Re: More SVG Cards, Accessible Deck of Cards?

["Richard Hoelscher" <rah rahga com>]

David Bellot said:
>
>>Presumably that was after Gnome 2.10 because I think I installed the
>>extras but I'm not seeing any other cards.
>>
> As far as I know it was in gnome 2.8
> Maybe it has been removed from the extras for 2.10 but I didn't know.

It's still in extras as "bellot.svg" .... Almost every old bit of graphics
is in extras, including the now-obsolete Same GNOME themes.

>>With careful use of SVG clones or defs and using SVG text instead of
>>converting to curves I imagine you could get a very small file even with
>>using SVGZ.
>>
>>
> Yes, that's what I'm doing. Lots of <use> and <defs>.
> But the main part of the file lies in the characters' paths, and this is
> what I'm working on.
> Using SVGZ, I'm already under 300Kb !

Don't rely on svgz to reduce your file size... They'll be zipped even
better when packaged in a gnome-games.tar.bz2, so svgz would only increase
the time it takes to load and resize the file.

>>To go a little offtopic for moment, if you were to put together a set of
>>template cards with blank image placeholders in the middle I can think of
>>people making their own custom card sets.  Although someone recently
>>pointed out Barbie Linux Distribution (serioulsly) I'm suprised no one
>> has
>>rebranded GPL software and sold it with custom artwork.  I mean you can
>>get all kinds of board games branded with Star Wars, and I've seen
>> branded
>>flash games put together as high end advertising so I think it is almost
>>an inevitability that someone will do the same with open source software
>>and games are likely to be an early target.  I have been able to see it
>>coming for a few years now, if only I had a business plan and franchising
>>rights or a movie tie in.
>>
>>
> Actually, if I have time, I'll work on a gtk applications to design new
> cards deck. Currently, the only thing I have is a awk piece of code to
> generate my own deck.
> It is full of parameters and can be tweaked to other decks... I guess so !

Alan:

You mentioned templates... I've got a pair of index-only templates at
http://rahga.com/svg .

I've used them a bit already. Designing original face graphics is tough
(it's one of the projects on my plate, see preview at URL), but pictures
such as the ones you mentioned are quite easy... Just look at
"Dondorf.svg", which is a redo of the classic dondorf.png set, combining
the SVG template with high-resolution PNG images.

A problem with dondorf.svg is that when the PNG images are viewed at 1:1,
the entire deck of cards is a 2048 x 1230 pixel image, so it can be quite
slow to render at high resolutions even on powerful machines. It is a
beauty, though, IMHO. ;)

You also mentioned accessible cards and pointed out a pair of Magnum-style
cards. Creating cards like this are, of course, easy to do. However, I
have no idea how to make them usable in a game such as solitaire of
blackjack. You really have to be able to see the all the indexes as you
play. At the very least, some sort of change will have to be made in code
in both games, and it would probably take a bit more work than hammering
out a card set.

-Richard Hoelscher
http://rahga.com/svg/