Curse

FrogDevourer · Jun 12, 2006, 11:36 PM // 23:36

Here is a mirror of the official project announcement located on the Servants of Fortuna forum. Feel free to visit us for the latest news & releases (or if you want to contribute).
http://forum.sof-guild.com/index.php?showforum=25

Updates and Card Releases

2006/10/26: New release. Available at filefront.com. Included in this package:
- First release of the vB mod for sofBBcode (with a clean and simple installer)
- demo Wiki tag included and available in the vB mod
- pre-release cards (and minicards) for Nightfall skills (based on WPE stats)

2006/06/20: Random Sealed Deck Updated (Link & Mirror):
- New feature : dynamic link to guild wiki & gwfreaks (when more information, or related content is needed)
- New feature : fuzzy search in skill names (ex: melan* -shot)
- New feature : optional control of random seed (can be used to reproduce a random selection)
- New display format : when the icon is clicked a text tooltip appears with more controls (show minicard, show full card, external link to guild wiki, external link to gwfreaks, external link to SoF Database)
- New display format : icons without name now have a tiny text tooltip with the skill name
- Two new repositories (courtesy of Clint O and Zero Moonshadow )

2006/06/18: Random Sealed Deck Updated (Link & Mirror):
- New feature added (campaign filters)
- New feature added (skills are now sorted by attribute)

2006/06/17: Project Part C is now official. An online illustration of you what you can do with minicards and tooltips can be found here. The full distribution package (cards, minicards, icons, tooltip source) can be found on filefront.com: here

2006/06/11: First official release. The distribution package can be found on filefront.com: here.
- New GW:F icons included
- Minor bug fixes on script description
- New layout with profession icons and skill type icons

2006/06/11: Random Sealed Deck Updated (Link & Mirror)
- New GW:F icons included
- Guild Wars Guru offered to be our first host (hopefully more to come) so all features of the Sealed Deck Generator have been unlocked.

Quote:

GW Skill cards & Sealed Deck Generator
by FrogDevourer

Table of Content

- Introduction & Sealed Deck
- Project Part A: GW Skill Cards
- Project Part B: Random deck generator
- Distribution
- Contribute
- Credits
- Frequently Asked Questions

Introduction & Sealed Deck

Many people compare Guild Wars to a collectible card game (CCGs) such as Magic the Gathering. With hundreds of skills from many professions, there's indeed a lot of collecting to do. But so far, Guild Wars been a collectible skill game. No card. Yet half the fun in CCGs comes from the card themselves. Collecting them, playing with them, and of course, the so addictive booster pack gamble: will I get the ultra rare card in this random pack? Even worse, we're missing a very interesting tournament format: Sealed Deck. Rather than reinventing the wheel, I'll quote ANet's official article about the backstage event from March 2006.

Quote:

[Backstage events] are great events for guilds to compete in, but what do you do if you get a bunch of new players together with varying levels of PvP skill? If you were playing certain popular trading card games, you would suggest some form of limited play. Limited play is a type of competition where each player or team is given a randomized pool of cards, miniatures, or other item to choose from in order to build an army, deck, or player. There are different types of limited play (booster draft, Rochester draft, sealed) but the easiest is sealed play.

Sealed play is a great form of tournament play for a variety of reasons.
* First, it is an easy entry for new or relatively unskilled players. By limiting the number of skills to choose from, new players can quickly decide which ones would work well together instead of going through the entire list. Also, as new players they have not unlocked many skills and those available are somewhat limited for competitive play.

* Second, it is a test of a player's Guild Wars PvP knowledge and ability. Experienced players will frequently end up with a roster of unpreferred skills. Instead of playing with skills they are comfortable with, they have a limited amount of time to study ones they are unfamiliar with.

It used to be hard to set up such a tournament, but GW:Factions made that very easy thanks to guild scrimmage. Send a temporary guild invitation to the tournament participants, make two teams, hit scrimmage and have fun... Of course, the biggest problem is to create random decks, or random skill sets. That's when this project comes into play.

This aim of this project is twofold: to provide an online software able to generate random Sealed Decks (random pools of GW skills), and a complete collection of GW skill cards with up-to-date stats, texts and descriptions. Each half of this project is entirely autonomous, and it can exist without the other half.

