TCG Fakes WOTC Custom Card Creator v1

[Weobi]

I've enjoyed messing around with this tool and very much appreciate the effort that you've put into it so far!

How does one go about saving cards? I can't seem to do this with my basic account (also can't seem to find a way to upgrade to pro)... and I'd imagine being able to download a card would be nice for print-n-play.

 

[poketcgshop]

I've enjoyed messing around with this tool and very much appreciate the effort that you've put into it so far!

How does one go about saving cards? I can't seem to do this with my basic account (also can't seem to find a way to upgrade to pro)... and I'd imagine being able to download a card would be nice for print-n-play.

Thank you for the kind words!

As for saving cards - my apologies I forgot to mention that part! You have to create an account (it's free!) and confirm your email. It's only a couple of fields - email, username and password/confirm password. Click the "Login/Signup" button on the top right.

Perhaps I should make users more aware of this, as I can see this being a problem in the future. I should design some type of introductory dialog and/or callout on the homepage that lets users know about this. Also - the "PRO" is a little misleading - I am going to change it to "Advanced". I just wanted a way to differentiate between the basic features and then some more of the secondary controls.

One more note on saving cards - I did limit the amount of cards (for now) that you can save to 5. (You can delete and save new cards, you just can't have more than 5 stored at a time). The reasoning for this is I am on the "Free" tiers of the services I am using for this app, so if I get bots or some spike of users creating thousands of cards, I would be charged a decent amount of money, and the site doesn't generate any income so it's all out of pocket. I didn't want to put ads or any annoying callouts on the site that would get in the way of stuff.

In the future I plan to offer a paid account where you can create your own sets, with set logo, description etc, and then add cards to your sets, share them, etc. I would just charge enough to cover my database / hosting fees for the additional bandwidth usage. In the meantime I at least wanted to allow people to create whatever they wanted for free (you can always take screenshots as you create them or I may even add that feature as well) and then allow for some more advanced users who want to create complete sets.

Hopefully this make sense, just wanted to give my reasoning for the paid accounts. It is a labor of love, as they say.

Will post another update later today!

- Mark

 

[poketcgshop]

Hi everyone!

Hope everybody is having a great week. I just pushed some updates to the live site:

- Updated "swoosh" assets - these are traced SVG with background image overlay of "clouded" texture that I am still tweaking a bit to get perfect
- Added all 8 JOHTO trainers to the trainers dropdown! (preview screenshot below) - keep in mind the trainer image only shows up on Gym or VS template
- Additional tweaks to the E template (scan bars, cost grid area, etc)

More updates to come next week including Neo & Legendary Collection holo sets to view and modify!

Thanks as always,

- Mark

 

[Kotif92]

Thank you for the kind words!

As for saving cards - my apologies I forgot to mention that part! You have to create an account (it's free!) and confirm your email. It's only a couple of fields - email, username and password/confirm password. Click the "Login/Signup" button on the top right.

Perhaps I should make users more aware of this, as I can see this being a problem in the future. I should design some type of introductory dialog and/or callout on the homepage that lets users know about this. Also - the "PRO" is a little misleading - I am going to change it to "Advanced". I just wanted a way to differentiate between the basic features and then some more of the secondary controls.

One more note on saving cards - I did limit the amount of cards (for now) that you can save to 5. (You can delete and save new cards, you just can't have more than 5 stored at a time). The reasoning for this is I am on the "Free" tiers of the services I am using for this app, so if I get bots or some spike of users creating thousands of cards, I would be charged a decent amount of money, and the site doesn't generate any income so it's all out of pocket. I didn't want to put ads or any annoying callouts on the site that would get in the way of stuff.

In the future I plan to offer a paid account where you can create your own sets, with set logo, description etc, and then add cards to your sets, share them, etc. I would just charge enough to cover my database / hosting fees for the additional bandwidth usage. In the meantime I at least wanted to allow people to create whatever they wanted for free (you can always take screenshots as you create them or I may even add that feature as well) and then allow for some more advanced users who want to create complete sets.

