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Prototyping cards on Macs

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Rick-Holzgrafe
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Multideck is a Macintosh application for easily creating card images for custom card decks. Enter your card content (card text and image filenames) in a spreadsheet for easy tabulation, and create your layout templates in Multideck. Print your finished cards to paper or to easily-shared PDF files, or export them in various formats suitable for online gaming (such as Tabletop and Tabletop Simulator) and print-on-demand services (such as The Game Crafter).

Features include:

  • Fully customizable card sizes with easy presets for standard card sizes
  • Select fonts and font sizes, styles, and color
  • Rich text allows inline images and icons in lines of text
  • Place images where you want them, at any size
  • Rotate items to add vertical, angled, or upside-down text and images
  • Color controls include translucency effects
  • Two-Sided Cards - design, print, and export on both sides of your cards
  • Full Unicode support - Use any language and alphabet, including Hebrew, Arabic, Cyrillic

Version 2.6 is now available in the Mac App Store. Visit the Multideck Web page for more information, along with instructional videos and demo projects. Subscribe and visit the Multideck Users Guild on BoardGameGeek for discussion and news.

questccg
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Just curious...

Is Multideck better than "Cocktail"???

https://cocktail.software

You two (2) may be competing for the SAME audience of Game Designers... Obviously you'll say that your software is better, who would not. Or that it caters to another audience (like Mac users).

This is not my business... But maybe you should CONTACT "Dan" over at Cocktail and see if you guys can MERGE products (or come up with a common feature list). Sometimes it is COOL to COLLABORATE with people and you guys BOTH are designing software for Card Creation...

If you guys can SEE "eye-to-eye"... Maybe an AWESOME COLLABORATION could ignite and then for sure you BOTH would have the BEST of both breeds...!

Just a thought. Cheers!

Rick-Holzgrafe
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questccg wrote:Is Multideck

questccg wrote:
Is Multideck better than "Cocktail"???

To begin with, I don't think Cocktail will run on a Macintosh. I was clear in my post: Multideck is for Macintosh computers.

I might be wrong: the makers of Cocktail haven't bothered to post things like system requirements on their site, as far as I've been able to find. (Nor have they posted a price.) But downloading their "preview" yields a file in .msi format: that's for Windows, and can't be unpacked on a Mac.

So why are you shouting, in all-caps and multiple question marks? And why exactly does Multideck have to be "BETTER"? It's as if you think there should never be more than one app serving any particular purpose. But there are dozens of image editors, text editors, word processors on the market. There are hundreds of solitaire apps, to pick an extreme example. Your personal notion of "better" or "best" for any of these may be different from anyone else's. Price, features, robustness, system requirements, performance, documentation, and provider are all things that may contribute to any user's notion of which app is "best".

Maybe you think there should be only one kind of car on the market?

Multideck is not a new app. It has been available for some years. It is full-featured, robust, and well-supported: I'm the designer, and I've been adding features and squashing bugs as they are found, for all of these years. It has a very high rating on the Mac App store. A number of BGDF users are already users. I posted links to the app on the App Store, where customer reviews can be read, and to the Multideck Users Group on BoardGameGeek, where discussions between users and myself can be found. Apparently you didn't bother to check any of that out before complaining publicly.

So I'm kind of annoyed at you for casually suggesting that Multideck isn't good enough, and that I should "CONTACT" Cocktail and "MERGE" products and "COLLABORATE". Frankly, I was here first, my product is complete and available for purchase now, and has hundreds of happy users.

Have you suggested to Cocktail that perhaps they should contact ME?

Or do you have some other reason for trying to promote Cocktail at my expense?

questccg
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Don't be offended...

We feel differently about "things". Personally, I find that running my projects alone nowadays is a detriment to the success of my ventures. But finding someone who shares your passion is ... well hard. I meant no disrepect... I just saw two (2) people designing the same thing and thought: "Maybe these two (2) people could or want to work together...?!"

Like I said from my experience nowadays things are veering towards collaborations. And not single person ventures. I'm even suggesting that Cocktail with its features could be improved upon with another 1 or 2 Developers to make the product more appealing to much more users.

