Creator: the card designer's manual
In the Creator you can make a game’s decks with no outside program: you draw the card’s template, fill in the table of cards, and send it to the Builder with one click. From there the cards go to the Controller and the table display, exactly as you drew them.
This manual is for whoever makes the deck. The Creator is made for a desktop computer and a tablet, because editing needs a big screen. On a phone you can look through your decks and your cards.
If you are just starting, read Your first deck: it walks you step by step from the first deck to your cards showing up in the Controller.
What a deck is
A deck is one template and one table.
- The template says what a card looks like: where the name goes, where the picture goes, how big the card is and what shape it has.
- In the table every row is a card. The columns are the fields: Name, Text, Cost and so on.
The template’s elements are bound to the fields. So when you change the template, every card follows, and when you change a row, only that card changes.
A game can have several decks, units and events, say. What belongs to the game as a whole is shared by every deck of the game: the images, the symbols, the textures, the game values and the components. These are in the Library.
The screen
On an open deck the top bar holds, from left to right:
- the logo: it takes you to the home page;
- the path:
Games › the game › the deck › the view. Click any level to step back. Click the game’s name to set the game’s languages, and click the deck’s name to rename, duplicate or delete the deck; - the view switch: Template, Cards and Library;
- the save state: it shows whether everything is saved;
- Undo and Redo (Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Y);
- Send to Builder, see Send to Builder;
- the account menu with your avatar: the Account, the interface language and signing out.
You sign in to the Creator with the same account as the Builder. It cannot be used as a guest.
Saving
The deck saves itself; there is no save button. The Saved mark in the top bar tells you everything is on the server.
If the same deck was changed somewhere else meanwhile (in another browser tab or on another machine), the mark becomes Changed elsewhere. Click it:
- Reload brings in the version saved elsewhere;
- Copy my text first puts your table on the clipboard, so nothing is lost.
If a save fails, the mark says Not saved. You can try again with Retry: as long as you do not close the page, your change is kept.
The interface language
You switch the language of the Creator’s interface in the account menu (English, Hungarian or German). After the switch the page reloads. This is only the language of the buttons and labels. You write your cards in whatever language you want; if your game has more than one language, see Multilingual game.
The pages
| Page | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Your first deck | From the first deck to the Controller, step by step |
| The home page | Your games and decks, rename, duplicate, delete |
| New deck | Sizes, shapes, tokens and tiles, starter templates |
| The template | Drawing the card: elements, moving, properties, the back |
| Fields in the template | How you bind elements to the table’s columns |
| Text and fonts | Text with fields and icons, fonts |
| Groups and components | Holding elements together and reusable card parts |
| The Cards view | The grid of cards and the table, Excel-like moves |
| Tabs and links | Helper tables, data from other decks, choices with options |
| Import and export | Bringing a table in from Excel or CSV, and taking it out |
| Printing and images | A PDF for printing at home, PNG images |
| Library | The game’s images and tags |
| Symbols | Small icons on the cards: from a built-in icon, an image or a file |
| Textures | Patterned fills, with different colours card to card |
| Game values | One value used by every card of the game |
| Multilingual game | Cards in several languages, translating side by side |
| Snapshots | Saving the game and restoring it |
| The limits of your plan | What the Free, Plus and Pro plans give you |
| Send to Builder | What happens when you send, sending again, Send and release |
Good to know
- A card looks exactly the same in the Builder and the Controller as in the Creator. When you send, the Creator draws the cards into images.
- The Creator’s data overwrites on send. If you change the quantity, the order, the back, the size or the title of a set sent from the Creator in the Builder, the next send puts them back. Details: What the send overwrites.
- On a tablet you bind fields in the panel. Dragging fields in works with a mouse; on a touch screen use the properties panel’s From field switch, see Fields in the template.