from consistency in representing the source material. I don't know why the V:tM developers italicized it in the first place. Perhaps aesthetic pretension?

Upgrade time.

Our fortnightly game was cancelled this week, so I took the opportunity to improve the cards.

The main change addresses layout issues; including vertical alignment. The clan requirement has also been moved to the same location as on the vampire which frees up more space for text and is logical.

The design has also been reworked to allow for transparency on the main text blocks. This softens the overall tone and as a bonus highlights any icons in this area. The background is filled using a reflection of the main image — meaning that the artwork can be supplied with fixed dimensions.

The position of the pool / blood cost is now fixed and pretty much centred vertically.

Imbued cards improved.

All these changes are now live.

Cards looks fine, but we still need way to "VTMize" the design somehow.

elotar wrote:

Cards looks fine, but we still need way to "VTMize" the design somehow.

I agree.

I appreciate the work put into redesigning the layout of the cards. Something to consider is that the current design is a departure from the look and feel of the V:TM source material. The de-emphasis on the green/gray marble undertones at the expense of enlarging artwork that oftentimes has no thematic association with V:TM makes the new layouts look like something other than a card game based on V:TM, which in my opinion is a bad thing. And the different-colored bars for each card type are sometimes too bright and tend to clash with the enlarged artwork more than blend in.

Now, the new layout isn’t all bad. For Instance, the artwork on Blood Fury captures the theme of the source material, and the red side bar complements the enlarged bloody artwork nicely. But for every Blood Fury, there’s a Seraph’s Second, in which the cartoony artwork really didn’t need to be enlarged and the dark overtones granted by the juxtaposition of the artwork to the green marble bar in the original layout are missing and replaced with warm, bright aquamarine tones in the new layout.

Again, I appreciate the hard work. But the original layouts do a much better job of making V:TES look like a card game built off of somber V:TM source material. The old layouts weren't broken, and I'm not sure why they need to be fixed.