Card Back Visibility

[Waterhorse]

I've been banging my head on this for a while now. When you have multiple card backs, is there a way to make them visible on the viewer for the opponent? The card is on the table, face down. I can get the owner to view both sides of the face down card, but opponent can't see either, just the card on the table. It's too small to read and it doesn't react to trying to display the name. I can't find anything on the plugin creation page and I haven't any success searching through the forums.


<definition><kind>ISALLOWINGMULTIPLECARDBACKS</kind></definition>
<definition><kind>ISYOURFACEDOWNVISIBLE</kind></definition>
<definition><kind>BACKVISIBILITY</kind><value>BACKVISIBILITYSHOWFACES</value></definition>

[CrazyChucky]

What do you mean "the opponent can't see either"? What does the opponent see in the card viewer pane when they mouse over the card on the table, just a blank space?

Some screenshots might be helpful in explaining both what you want to happen, and what is happening.

[Waterhorse]

When I mouse over the cards, everything works like I want. The viewer shows the current side with the option to view the other side by double-clicking the viewer.
When I'm the opponent however, if the card is flipped then it only shows the cardback. The unflipped card functions like before, showing the current side, double-click for the other. I want the opponent to be able to view the flipped card.

[CrazyChucky]

Ah, okay, I see what you're asking now. Unfortunately, as far as I'm aware, this is a limitation of Lackey; there's ISYOURFACEDOWNVISIBLE, but no similar option for cards that aren't yours.

There are two workarounds I can think of. Neither is ideal, but depending on how your game works, one of them might be sufficient. (I don't know anything about how Exceed functions.)

The simplest is for players to just flip and reflip cards when they need to read them. This requires no additional work on your end, of course, though it could be confusing for players to see each other doing this just to check things, when the card isn't supposed to be "actually" flipping.

The second option would be to create tokens of the backside, either instead of or in addition to the "actual" backside. As an example, in Magic, even double-sided cards need to be turned "face-down" sometimes; that is, show a standard back rather than the "flipped over" version. So I give all cards the standard back, and cards that have a special backside have a script to spawn a token of it.

Depending on your needs, you could do both. If the card has both sides defined, and is currently face-up on the table, then anyone who mouses over it can see both sides in the viewer. Then if, as a game action, someone wants to flip the card over on the table, what they could do instead is right-click it and select the script to spawn the token, then place that token next to or overlapping the actual card. Then you could still tell at a glance which state it's in on the table, and everyone can still see both sides. (They could mouse over the token to see the back, and mouse over the original to see either the front or the back.) If you need to flip the card face-up again, simply drag the token to any non-table zone and it will cease to exist.

[Waterhorse]

What I think I'll end up doing is adding a script to spawn the flipped side as a card. Since the cards don't switch very often, the player can simply drag the old card back to the Fighter zone. I'll keep both the cards double-sided. It maybe overkill but I like options.

Thank you for your help! I didn't know you could add scripts like that! A simple google search told me what I needed to know. It's working now and I'm glad.

[CrazyChucky]

That could work! One thing to keep in mind is that if you create them as nontoken cards, both versions will be available in the deck editor. Adding "Token" to the beginning of the type line on cards that you only intend to spawn keeps them from cluttering up the master card list.