Custom Templates

[neopium]

Agreed: great fellowship, great templates!

[Hobbiton Lad]

I will work on finishing up the Shadow culture templates over the holidays. Once these are finished, I wonder if we can get a child board in the Undying Lands for Second Edition topics. I don't consider a new edition a "dream card" project as much as a true resurrection of the game.

Do any moderators still frequent the forum? It's a shame I couldn't get this done like 2 years ago, there might be a lot more interest.

[macheteman]

i would love to see your template work put to use by this forum developing sets for The Hobbit based on the LOTR mechanics. i've been out of the loop for so long, thats probably forbidden by some rights infringement or something, but i'd much rather see an this developing something new than revamping something already done.

[Hobbiton Lad]

FYI - I have updated the original post to include finished versions of all the Free Peoples templates.

[Gerontius]

The Fellowship templates look great. One small thing that's bothering me though- the empty space at the top of non-character templates seems too big. You've probably noticed this already, but Decipher non-character cards have that space smaller than on characters- even to the point at which the culture icon overlaps with the picture significantly (particularly in Rohan and Moria templates). I can understand why you'd want to avoid this overlap, and maybe I'm just too used to Decipher's templates, but some of yours, particularly the Gandalf non-character template, feel a bit disproportionate to me.
Regardless, fantastic job and I'm hoping this all turns out!

[Hobbiton Lad]

The Fellowship templates look great. One small thing that's bothering me though- the empty space at the top of non-character templates seems too big. You've probably noticed this already, but Decipher non-character cards have that space smaller than on characters- even to the point at which the culture icon overlaps with the picture significantly (particularly in Rohan and Moria templates). I can understand why you'd want to avoid this overlap, and maybe I'm just too used to Decipher's templates, but some of yours, particularly the Gandalf non-character template, feel a bit disproportionate to me. Regardless, fantastic job and I'm hoping this all turns out!

I see what you're saying. What do you think of this style for the Non-Character template?

http://postimage.org/image/wwv7xp8lr/

[menace64]

It's immediately better! But I think I'd need to see all of the templates like this to make sure none of the current culture icons overlap too much.

[Hobbiton Lad]

Here are Dwarven and Gollum. It'll be a day or two before I can get the others up.

http://postimage.org/image/adedljnwv/

http://postimage.org/image/b1n84hmmn/

[Hobbiton Lad]

I have modified the original post to include updated Non-Character templates per Gerontius's suggestion. If nobody sees any further glaring issues, I'd like to go ahead and mark these as completed.

[menace64]

Mark away then!

I'd like to say that, beyond doing an extraordinary job with these templates, you turned this into an awesome collaboration between a bunch of us. I know that if I was doing all the work, I'd take very few criticisms and I wouldn't listen to the input of others nearly as often as you have. If gold pieces still meant anything, I'm sure we'd be showering you in them!

What's your next step?

[MarcinS]

I'm not sure if it was intentional, but on the Dwarven templates the pattern of light-brown dark-brown panels doesn't align properly as well as you have neighboring dark-dark and light-light panels. It is barely visible on the character, as it is obscured by the lower side of the vitality blob, but on the item it is clearly visible to the left of the lines of text starting with "may stack..." and "pile on..."

[Hobbiton Lad]

I'm not sure if it was intentional, but on the Dwarven templates the pattern of light-brown dark-brown panels doesn't align properly as well as you have neighboring dark-dark and light-light panels. It is barely visible on the character, as it is obscured by the lower side of the vitality blob, but on the item it is clearly visible to the left of the lines of text starting with "may stack..." and "pile on..."

I've updated the Dwarven templates per this observation.

[Hobbiton Lad]

What's your next step?

Next I will finish up the Shadow Culture templates. I still need to get the Non-Character versions of those whipped up. Then we can look at the site template again, and finally The One Ring.

Once all the templates are complete. It will then be the right time to start talking about how Second Edition is going to work. That discussion should probably take place in the Undying Lands forum rather than here, because 2E isn't a dream card project as far as I'm concerned.

EDIT: As of 10:00 pm this evening, I have located the version of Garamond BE used for the cost, strength, vitality, resistance and home site numbers. With this discovery, all font requirements for templating are now complete. In theory, if I got hi-res versions of the original templates, I could completely generate new cards from them and maintain the exact same look.

I mocked up a version of Freca using the 72dpi character blank I have for Dunland. Keep in mind, this blank does not have a home site icon.

http://postimage.org/image/vab29l2vj/

Now compare it with my custom Dunland template.

http://postimage.org/image/5dhdwyz7z/

As you can see, it is much more optimal to work with a 300 dpi blank because of text rasterization. I scale all of the previews for the new templates down from 300dpi to 72dpi to show you guys, but the text is still very clear because I worked with a high resolution template from the beginning. When I render the same font directly onto a 72dpi image, however, the result is much more fuzzy.

So, long story short, I would need 300dpi resolution versions of the original blank templates in order to realistically use them for this 2E project.

[MarcinS]

(Snip)
So, long story short, I would need 300dpi resolution versions of the original blank templates in order to realistically use them for this 2E project.

I don't think there is a need for using the old templates. The new ones look awesome, avoid some copyrights issues and also bring fresh breath into the game. Also if you were to keep the old templates you'd also have to probably follow the shadow culture madness that we experienced across multiple blocks, where original cultures were abandoned for the new ones. If 2ed will be done, it can be fixed (in whatever way chosen) from the start.

[Hobbiton Lad]

I have updated the Free Peoples templates in the original post to reflect the correct numerical fonts. Shadow culture templates should hopefully be finished by tomorrow, if not late tonight.