Hopefully this make sense, just wanted to give my reasoning for the paid accounts. It is a labor of love, as they say.

Will post another update later today!

- Mark

I created and confirmed an account and pro options are still not unlocked.

Great work by the way. Any way to save cards as .PNG files without backgrounds?

 

[poketcgshop]

I created and confirmed an account and pro options are still not unlocked.

Great work by the way. Any way to save cards as .PNG files without backgrounds?

Hmm, that is odd! I will look into that. I do see your user successfully created, but this is the first I am hearing someone report this issue.

I have not added a "save to PNG" feature yet but I will consider it. I think it would be cool to allow a "Save to PNG" feature for people who don't necessarily need to save full sets on the website as a premium account holder and just want to print their own customs and save on their own machine! I will provide more updates on this feature soon.

As per your account - can you try logging out and back in? You shouldn't have to do that after confirming, but I am wondering if that will fix it for you.

Side note - I started a YouTube to add some tutorials on how to create cards! Here is a Crystal Charizard from scratch:

Thanks as always!

Mark

 

[Weobi]

Hmm, that is odd! I will look into that. I do see your user successfully created, but this is the first I am hearing someone report this issue.

^^ this is currently happening to me as well

I have not added a "save to PNG" feature yet but I will consider it. I think it would be cool to allow a "Save to PNG" feature for people who don't necessarily need to save full sets on the website as a premium account holder and just want to print their own customs and save on their own machine! I will provide more updates on this feature soon.

^^ yes, please add a "save to PNG" feature for us print-n-play people!!

As per your account - can you try logging out and back in? You shouldn't have to do that after confirming, but I am wondering if that will fix it for you.

^^ tried this, no luck

 

[poketcgshop]

^^ this is currently happening to me as well


^^ yes, please add a "save to PNG" feature for us print-n-play people!!


^^ tried this, no luck

D'oh! Was a silly code error on the site, just fixed! You should be able to save cards now! (reminder: "basic" users can save 5 cards)

I will definitely prioritize a "Save to PNG" feature! I agree that would be a vital functionality for this.

Side note - I created a "Pull Game" - you open virtual booster boxes and try to pull as many holos as possible! I am testing some RNG logic to simulate the exact amount of holos you would have gotten out of a box, and the exact order the cards were in out of the packs!

Check it out here - https://poketcg.app/games/pull-game

It also will log your entire opening into a table so you can see how many of each card you pulled!

Thanks as always for the helpful testing and feedback! More goodies coming very soon

-Mark

 

[digimaticfx]

that would be awesome. png save format would be cool for us to mess around with. My only suggestion or maybe there is a way and i dont know, but i like designing full art cards. Any way to remove the background? the closest i could do was turn it to full holo but i want to expand the artwork into the full card. thank you

 

[poketcgshop]

that would be awesome. png save format would be cool for us to mess around with. My only suggestion or maybe there is a way and i dont know, but i like designing full art cards. Any way to remove the background? the closest i could do was turn it to full holo but i want to expand the artwork into the full card. thank you

You all asked, I delivered!

I have just pushed the Save to PNG feature live! Let's test it! It even saves with transparent background! (video below of it working)

Note: You must be signed up and logged in to save cards as PNG's. This helps me avoid bots / hackers spamming the functionality and overloading my site.

I also removed the card flip on mouse hover of the card, I felt it was annoying. It is now located on the left actions area where the save to PNG button is.

As for "full art" functionality - for now I was just focusing on the "WOTC" features, as there were no full-arts of that era. But - I will keep this on my list of possible functionalities to add in the future! The code is written in such a way where I can easily add these types of features, so I wouldn't rule anything out!

Let me know if you guys are able to successfully save your PNG's! It is working for me in the major browsers - Chrome, Firefox, Safari.

- Mark

 

[digimaticfx]

wow, thanks so much. looks great. Just tried it out, definitely a game changer. Could you add a transparent background option? sorry if i sound picky, just curious. As in the type background being left out\turned off. thankssss!

 

[poketcgshop]

wow, thanks so much. looks great. Just tried it out, definitely a game changer. Could you add a transparent background option? sorry if i sound picky, just curious. As in the type background being left out\turned off. thankssss!