Project Part A: GW Skill Cards

To test out the sealed play concept ANet created decks of sealed Guild Wars skill cards. You can find a photo of the original GW cards on the official website:

I found this idea quite thrilling but to be honest the original GW cards were a bit bland. The game and this format deserved something a little more eye catching. As an old CCG player, it was hard for me to resist the idea. Long story made short, creating an automated but intelligent image manipulation bot had been on my dusty project list for months, so I unearthed this project. I spent some time working on a fast image generator that could be populated by external skill databases to make a complete set for GW skill cards. Thanks to the dedicated work of many people from the Servants of Fortuna [SoF], I have access to such a flexible and up-to-date skill database.

The result is a collection of almost 800 skill cards like these:

(model: Makkert's ranger)

(model: Lasareth's warrior)

(model: my warrior)

More samples on Imageshack:

Even more samples:
http://img315.imageshack.us/img315/581/rit...pirit7le.th.jpg
http://img315.imageshack.us/img315/7830/as...ength8kw.th.jpg
http://img315.imageshack.us/img315/7882/el...tgale8hn.th.jpg
http://img315.imageshack.us/img315/2439/me...ation8yj.th.jpg
http://img315.imageshack.us/img315/2870/mo...ments6fc.th.jpg
http://img315.imageshack.us/img315/531/nec...fiend0yo.th.jpg
http://img315.imageshack.us/img315/7577/ra...gshot8yc.th.jpg
http://img315.imageshack.us/img315/5673/ra...ction6cr.th.jpg
http://img315.imageshack.us/img315/6262/ri...rowth0xu.th.jpg
http://img315.imageshack.us/img315/7520/ri...souls0tl.th.jpg

A few more numbers to illustrate this project:
~800 skill cards
~90 character models
~60 backgrounds (per profession)
~1 MB of XML db
~50 MB of pictures (jpg, average quality)
~15 min to rebuild an entire card set once the database is updated

Project Part B: Random Deck Generator

This online tool is a simple generator of random GW sealed decks. Sealed decks are random pools of GW skills. They can be as small as a skillset, typically when you want to play with 8 random skills, or as large as a complete skillset of ~800 skills. Choose your tournament settings, generate one sealed deck for each participant, let them build their own skillset, and have them fight one another with this limited amount of skills. Organizing tournaments and casual fights with a limited/sealed format has never been so easy.

The random generator can create skill pools with simple rules (e.g: give me 25 random skills from each profession) or with customizable, flexible and somewhat complex rules (e.g: I want 3 random warrior elites, 10 basic necro skills, and 25 random skills from both professions plus 30 skills from any profession). It is even able to create random skillsets like Nash's old Ultimate Build Generator. Sealed decks can be displayed in many formats, some of them being forum/website friendly. It provides a link to each GW card in order to give an accurate description of each skill.

But enough talk, a couple of clicks are worth more than an essay. Check out the 4 functions of this online tool:

CLICK HERE for the original random generator with a *lot* of selectors for you to customize your own tournament rules. A mirror can be found here.

CLICK HERE to build random skillsets for purely random character builds. This function is copycat of Nash's Ultimate Build Generator, and a proof that selecting 8 random skills from two professions can come up with better skillsets than what you can see in nightmare PuGs of hell. ^_^ A mirror can be found here.

CLICK HERE to display one random skill card with each reload : discover each and every skill. Read them in detail, and learn tidbits of GW knowledge with each reload. Of course, don't forget to show off you knowledge with GW skill trivias. This function will be activated only when at least one card repository is active (none at the moment, see section distribution). A mirror can be found here.

CLICK HERE to dump a list of all skills of one or two professions. Initially designed as a way to display many GW cards in a single page. A mirror can be found here.

CLICK HERE to get all features in one page. A mirror can be found here.

Distribution

The GW skill cards are freely available to the community. Due to bandwidth concerns, you will not find them on the Servants of Fortuna website. Here is a list of GW fansites who are hosting or using these cards:
- Guild Wars Guru
- Hopefully more to come...

If you're willing to host them on your personal site, on your guild site, or on a larger GW fan site, I invite you to contact me (FrogDevourer) through the Servants of Fortuna forum, and I'll give you private access to the latest GW skill card package. Note that this package is *not* available to the average GW fan unless he's offering to host and to mirror GW cards. The bandwidth necessary for that would be enough to melt both my site, and my guild's.

