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An invention!

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Stainer
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Think of holding cards in your hand. Like 5 cards, or so. As if you're playing poker. Now, what if the card was dealt to you blank... completely blank. Nothing on it. And when you hold it in your hand, it takes the heat from your fingers, turns that heat into energy (I know... Heat is already enegery...) and the card lights up showing you what's on it! And maybe there's a little randomizer on the card so the card randomly chooses what to display from a set of cards it stores in memory. That would be cool. I already have a game idea for this too. Anybody know how to invent this?

Rob

SenorOcho
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Sounds pretty similar to Star Wars' sabacc, where you just had your "cards", and their values were determined randomly at the start of the game.

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

Anonymous
A LIGHT CARD?

I like the idea. I havent played the star wars card game before but an actuall card heated my your warmth of your hand and displaying the card at random. hmm sounds very cool. This invention I wouldn't know how to work it but you would like some help on the display on working on the project I have no problem designing it for you with your ideas of course.
I can think up a few things pretty much off the top of my head. But then again I am afraid that the game can be cheated some how or some way. I wouldn't think so but that is how I think of it. ohhh brain storm. Pm me and we can talk. I just had an awesome idea. and the game won't be able to recieve hackers for the game.

BullDog
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jord
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An invention!

If I recall, there was a lot of detail given to sabaac in one of the books covering Han's background. Odds are google will turn something up if you're interested.

larienna
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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.

Gogolski
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Larienna wrote:

Quote:
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.
I can see the use of it when the card has several 'faces' stored in it. That way, you do not know what cards or how many of them are in the card deck. Other than that, it's all about the visual I suppose...

Zzzzz
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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*

jwalduck
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A card made from the same stuff as a strip thermometer could show different things at different temperatures. These could be effectively random as the heat from the players hand varies. The problem I see with this is that the cards would have no memory and would constantly change with your changing grip and rearrangement of the cards. Once you lay them on the table the text would change then disappear.

Modern batteries also have the same material in the charge testers on their side. Current from the battery heats a resister that changes the strip thermometer to show the battery's charge. You could possible do the same thing with cards where each card forms part of the battery (different cards are cathodes and anodes) and when you held them against each other they produce a weak charge and light up text on the cards. Again the problem is when you sepparate the cards they will go blank.

The other alternative would be an electronic "card" with the following properties:
* Could display any card on its face randomly drawn from a set of possibilities
* Knew who is holding it
* Can remember what card it is being

You would also want to add to this list:
* Can communicate with the other cards in the game to create a virtual deck
* Are able to download new deck types to play different games on the same hardware.

This hardware already exists - Gameboy DS and PSP. These platforms can do every thing on your list. I am not suggesting you have one handheld for each card but each player's PSP can hold their "hand of cards" and talk to the other PSPs in the game via WiFi - exchanging cards and card effects as required.

seo
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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

Infernal
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Have you heard of E-Paper?

With E-Paper you can plug it in to a computer and then have the computer display any image on it. At the moment it is only black and white but they will soon have colour. Another good thing about E-Paper is that once you have displayed something on it you can disconect it from the computer and the image will stay, but while it is conected to a computer you can change the display as much as you want. The thickness of E-Paper is about that of cardboard, so it would be a good thickness for cards.

If you had a small handheld device that could generate the card designes and conect and write onto E-Paper then this would be the system nessesary to impliment your idea. Also once a player has bought the handheld device (this would be the most expesive bit) they could just buy black pre-made E-Paper cards (I'm sure that someone will make them) and conect this to the writer. Player's could download new cards off the internet.

Actually this could be a game system. Just upload the required cards (or even game board) to the apropreate E-Paper and play the game. Once a device like this is made then it would eliminate a lot (but not all) manufacturing costs of board games (this is why I think someone will end up making a system like this).

Hedge-o-Matic
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jord wrote:
If I recall, there was a lot of detail given to sabaac in one of the books covering Han's background. Odds are google will turn something up if you're interested.

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.

Stainer
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jwalduck wrote:
A card made from the same stuff as a strip thermometer could show different things at different temperatures. These could be effectively random as the heat from the players hand varies. The problem I see with this is that the cards would have no memory and would constantly change with your changing grip and rearrangement of the cards. Once you lay them on the table the text would change then disappear.

Modern batteries also have the same material in the charge testers on their side. Current from the battery heats a resister that changes the strip thermometer to show the battery's charge. You could possible do the same thing with cards where each card forms part of the battery (different cards are cathodes and anodes) and when you held them against each other they produce a weak charge and light up text on the cards. Again the problem is when you sepparate the cards they will go blank.

This is quite fasinating. I never even thought of the strip thermometer, yet I see them on aquariums all the time!

I don't fully understand cathodes and anodes (I did a bit of research), but how (or what) would you do to put them onto cards? Would there be a chemical reaction between the cards, causing them to light up? How safe are these things? I"m really interested in this. This is quite neat.

Thank you all for the responses. I like to invent things!

Rob

Hedge-o-Matic
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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.

Anonymous
An invention!
Scurra
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Oops - hijacked the thread. Sorry.

Hedge-o-Matic wrote:
Besides the fact that the Star Wars novels were, with the sole exception of the Timothy Zahn series, utter and complete crap, [...]
For the record, everything that happens in a Star Wars novel should be ignored because the authors so clearly never saw the movies.
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? :-)

Kreitler
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Re: Oops - hijacked the thread. Sorry.

Scurra wrote:
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.

Believe it or not, I heard that flexible computer screens may be in production as early as next year. I'll believe it when I see it, though...

K.

larienna
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Quote:
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*

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.

TrekNoid
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Quote:
You buy 50 electronic cards that will be your deck and you download the necessary datafiles to draw the cards.

I just don't know that technology has reached the point where you can create card-sized electronic paper items that would be playable like cards... for anything even reasonably priced.

About the closest I could imagine would be putting barcodes on the cards, and inserting them into a reader during play that would tell you what they were. That way, the randomizing element doesn't have to live on the card itself.

TrekNoid[/code]

Qundar
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SenorOcho wrote:
Sounds pretty similar to Star Wars' sabacc, where you just had your "cards", and their values were determined randomly at the start of the game.

(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.

Infernal
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Quote:
I just don't know that technology has reached the point where you can create card-sized electronic paper items that would be playable like cards... for anything even reasonably priced.

Once you have a set of epaper cards (and a reader/writer/storage device) then you don't have to buy another "set" of these cards. New games can be sold without manufacturing costs, and thus reduce your overhead.

I see the "market" of this system would be CCG designers, rather than the public (well ultimately the public) as it would reduce the cost of producing the game (if the system is sold seperately to the game) and therby increasing the profits that they can make, as well as being able to undersell the competition (other CCG makers). Also because of the nature of the medium (electronic) they can bring incremental updates (small expansion packs) and thus have a higher turnover of product rather than relying on big, one off expansions.

The nature of the E-Paper system would change the way that CCGs would be marketed.For one they would not realy be "Collector" as you can just down load the cards that you want, they would be more "Customizable".

larienna
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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.

Anonymous
An invention!

Unless the cards have activation codes like Microsoft XP.

Qundar
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An invention!

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.

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