Plugin Creating Program

[Fluffy]

So I just discovered Lackey today and I love this idea. I will be using it to create a custom card game with some friends but the Plugin Creation Table of Contents is a bit overwhelming. I was surprised to figure out there isnt another .exe file to create cards with and create all that text for you as well as guide you along. If I could create a program like that I would but, I probably would be posting this in the first place but I think it would be a great idea for total noobs such as myself.

What are everyone elses thoughts on this?

[AuraDragon]

The plugin creation tutorial is overwhelming simply because of the number of optional features that it details.  Actually making a plugin is quite simple, especially if you use War3000 as a base.

I believe that the best program to create plugins is simply Microsoft Excel, as filling in the card data and obtaining card images is the only tedious, and difficult, part of making a plugin.

There are some specialized programs like Gatherer Extractor that can obtain card data and format it for Lackey, but they only support a single game.

[Nirrol]

@OP
I think you might be a bit confused as to what LackeyCCG is and how it works.
It's main function is to create plugins to allow existing games to be played online, using scans of the existing cards - it is (technically) possible to create a program to "scan the scan" and create a text database of anything it finds, bit it would be impossible for it to arrange this data in a meaningful way - it could not, for example, determine what a symbol represents, if it could even recognise it as a symbol at all.

A card text database is NOT needed to use Lackey, as you can (hopefully) just read all the card images. A Text database simply makes it easier to group cards according to different criteria.

Apps DO exist to create new cards (either for a player created game or a virtual game add-on) but they are either game specific (e.g. to create new cards for MTG) or they require all the different images/text required to create every card in a repository and some form of "programming" to pull them all together. It can be (and has been) done using an Office suite and mailmerge/reporting systems, DTP applications, or good old fashioned Photoshop.

Whichever way you do it, creating a plugin/add-on requires a significant amount of work on your part.

Tip: If you download a card text database to create a plugin - READ THROUGH IT SEVERAL TIMES and compare it to the card images. If you release a plugin with errors in it, it's your fault, not the person who created the database