The terms and conditions are simple: to be eligible you must accept to host *only* the latest release (expect a new set with each skill balance update from ANet), and to make it available to the community free of charge. You are free to make what you want of these cards as long as you don't alter them, and as long as no commercial activity is based on this project. A few lines of credits with a link to this page would be appreciated. In return, your mirror will be listed in this page (optionally with your logo) and if you want, your repository will be listed in the random deck generator.

Contribute

You can help this project. Because my spare time is very limited I need a lot of help to improve this contribution to the GW community. I trust there are many skilled and dedicated people out there who would be able to:

- Host and mirror : we need high bandwidth hosts and mirrors, preferably with a large GW audience. The more the better. The larger the audience of these cards, the more accurate the feedback will be. See above for the terms and conditions. If you are interested, please contact FrogDevourer

- Proof card texts & descriptions : despite the outstanding job from the database maintainers, some errors remain. Wrong statistics, wrong or incomplete acquisition info (bosses, quests)... If you find an error, report it (on this site, in any official fansite forum thread, by PM...). Just make sure you're using the latest card release beforehand (see below). Feedback on the SoF skill database can be posted in this thread.

- Find the best tournament settings : the random deck generator is very flexible, yet it's also way too complex for the average GW player. To make it more user friendly and simple to use, it needs a handful of well-chosen presets that can be used as standard or default formats. So if you play with this software and if you find the perfect settings for a fun and challenging tournament format, please report it and this setting will be included in future versions. Your favourite Sealed Deck settings can be posted in this thread.

- Provide high quality models : if these cards are popular, future release may include more models from each profession. If you want to see your character included in a GW card, have a look at the screenshot specifications below and submit yours in this thread of the SoF forum. Low quality shots who cannot be used will be ignored. Conversely, guilds who provided enough high quality material may see their cape used a background for some of their models.

- Send feedback, comments and suggestions: because two heads can come up with better ideas than one, any feedback from card users and collectors is welcome. Constructive criticisms as well. Feedback on the Sealed Deck Generator can be posted in this thread. Feedback on card graphics can be posted in this thread.

- Organize and promote Sealed Deck tournaments: because it is fun, yet challenging. Luck can affect your chances of victories but even the worst players need skill to win.

- Advertisement: because such a project needs to reach a critical mass before it's viable. Advertise the skill cards or the generator, or both. Contact the webmasters of your favourite fan site and bug them until they accept to have a look at this project. ^_^ You can direct them to this official page

Character model specifications

Character specs:
- Have fun with emotes and shooting angles (however divine auras *can't* be used for these cards)
- PvE or throwaway PvP characters
- Rare armor or not (your character's face and skin is as important as their armor)
- Undyed or custom dye (preferably not black so that I can identify dyable areas and change the armor color if need be)
- With or without helm
- No cape on the character itself
- Front shots are good, but don't hesitate to make something different if you have a cool idea

The screenshot background is somewhat important. If it's well chosen, the blue screening process is almost automatic, and I can move to the next screenshot in a couple of minutes. If the background is poor, I have to edit the picture manually pixel by pixel. The best backgrounds are:
- As uniform as possible (typically sand, snow, sea or sky)
- With a base colour different from your armor/face/hair color (e.g: if you have white hair don't use snow)

Screenshot specs:
- Crop images if you can
- Convert the bmp into a high quality format (png or *uncompressed* jpeg)
- Watch out for poor lighting (underground, cave and indoor screenshots are often unusable)
- Use the best visual settings your computer can support

Credits

This project is fan-driven and fan-oriented. Initiated by FrogDevourer as a contribution to the outstanding GW community, it is maintained with a very limited amount of spare time, and its creation was possible only thanks to the contribution of many people.

- The skill database used to make these cards is internally hosted by the Servants of Fortuna. The database PHP/SQL engine was created by Beqxter and Vykara. The database was populated by *many* SoF contributors.
- Most skill icons used come the official fan kit, save a handful that were unsuable for obscure reasons. Missing icons were collected from popular fan sites (GWO, GWG, GWFreaks).
- Most character models used were provided by Servants of Fortuna. To round up the first release, some shots were collected from fan site forums and GuildWiki.
- Graphical components used to make these cards are copyrighted by ANet and NCSoft.

