I know I've really been 'hawking my wares' on other areas of the site in a bid to get attention/traffic, so if this topic is frowned upon: mods, do with what you will. I'd just like to see, as my site is branching in different directions, one of those directions will strike a chord with someone here who might come and help us out.
For those who don't know, Crystal Plains is a collaborative artwork and projects site, located at www.crystalplains.net. We are now but a small and sparse few, which is part of the reason I've been trying to rally more viewers. There are really two parts to the site: Crystal Plains and what I've decided to call the Project Corps. Crystal Plains, or CP, is the site itself: the message board, member portfolios, "MuseWorks", where the community can come together and share their work. The latter, the Project Corps, are the gatherings from inside the community that work on projects and other developments that are hosted on and supported by the website.
Currently there are several projects begun, all which need more help and input before they can move forward. I would like this topic to be a showcase of those projects, where the creatives of the MoFo can easily see and hopefully get their interests piqued.
The first and second are ones that I've brought up here in other topics before: the CPWiki. Like its practical brother, the Wikipedia, CPWiki is built with MediaWiki software and sports many of the functions you may already be familiar with from the larger site. Unlike Wikipedia, however, the goal of the CPWiki is to chronicle and archive elements from fictional sources written by our members - such as role-plays, short stories, and character biographies.
What we need: Writers with material they are willing to post; editors willing to help with articles already written; anyone who wants to contribute to the structure of the wiki, to keep things organized.
Message board link.
The second project started, and still under development, is the Role-Playing Thread Preservation Society, or RPTPS. This is a repository of role-plays taken from message boards, instant messenger, or any other form of play, where they can be easily viewed by others and somewhat protected from any errant deletions that would otherwise cause them to be lost forever.
What we need: There's a list on the project page, but to summarize, we definitely need some more source material to archive - if there's anyone on the MoFo who would like their RP saved on the site, please speak up; we also need editors to process said submissions, and web designers who can contribute to the look, feel, and usability of the project site.
Message board link.
A third project, that I just started last weekend and hope to quickly expand, is the VISIONS Online Card Game. This will be in the vein of a trading or collectible card game, but specifically designed to be played over an Internet message board. Rules and details are largely sketchy right now, so input and suggestions are largely appreciated.
What we need: Immediately, we could use some input into the general rules of the game, the overall presentation, and the layout of the cards themselves. Soon we'll also need offerings for the cards themselves - the first set will be a "grab bag", meaning we'll take most suggestions, no matter how ridiculous, for testing purposes - and playtesting.
Message board link.
If any of the above projects strike your fancy, please don't hesitate to join up with us at the message board and get started. If the topic doesn't get closed, I'll be sure to update it with further developments.
20070625 Update:
Here's a small sampling of some of the cards that have been made for VISIONS. Click the thumbs to zoom in.
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A rough draft for the rules for the game are currently located here if anyone wants to read them.
Still need some more people to step forward for this project; looking for card designers, rule editors, even beginning programmers to hammer out some game tools like a online PHP generator for the cards and a simple app to easily produce bbcode/HTML to post the playing field of all of your cards.
Hmm.
This Card game looks like it has some potential. I can help you tweak the rules or do the gruntwork making cards or whatever if you need it.
Thanks for the word of support, Bat.
I'm hoping to get the cardbase going with a "Grab Bag" set, where everyone just makes whatever they want and we pick the best cards to save for posterity; this helps both to get cards made, get the rules tested, and let the players have a little fun doing it. After the kinks have been ironed out, the first "real" predeveloped set will be released.
So for now, if you see anything that I may have overlooked in my rush to finish the rules, if more clarification is in order somewhere, or if something just glaringly doesn't work, let me know. What TCGs/CCGs are you familiar with?
Pretty much just Magic.
First, biggest, and best.
A lot of things are borrowed from M:tG - 'tapping', 'summoning sickness', basic turn structure, and general skill physics.
The only issue with Magic is that deck building is the only skill for the game needed imo. But I still <3 magic anyway. But don't totally copy it. Learn from it, and be inspired by it, but don't copy it. And once you have it finished, I would love to play.
Without much of a randomizing factor, deck building is one of the only core components in Magic, I agree - and, by relation, whoever has the most money gets the most powerful cards and wins most of the time. Fortunately, with the cards being online and free, VISIONS players can pick pretty much anything they want. Unfortunately, the way VISIONS is set up out of necessity includes not only no randomizer, but no draw deck as well; all cards are visible all the time. If there was a way to include a simple, foolproof dice-rolling or card drawing technique, I would jump on it.
But no, VISIONS doesn't copy Magic, it borrows from a lot of card games equally. I've been involved in the hobbyist gaming circles for about ten years now, and know most things there are to know about Magic, Star Wars (both of them), Star Trek CCG, Pokemon, Legend of the Five Rings, Lord of the Rings (pretty much every game Decipher, Inc. has ever made), and other games like D&D, Star Wars RPG (both versions), Clix, and so on and on. I have a knack for the game balance, but making sure the rules are airtight and presentation is passable I still feel iffy about in this game.
Mm.
Speaking of which, pass a photoshop template this way.
I'm still working on getting the text boxes to line up on the Photoshop templates. I'll get it done first thing when I get home from work today.
Cool. Make something similar to Magic's Slivers. >_>
Photoshop templates: visionsocg.crystalplains.net/temp/visionsocg_photoshoptemplates.rar
Also, here's something for you, Aeva:
And for you, Bats:
Thanks for the support, guys =)
Interesting place though I was never good at collaborating with anyone...I may give it a shot if I can look into this some more.
Here's a couple cards I made last night, in the wee hours of the morning.
I was just playing around with the system and don't intend for them to actually be used, so they weren't made with any sort of regard to balance. They're mostly just concepts I thought would be fun.
GENTLEMEN, BEHOLD!
Characters:
Assets:
Actions:
Some of those are actually good - in the sense that I would add them to a real set.
Mind if I add them to the list we have going? I can upload them to the VISIONS server first if you want.
Go right ahead. You don't have to upload them separately unless you figure they'll be getting enough hits to kill Photobucket's generous bandwidth allocation.