It's natural that when you look at two (2) pieces of Software that both are hard to compare because they have a different set of features. But if say one product was to ADD a set of features, perhaps the more prominent ones, then you would have a product that is probably better than BOTH alone.

I didn't say ANYTHING about "Not being good enough" either. You maybe took my comment the wrong way. Like I said, it was a bit of "personal reflection" in that I feel like my SOLO projects are not at par with the teams of 5 to 8 people working on games nowadays... It's hard to compete on KS when you have a team with a dedicated Graphic Designer who can bling out a page and spend a couple of months making everything look "prettier"...

Again that's my own personal "baggage" and I was just thinking: "Hmm ... They BOTH are designing card design software ... Maybe they could be good working together...???" That's what my real thoughts are.

I was NOT complaining... As I said, I was merely eluding to the fact that IT SEEMS like both of you are working on a similar piece of software. From an outsider's POV.

I have not looked into Multideck because it is a Mac product. In another perspective, if your product is good for Macs, why not introduce the features into the PC world also. I get it: you're not interested in collaboration. And that's fine too.

I think you chose to bite off my head because I suggested that maybe you could collaborate with another Developer. Sorry, my bad. I thought maybe two (2) people working together might produce a better end-product (for both individuals).

Again it was mostly my own reflection, that I could benefit greatly from another "team member" to be at least 2+ people in my future ventures.

Don't be offended... That was not the intention. I guess some misdirected intention based on personal experience that biased my good judgement.

Sorry again no offense was meant. Best of luck with your software!

questccg
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One last comment

I work on a Windows PC not a Mac Computer. As such I am biased to suggest that Cocktail could be the better "end-software" because I am on a PC. I HIGHLY doubt that you can make code for BOTH "at the same time".

Secondly I know Dan from Cocktail ... We've talked about HIS software before. I don't own a copy, but I do feel like using HTML Markup for the editing of the cards is very ... well ... SLICK! (Or Clever if you prefer)

I don't have "multi-deck" and I think this is the first time we have engaged together in terms of a discussion...

Again I don't want you to be offended. Like I said, I've talked with Dan probably more so because he wanted a Lifetime Banner for his product (which runs on PCs only...)

pelle
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My tool for making cards

My tool for making cards (https://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/299033/inkscape-extensions-boardgam...) runs on Macs (older versions were primarily developed on one) and in Windows and Linux. In general developing for multiple platforms is not a big deal and the default for many developers as most development tools and frameworks are multi-platform anyway. (Of course when making it as an expansion script for an existing multi-platform application it becomes even easier.)

Everyone has their own wishlist for a tool like this, and they are reasonably easy to make, so I perfectly understand why there are so many. Mine has been available (for all platforms) and free since 2008. Back then the only alternative I was aware of was Nandeck, but it only runs on Windows, and there were several design-choices I were not happy with (and, at that time, it did not have many features I was looking for, but those have probably been added over the years). In particular I thought it made much more sense to use a full-featured existing graphics editor (like Inkscape) for drawing cards instead of trying to invent my own editor. Others obviously disagreed and instead of using my tool (or helping me improve it) they decided to make their own tools, and I have no problems whatsoever with that (100% agree with the maker of Multideck above, almost so much that I am tempted to start typing in all caps here).

questccg
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I guess that developing by community isn't what it is...

I meant no harm by the suggestion. I never insinuated one product was better than the other. And the easy answer would have been, Multideck does this and this and that and so forth better. I used to be a Software Developer who worked in large scale integration. Previously I used to work in C++ Development. So I know about software: no product has all the features you want. You need to figure out which one works best for you and the platform you are on.

@pelle brings an interesting point in that multi-platform development is possible as per his comment. This I don't know, even with C++ Software Development there were parts of the code which were platform specific (either the UI Libraries or the Database code, etc.)... Always something that prevented a solution to be truly "multi-platform".

I guess that MIGHT be able to be abstracted away... But then if you are using a HTML Library and on the other platforms there are no such libraries or the differences in implementation mean that some features are possible but others are not... It gets to be complicated working with multiple libraries on different platforms.