Epinephrine · Jun 13, 2006, 12:35 AM // 00:35

Wohhoo, great that release is finally here! Way to go Frog Devourer, they're gorgeous

W00t, my Lana!

Rathcail · Jun 13, 2006, 01:51 AM // 01:51

Impressive project.
While I was fooling around with the random generator, I got a silly idea. Someday I'll make a random skillset and play the PvE side through with it! Fun!

Slainster · Jun 13, 2006, 11:47 AM // 11:47

awesome!

samifly · Jun 13, 2006, 01:06 PM // 13:06

very cool - love the detail you put into the cards.

Thy Shadow Wolf · Jun 13, 2006, 02:47 PM // 14:47

Those are amazing, keep up the good work guys!! *claps*

Arya Nibelrund · Jun 13, 2006, 03:11 PM // 15:11

I'd like to thank Frog on behalf of the whole GW community. You're doing a great job for all of us and we're really thankful for that. Keep it up

sgtclarity · Jun 13, 2006, 03:22 PM // 15:22

This is an awesome idea, those are really useful and beautiful. I wouldn't mind paying money to get my hands on a card deck of these.

Makkert · Jun 13, 2006, 03:35 PM // 15:35

SoF ftw. what else can one say?

Arya Nibelrund · Jun 13, 2006, 04:07 PM // 16:07

^
/Signed

SparhawkJC · Jun 13, 2006, 04:56 PM // 16:56

If only you guys were recruiting...

SnipiousMax · Jun 13, 2006, 05:37 PM // 17:37

Will you guys be hosting a tourny to promote it?

Jetdoc · Jun 13, 2006, 06:04 PM // 18:04

Wonderful! This actually is nice for an old MtG player that would like to organize his skillbar and works better with tangible items (e.g. cards) in their hands...

mr_boo · Jun 13, 2006, 07:59 PM // 19:59

Stunning work FrogD...as always, you've outdone yourself!!! As Epi stated, the cards are simply gorgeous.

Makkert · Jun 13, 2006, 08:37 PM // 20:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by SparhawkJC

If only you guys were recruiting...

We're overextended. We had to close recruitment, to handle our current applicants as well as to give ourselves room to handle other issues. And projects, such as this one. Don't know when we'll open up recruitment, sorry.

Quote:

Originally Posted by SnipiousMax

Will you guys be hosting a tourny to promote it?

Considering the facts:
- currently quite busy
- we're still searching for a 'standard formats' for tournaments

I think the answer is 'no' on the short term. When we can pinpoint a fun and meaningfull format, who knows....

Martian · Jun 13, 2006, 08:45 PM // 20:45

I honestly didn't understand a word of this concept. Are they like pokemon cards or something? what's a backstage event? What are you actually supposed to do with them? Are they like on the screen or held in your hand? What the hell is gong on that's got everybody do excited?
*Cries at own ineptitude*

FrogDevourer · Jun 13, 2006, 09:01 PM // 21:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by Martian

I honestly didn't understand a word of this concept. Are they like pokemon cards or something? what's a backstage event? What are you actually supposed to do with them? Are they like on the screen or held in your hand? What the hell is gong on that's got everybody do excited?
*Cries at own ineptitude*

There is a link in the announcement that should make everything clear if you're not a collectible card game player. Here a copy:
http://www.guildwars.com/competitive...es/sealedplay/

GW cards are more or less like Pokemon cards I guess, although you don't have to collect them. They serve two purposes: eye candy that can be used on any GW fan site to highlight a particular skill, and up to date reference (stats, description). On most fan sites, skill description quickly become obsolete because it takes a lot of time update everything after a large balance change. This will hopefully be easier with GW cards. Download the latest package, and upload it to your site. And voilà!

Tryll · Jun 14, 2006, 08:19 AM // 08:19

These are a great idea and I for one will find them very useful. Great work Frog Devourer and SoF. The designs are absolutely stunning and, more importantly, easy to refer to.

Furfoot · Jun 14, 2006, 08:32 AM // 08:32

Where did you get all those factions skill icons as they're obviously not ingame shots.

LightningHell · Jun 14, 2006, 02:10 PM // 14:10

Nice work...now to get back to M:tG...*drool*

Someone make a draft engine!