Thanks for the kind words! I actually just pushed another small update to the live site - I added a loading indicator when you click the Save to PNG button since it takes a second to compute and generate the image, this way the user doesn't think nothing's happening and ends up double clicking and saving multiple copies of the image. If you're already on the app you may need to just refresh to get the changes!

As for the transparent background option - do you mean like on the whole card? Or just the frame area where the Pokemon image would be? If you have a screenshot of what you are talking about that would be awesome! But yes most likely I can add this feature in the "Advanced Template Options" area. If you look I do have reverse holo options which is essentially an image layer over the entire background, so I could have it where you had a custom "reverse holo" layer (which would be probably the functionality I think you are looking for, but I want to make sure).

Also - feel free to post attach the PNG's of the customs you're creating with the card creator! Would love to see the ideas you all are coming up with

Thanks as always for the feedback!

- Mark

 

[digimaticfx]

Basically like the fire red, water blue, ETC, backgrounds left out. everything else intact. So where you change the orb type, maybe have a 'none' option OR like you said, put an opacity layer on the card type background. Hopefully its possible and saves as .png with transparent background intact. what do you think?

 

[digimaticfx]

i do these on photoshop to make custom full arts. but after finding this project of yours, it will definitely help. awesome project you got going. on mine the attacks are missing so its not the best example. I understand the frame might be part of it but if thats the case, that can be left out.

 

[Weobi]

alright, quick quality-of-life suggestions for the UI:
- when hitting [tab] to move between form fields with up/down arrows (e.g. Length (ft.) under Status Bar Attributes), each arrow is highlighted, not just text fields... this is annoying
- after clicking the [choose image] button for Pokémon artwork, the cursor does not automatically move to the text field... you have to click on the text field... this is also annoying
- when I click on a saved card, i can't find the option to alter or download the card

and a much more complicated quality-of-life suggestion for the UI: it would be very cool to be able to click somewhere on the card art, then have the appropriate form field highlighted in the UI.

Also, are there plans to allow folks to upload their own artwork for card images? backgrounds? set symbols??

omg i want to save more than 5 cards ?

 

[Weobi]

Also, a quick note on the Pull game: unlike packs 1-35, after I pull the last pack, there doesn't seem to be any way for me to see a list of the cards I've pulled!

 

[poketcgshop]

i do these on photoshop to make custom full arts. but after finding this project of yours, it will definitely help. awesome project you got going. on mine the attacks are missing so its not the best example. I understand the frame might be part of it but if thats the case, that can be left out.

Thank you again for the kind words and the example! I can try to implement something like that in the near future - WOTC era "full arts" would be very cool! Will keep you posted on this.

alright, quick quality-of-life suggestions for the UI:
- when hitting [tab] to move between form fields with up/down arrows (e.g. Length (ft.) under Status Bar Attributes), each arrow is highlighted, not just text fields... this is annoying
- after clicking the [choose image] button for Pokémon artwork, the cursor does not automatically move to the text field... you have to click on the text field... this is also annoying
- when I click on a saved card, i can't find the option to alter or download the card

and a much more complicated quality-of-life suggestion for the UI: it would be very cool to be able to click somewhere on the card art, then have the appropriate form field highlighted in the UI.

Also, are there plans to allow folks to upload their own artwork for card images? backgrounds? set symbols??

omg i want to save more than 5 cards ?

Thank you for the testing / suggestions! So the tabbing going to the arrows is really just an accessibility thing, technically every control should be tabbable for screen readers, and other tools that help disabled / handicapped users navigate and use the site. I can easily turn it off, and make the "tabIndex" value for the buttons "-1" so that the tabbing ignores them. I was putting a higher priority on getting the Up and Down arrow keys to update the number input fields, which I felt was more pressing / annoying.

Also, a quick note on the Pull game: unlike packs 1-35, after I pull the last pack, there doesn't seem to be any way for me to see a list of the cards I've pulled!