That being said ... The intention of my comment was not to offend anyone! All I was paraphrasing was: "Wouldn't you like to work with like-minded people on a product that you seem to care about?!" And like I said that, in my poor judgement I accidently offended Rick (Again apologies)... This was again rooted in my own "reflections" that "Damn it would be good to collaborate with someone nowadays" since projects are now having 5 to 8 people working together and not SOLO efforts which are less esthetic or simpler in terms of graphic appeal.

No reason to shout ... And yes nothing wrong with multiple products doing the same thing. Like I said this is common-place in software and there is Notepad, Notepad++, Textpad, etc. And a ton more.

Again my comment was biased because I was in a way "reflecting" on my own situation... Anyhow best to all you Software Developers ... I'm out of the business because I was frustrated with the lack of "experience" in terms of growth: nobody wants to train you and yet they expect you to have all the answers... I truly love Game Design ... Because there is always something new to LEARN and EXPERIENCE and to see what others are doing. The only problem that I see nowadays is that TEAMS are posting Kickstarter Projects. And like I said, it is become more and more difficult to compete with them. Point final.

Go forth and produce merry code... And please don't be offended. Cheers!

Rick-Holzgrafe
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Thank you, @questccg.

Thank you, @questccg.

Rick-Holzgrafe
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questccg wrote:@pelle brings

questccg wrote:
@pelle brings an interesting point in that multi-platform development is possible as per his comment. This I don't know, even with C++ Software Development there were parts of the code which were platform specific (either the UI Libraries or the Database code, etc.)... Always something that prevented a solution to be truly "multi-platform".

I agree. I've had a fair amount of experience over the years with various "multi-platform" platforms: some were frameworks that presented a common API, some were web-based frameworks. I've never found any to be terribly satisfactory; some were downright disastrous. (The latter was so long ago that I don't remember the name of the framework, and it wouldn't be useful today anyway.)

My issues with cross-platform solutions are different from yours, perhaps. A lot of Mac users are Mac users because they like the user interface and smooth integration with the hardware. This is usually what's lost in a multi-platform framework, and it can be a deal-killer for a lot of Mac users. There are those who don't mind, or will put up with it to get functionality they can't get any other way. But a well-made native solution always has that advantage for users of any particular system: familiar UI elements, smooth integration.

I've been a Mac developer since 1986; I worked for Apple for over a decade. I've always liked their stuff (on the whole, although nothing's perfect!) and I am firmly entrenched in their ecosystem of Macs, iPhones, and iPads. So branching out into Windows programming would be a complete departure for me: a huge monetary investment in new equipment and a huge time investment in learning new languages and variants, new frameworks, and so on. It's not worth it to me. So my apps are for Apple products and I don't expect that to ever change. I wish it were otherwise; I do get a lot of requests who want me to port my stuff to Windows!

pelle
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Applications on Mac being

Applications on Mac being like other Mac-applications or not is one of those things that results in having multiple applications for the same thing I guess. For me when I used Macs (both at home and at work, for almost a decade), I still pretty much treated those as just prettier Linux computers, and I always avoided using applications that were not available on both, because I still also used Linux. It was confusing if an application did not behave the same. I could accept that in some applications when I used them on a Mac I had to remember to press Cmd instead of Ctrl for keyboard shortcuts, but it was annoying when the differences went deeper than that.

Cross-platform was always the selling-point of C (and C++) and UNIX operating systems. Since I got into those things at the university it just became a habit to always worry about weird "other platforms". At work in most projects I also have to always think about all sorts of different hardware platforms that will run the same code. I work(ed) on some Linux-only projects, but even then there was always different hardware to worry about and other things that differed.

It is a way of future-proofing my own code as well. I do not know for sure what platform I will be on in a few years. And even on the same platform there are unfortunately breaking changes now and then, so it makes sense to always keep at least one or two abstraction layers between your code and the platform. I am not going to litter my code with Linux-specific calls even if I have no immediate plans to run it on anything else. That is a mistake I have tried to avoid since MSDOS-days.

About as far from boardgame design we can come, perhaps. :)

For my Inkscape extension not much of it applies as that is just a python script, and it is up to the Inkscape developers to worry about supporting different platforms. I think there has been one or two bugs in my code because I never test it on Windows, but nothing that required any major Windows-specific workarounds, mostly just relying on the APIs already existing in python to abstract differences between systems.

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