These are awesome! I’d love to get a copy of these once things are worked out, and I’m more than happy to pay to support the project.
I’d be happy to obtain/buy a set. I’m always looking out for ideas for the Norfolk group
Croeso mawr, Ow! It’s a brilliant piece of work.
what sort of format would moo want?
Not sure - we’d have to chat to them to see if they can do exactly what we want - but as long as we can hammer out the terms, I’m sure they’d be good with anything that Craig thinks is tidy enough…
The trial with Magic Set Editor didn’t work out too well (way too fiddly), but I am now trying nanDeck, which is a program that uses a script language to generate playing cards. Its looking good, but I have yet to add images. The advantage of this program is that you do not have to design each card, but simply feed the text for cards into the program in a simple data file, making it simple to add new cards. That way, all people will need to do to extend the card set is add to the .txt file containing the story text; really simple and the data file could easily be shared via this forum.
I’ll report back with some sample cards later…
Hwyl,
Stu
Great idea - especially for groups of learners (or bootcampers?) I think you could play patience with a set too (for lonely learners) - putting cards together in different stories - or if there were some ‘picture only’ cards, making up your own stories about them. I’d be happy to pay £10 for a set of cards. Waiting with baited breath for more developments…
Hopefully this will work:
Hwyl,
Stu
Oh, wow, Stu, those look absolutely amazing. Fantastic work.
Diolch Aran! And all with 12 lines of code, a file of text and a directory containing the images. I will produce all 40 when Owain makes his cards available, and publish the code to create them. Then anyone can make the cards themselves, and add to them hopefully!
Hwyl,
Stu
What’s the licensing for those images? (I assume they’re not hand crafted, but apologies if they are!)
No idea. They are just examples. We can find public domain images if we want to use them widely…
Stu
Or throw it open to our resident artists and image creators…
Great work, Stu! Although I do still like Craig’s suggestion of creating vectors from the originals and then just adding some nice typography and texture. Much easier to adapt that way too. All in all though, I think it’s going to be melys! (Can I use it like that? If Taffman has ‘taclus’, can I have ‘melys’?)
[Officially offers ‘melys’ to Jon]
Bendigedig!
I had actually previously considered the possibility of entering this for the “learners game” in the Eisteddfod, but considered that seeing about throwing it out here for a pack to be available to anyone who wanted one would be quicker and more conducive to being of help than going down that route. I haven’t checked, but I had assumed that such things as intellectual property and copyright would mean that making it freely available in this way would rule me out- but it’s just good to see it may be of help to people!
stu said: “I will produce all 40 when Owain makes his cards available, and publish the code to create them.
That is a very generous offer, Stu. Your cards look absolutely wonderful. What I would say, though, is that the reason I was happy to have these particular cards used as learners tools is because I was lucky enough to playtest them and have them looked over by a few Welsh speaking friends (one a Welsh translator, one who used to write for PyC, and one who writes for Golwg 360), all of whom are good supporters of learners and of “Welsh as she is spoke”, so that I - myself- would prefer it if the language could be kept the same. I’m not saying anything against or about “Teithiais” vs “Wnes i deithio”, just that I am happier in this context with one rather than the other, I had the one checked and not the other, and I would be happier if the words were kept the same in the cards -that I make.
Though, as I say, I realise the implications of putting it out on this site.
Also, from a purely conceited point of view, I would prefer the cards that I myself make to contain my little scribbled doodles. It was a conscious choice, otherwise I would have printed out pictures from the internet onto the cards- an option I considered and rejected, and in playtesting they seemed to go down well, but just my conceit, as I say!
But, as I say, I realise the implications of making them freely available. Not much of a team player, am I! 
If you do put the code up, I’ll be happy to see about taking advantage of your skill and hard work and put my own cards in. Not demanding you put the code up for me, I will also be seeing about other ways, as mentioned in above posts! But those cards do look good! Thanks once again, Stu!
@Owain - I prefer the original drawings too. I wouldn’t have thought that sharing them would be a problem when it comes to submitting them for competition at the eisteddfod. Are they really that strict that they would have an exclusivity clause?
@Aran - Diolch. Wna i ddefnyddio fe ym mhobman!
That is awsome! Looking forward to getting a copy once they are available. They look like the sort of thing which we could use in the Brussels group, or even on your own if you fancy a bit of light hearted practice.
As was said earlier I guess you can make them available for the other languages in the SSI family quiet quickly once you’ve got the basic framework sorted out.
I guess you could also expand it over time as well.
Diolch yn fawr to everyone working on this!
Owain, have a look at the Creative Common series of licenses - things can be made freely available AND “Don’t meddle with” as you choose.
S’mae Owain,
Here is the nanDeck code:
'Place the story text into the following file
link=“c:
andeck\cardiau.txt”,id,first,last,fragment
[all]=“1-{(id)}”
[ink]=#000000
[green_bkgnd]=#00FF66
'Place card images in the following directory
[img]=dirfiles(“c:
andeck\img\”,bmp)
[card_id]=join("Cerdyn: ",[id])
border = mark, #C0C0C0, 0.001, markdot, #C0C0C0, 1
font = arial, 14, B, [ink]
text = [all], [first], 0.5, 0, 3, 1, left
text = [all], [last], 2.5, 0, 3, 1, right
image = “1-{(img)}”,[img],0.5,1,5,4,P
roundrect=[all],5%,60%,90%,35%,#000000,[green_bkgnd],0.1
font=arial,12,[ink],[green_bkgnd]
text=[all],[fragment],10%,62%,80%,31%,left,wordwrap
font=arial,7,[ink],[green_bkgnd]
text=[all],[card_id],0.5,7.9,1.7,0.5,center,center
Just place the card text in a file called c:
andeck\cardiau.txt, with the following layout:
id,first_letter,next_letter,story_text
e.g.
1,Ll,A,rhywbeth rhywbeth rhywbeth
2,A,F,rhwybeth arall rhywbeth arall
and so on.
To add the pictures, place them in the directory c:
andeck\img\. I opted for .bmp files, but the program supports other formats. Names the image files 1.bmp, 2.bmp, and so on. If you have no image for a particular card, say card 5 has no image, then place a file called 5.bmp in the directory that has just a white image in it. You need the same number of image files as entries in your cardiau.txt file.
In deference to your wishes, I shall produce my own set of cards for my personal use; I do apologize if you felt that I have used your idea without permission and changed the wording to my preferred dialect without your permission; I just enjoyed your idea and ran with it.
Feel free to use the code above as you wish or not. Personally, I think it is an incredibly simple way to generate, update, maintain and share any kind of cards for a card game.
Hwyl,
Stu
Sorry, just noticed this (it was late):
Leia Fee: have a look at the Creative Common series of licenses - things can be made freely available AND “Don’t meddle with” as you choose.
That would be applicable to Owain’s cards, but not of course, to my program code, which can be used to generate cards with any image or text on them the user desires.
Hwyl,
Stu
Thank you to everyone for the compliments and interest!
I have a friend who is a professional (old style pen 'n paper!) illustrator, and another who is a professional graphic designer, and I will see about working with them to get something sorted out, and what is the cheapest way of doing it.
I was strongly advised by a few people to do exactly that before mentioning it anywhere else, but I thought that sharing it with the Welsh language learning community was more important.
So I’ll see about what I can sort out and be back in touch about them ASAP!
Thank you once again!