New to Lackey, question about carddata.txt and the tabletop.

[groveland]

Ahoy and salutations guys.
I am a rookie in every way here, including common coding practices (I know html and some ASP.NET, so I at least understand xml). I am using Lackey to suss out a game idea I have been working on for a while, and while most of this seems self-explanatory. Except for the database and the tabletop.

CARDDATA.TXT QUESTION SETUP:
I have several different unique types of cards that stay in their own decks and discard piles. They interact on the table, but they always start in their respective decks and end in their respective discard piles. No crossover. Kind of like using a deck of regular playing cards to track initiative in an rpg. Players draw them, refer to them when initiative is being called, and discard them when the turn is over, but there is no reason to stick them anywhere else or to have them clutter up the main carddata.txt file.

CARDDATA.TXT QUESTION PROPER:
The carddata.txt is a single file with a single set of column headers. I could just make a single giant carddata.txt file with a bunch of headers that are left empty for different types of cards. I get the impression that this is the way the file is intended to work. However, what I want to do is have unique carddata.txt files for each unique card type (player action file, initiative file, etc...). I feel like this approach would help me keep the cards straight during development, allow for a tidier file as there are no unused columns in the file, and just make reading everything easier. Is there something I am missing here? Is there a "best practice" approach to this that I don't know about? Is there a way to organize this in the single carddata.txt file that I don't see? Or can I break it up like I want to?

TABLETOP QUESTION PROPER:
If I want to make a graphic "tabletop" with zones of play instead of the generic background, how do I implement that? Can I make the cards snap into a display position inside those zones?

Thanks for reading. Sorry for the length.

[Trevor]

I suggest using a single file for all card data. It's easier to maintain that way. But if you do break it into multiple files, they must all have the same number of columns. The actual card data isn't used much anyway since people can read the card from the image.

Make a table top image and put it in your lackey folder's images/backgrounds/ folder, then load it in the appearance preferences.

No, you can't make things snap to different parts of the table. It's simple enough to just drag and drop them where you want them.