An invention!

Besides the visual effect, have you found any use in terms of game rules.

I mean, it is a bit useless, to view the card after in reach your hand since, the oppossing players won't see it anyway. So besides the visual effect which is cool, it has no use.

If the card materialise itself when you play it, then it is different since you don't know what you are playing, and you are taking a chance to play this card.

The idea seems pretty interesting, though I would rather see the card created from a biometertics point of view. Such that the card WOULD change based on some characteristics of the player holding the card. Or even using the level of heat that a player is given off, so on those cold hand days you might see a different card as compared to those days of putting your hand over the nice warm camp fire!

For example, when I hold the card, it might reveal a card with "Build an Army at Half Cost", option on it. But when another player holds the card, it might show the "Double Strike" card, which allows them to do double damage on an attack.

On another note, I DONT want to even think about the cost involved in creating something like this. 1000 decks of regular cards costs enough, imagine the cost of making a 52 card deck of these bad boys!!! *OUCH*

I agree with Larienna and Gogolsky.

If you're still interested, there are special inks that change color when heated. I remember having a design magazine about special printing inks, and one of the examples was an apparently plain black square. When heated with the hand or breathe, a greenish picture appeared. The visual effect was certainly quite impressive. But I guess it's something expensive, and the heat induced change tended to loose responsiveness as months went by.

Heat sensitive inks and materials are pretty common in toys (there's a Barbie doll with color changing hair) and children's cups. There are also thermometers made using similar products. A Google search for heat sensitive ink will return a lot of links.

Ariel

Besides the fact that the Star Wars novels were, with the sole exception of the Timothy Zahn series, utter and complete crap, I have to say that the description of the card game played between Han and Lando (I don't think it was Sabaac, actually, but some other) in one of them was truly, exceptionally horrible.

As a game designer and player, I just have to make the point that there's no way anyone would ever play such a stupid game, where the rules change at random times throughout. Imagine Fluxx, but the cards that control the rules are played at random times by a computer. Wow, what fun that would be! Let's stake our fortunes on it! It'll be zany!

For the record, everything that happens in a Star Wars novel should be ignored because the authors so clearly never saw the movies. There's no way Han Solo would ever bet any money on such a ludacrous game. Lando might have liked gambling, but he wasn't a moron, as players of this game would certainly have to be.

When I was in tech sales, I saw a video demonstration of e-paper (or some competing similar concept) except the "image" was downloaded onto the sheet by swiping it through a writer that looked like a modified credit card reader. Each strip of paper had a strip to recieve this information placed along one side. But my overall impression was that e-paper was flimsy and delicate, far too delicate for a game. But mounted on cardstock, it would probably work, and this would make the swiping easier, too.

But we never got around to marketing the stuff, and I heard nary a thing about it in the years since (this was in 1999), until I read this thread. Glad to see the idea's still alive! It's got to be further along than what I saw way back when.

To be fair, since Lucas clearly didn't tell anyone how the story actually worked, they were obviously shooting in the dark. The first Zahn books aren't *entirely* contradicted by the prequel trilogy, but it comes darn close ;-) All the rest are, as you say, complete crap.

Um, electronic paper, yeah, that's what we were talking about. I think it's cool, but nowhere near conceivable as a mass market product yet. Some fantastic ideas there though - I want to play that one which changes according to who is holding it.

: no-one said you have to be able to actually produce GDS entries did they? :-)

Well not necessarily since the content of the card can be numerised. So for example, instead of buying 100+ collectible cards to make a deck. You buy 50 electronic cards that will be your deck and you download the necessary datafiles to draw the cards. If you want to change your cards, you just redraw the cards. It will also allow you to make your own cards.

(I think one of the Jedi Academy books has a sabacc game between Han and Lando with a bit of detail)

Hi,

I thought of this exact thing when I read the first post. And, yes, it is in one of the Jedi Academy books. And it worked much like this too.

Live long and prosper, Qundar out.

The problem with a ecard CCG is the same than computer software : Piracy, Sharing, etc.

If my friend have the files for a card, I can borrow his files to make my cards, and I don't need to pay for any cards. So I think most of the money will be made on the ecard themselves.

The advantage, is that it is very ecological : no production, no shipping, no waste ( except for the ecard production )

Disadvantage : The CCG company will not make as much money.

Hi,

I like this epaper concept. You could sell the game(s) in 3 parts: the reader, the files, and the cards. You have the reader that you slide the cards into and it would change it to whatever it was. Plus, you could sell little cartridges with the files about which cards are which. And this could help cut down on the piracy thing. For example, I buy the reader for $20 and a cartridge for $5 (and this particular cartridge is for, well, lets say Magic, I've never played it, but I've heard of it). Then I buy a pack of ecards for...$5. I put the cartridge into the reader, which means I can slide my cards through it and play the game. However, I can't share the files with a friend. I can share the cartridge, but is that any different than video game systems like the playstation? So the main money will be made off of the cartridges, rather than the cards or readers. At least that's the way I see this whole thing working.

Live long and prosper, Qundar out.