Ahh! You are right! Thank you for testing that. I tagged "Beta" on this feature for these very types of reasons - I have not tested this much yet! I just had an algorithm handy and thought it would be cool to do simulated box breaks, so I built it out. We will be improving this feature for sure in the future. My priority for the site has been building out the UI for the store and populating it with all the product I have, and securing a better server environment as I have already experienced a small outage on Netlify this morning (site was down) and I can't risk that if I have lots of users coming to the site.

Thanks again as always guys! This is all still in heavy testing so I appreciate you all putting up with the little hiccups until I can get them all sorted and get this thing working 100% perfectly.

- Mark

 

[poketcgshop]

Hey Sorry I realized I forgot to touch on a couple of points

- when I click on a saved card, i can't find the option to alter or download the card - working on an update feature! I agree it's a pain right now since you can only delete, but this is coming, I promise! I just had other stuff in the way.

- after clicking the [choose image] button for Pokémon artwork, the cursor does not automatically move to the text field... you have to click on the text field... this is also annoying - are you saying it should auto focus the next text field? I can easily fix this just not sure what the desired functionality is here.

Also, are there plans to allow folks to upload their own artwork for card images? backgrounds? set symbols?? - eventually, maybe. I figured I would support people hosting their own images and pasting the absolute URL path for now, or using our library, but upload is definitely a future "maybe" feature while I get the store functionality built out.

omg i want to save more than 5 cards ? - I know, I know. I'm sorry!! Unfortunately I am somewhat throttled on the free tiers, once I have some money being generated from the app I can loosen these limits and allow unlimited saving (or at least a lot more than 5). My anticipation was, casual users can "Save to PNG" and serious users who want to really use the tool to build out their own sets would be paid subscription accounts to cover the hosting fees.

I have a lot more updates coming soon, for anyone into real cards we will be bulk importing about 30,000 products to the site, so that has been taking a bit of my time. But, I have some really neat ideas coming up for the site (adding all the functionality Pokellector app has)

Eventually will be adding Japanese card templates as well, so stay tuned for that!

Hope everyone is having a great week!

- Mark

 

[Weobi]

So the tabbing going to the arrows is really just an accessibility thing, technically every control should be tabbable for screen readers, and other tools that help disabled / handicapped users navigate and use the site.

Ah, yes. Good point.

I figured I would support people hosting their own images and pasting the absolute URL path for now

Oh! I can add a URL in the text field... nice! Somehow overlooked this.

once I have some money being generated from the app I can loosen these limits and allow unlimited saving (or at least a lot more than 5)

Any ballpark estimate on fee structure? Cost? A dreaded subscription model?

 

[Weobi]

- after clicking the [choose image] button for Pokémon artwork, the cursor does not automatically move to the text field... you have to click on the text field... this is also annoying - are you saying it should auto focus the next text field? I can easily fix this just not sure what the desired functionality is here.

Yes...? Let me grab a few screenshots:

1: Click [Choose] button...


2: This pop-up allows user to search for art, but user must click before they can enter text. It would be nice if cursor auto-magically focused on the text field:



(sorry for the second reply post)

 

[poketcgshop]

Ahh yes, thank you for the screenshots @Weobi that makes much more sense now - and yes, I can absolutely add auto-focus to that input. I agree it's an extra unnecessary step once you've clicked "Choose", you should be able to just start typing. Good catch!

And that's right, you can paste in any hosted image! As long as there is an absolute path to the image file that ends in an extension like .png, .jpg, .gif. If you try to paste and the image doesn't show up, check the URL to make sure. If you are having issues with an image not working, you could always save the image yourself, host it on dropbox, drive, your own server etc and link it from there.

As for the "subscription" model - I use a few free services that I will likely have to upgrade to the paid tier to keep the site running with no hiccups or down times, but I will most likely be doing that anyway since I've partnered up with my friend who is providing me over 20,000 cards and various other products to list in the shop. The intention is to sell a high volume of TCG products so I am planning on upgrading these services anyway. Those who want to use the site just to create and save custom cards can still do so! So the good news is I will likely be removing the card save limit in one of the next updates