How to Make a Card Game

In this mostly outdated guide, I walk you through making a card game, from the creation of the cards to publishing on the Workshop.

Deck Creation

So you want to make a card game? Here's what you've gotta do: First of all, you've gotta get some cards. Either scan some existing cards or make them yourself. Since a recent update, it doesn't matter what dimensions they are, so use square, rectangle, whatever. Next, you've got to get them into a 10x7 image. I like to process my scans into one image per card and then use Andrew Mazar's Deck Building Tool[www.nexusmods.com]. I actually never updated from version 1.6 of that tool, so it's probably got a whole lot of stuff I don't know about. I don't know about the custom ratio stuff, but if it's not in there yet, it's coming.

You get 69 cards per image, plus the Magic Hidden Card Image. This takes the last place in the deck template and is the image shown to other players when you hold face-up cards in your hand. It's not that important what it is, but it's nice if it looks good. Some question mark symbol is a classic.


So, you've got however many templates of the faces of up to 69 cards each, plus their Magic Hidden Card Image. The backs of the cards are going to stay as their own separate image, but be sure to save it as a .jpg to make sure the colors show up in the game properly.

Wait! Is your deck going to be sideways? Most cards have their longest sides on the sides, but if you want the longest sides to be on the top and bottom, you're going to have to do something extra. The front of the cards are going to want to be facing left, but the back of the cards will have to face right. Then, put them in the template and import them like normal.

Upload and Import

Okay, once you've got the face of your cards in a template and the back of your cards as its own image and everything in .jpg format, it's time to upload them. I use imgur[imgur.com] and it's never given me any trouble. Once you're signed up, just drag and drop and you can grab the direct link to the uploaded images. I usually transfer these to Notepad, just in case the browser bogs down the computer while dozens of cards are loading in.

Here's the info you'll need:
URL for the back image
URL for the face template
Number of cards in the template, not counting the Magical Hidden Image

Once you've got all that, it's time to load up Tabletop Simulator! Go into Single Player and load up the table you want to play cards on, along with whether you want Felt or Empty or anything like that. A quick note about custom boards at this point: I've not had much experience with them, but I've never had any problem getting a custom board to work properly on either the normal custom board surface or the giant table. Make sure they're in .jpg format, though, just in case.

Once you've got your table ready, Click Spawn Objects > Cards > Custom Deck. Here, you can enter all the information you gathered before, as well as whether it's a sideways deck or not. If you want you deck to have only one card, you will have to tell it to spawn at least two, but you can delete all the extras.

With any luck, you'll now have your custom cards available for physical manipulation! Throw them about, shuffle them and hold Alt over them to make sure everything looks right. Also, throw a few face-up cards to your invisible friends and see how they look in other people's hands to make sure the Magical Secret Image is working.

Set-Up and Publishing

Did it work? Great! You've now got your virtual hands on your very own set of virtual cards! Now, you can get a game of it set up, with all necessary props and allowances. If you need extras of a certain card, grab it and press C, then release it and press V to make as many as you want. While holding an item, press + to scale it up and - to scale it down. Also, you can lock objects in place by hovering over them and pressing L. This makes it so that they ignore physics and won't stack with cards.

If you want to use giant cards as some some of makeshift board, but don't want to lock them because you'll have to be moving them around, I recommend using the back of the card as the front. Just reverse the deck template creation process for these cards. See, smaller cards will stack with bigger cards they're put on top of if they're not locked down, but face-up cards don't stack with face-down cards. If you're only ever going to be putting your smaller cards face-down on the giant card boards, don't make the giant card boards upside down. It's obviously always easier to just lock cards, but this is an easy workaround for when that's not possible.

Once you've got a game ready to start, save it! You can then load up the game whenever you want and start playing, even when hosting a multiplayer game. The cards will automatically load up for anyone who joins your server.

But what if your game gets so popular that others want to host their own games? I suppose you'll just have to share it on the Workshop. Come on, don't be greedy! Get the game ready to start in Single Player again and, in the Menu, click Workshop Upload. Here, you'll need to set a title for your game, as well as a description and an image. Don't worry, this can all be changed later and nobody will see your game in the Workshop yet! You can just set some temporary things here.


Once the upload's complete, you'll want to keep the code - it'll let you update your game later and automatically send it to others who have subscribed.

Now, you can go to your Workshop Items page on your Steam profile, where your game will be waiting for you. Here are things people like when choosing a game on the Workshop:

• Screenshots, so they know what the game looks like. These can be added with the link on the right of the page of the Workshop Item.
  
• A description of the game, so they know vaguely how it plays.
  
• A full set of rules, so they can dive right in without having played ever before.

Once you've done everything you can for maximum public enjoyment of your game, it's time to let your baby free into the world. Click the Visibility options on the right and set your game to Public. In a short while, your game will show up on the list of most recent games on the Workshop. Congratulations!

Post-Release and Updates

Let me guess, the people are revolting. Also, they're not too happy about your game. Maybe they left some angry comments and threatened to get you banned from Steam. How were you to know your game had major balance issues and all the cards were all blurry and stuff? Never mind - with some quick fixes, we can quell these riots in a snap.

Remember the code you got when you uploaded your game to the workshop? No? It's in the URL for the Workshop page of your game. Go get it, I'll wait. Now, once you've finally fixed your bug-addled game by spawning in missing pieces or moving stuff around, you can release an update to your workshop item! Just go to the Workshop Upload menu inside of TTS and, instead of going through and uploading a second, fixed, version, just click the update option. Enter the code along with anything else you want to change. The title will need to be inputted again, otherwise it comes up blank in the Workshop Gamemodes menu. The image field, however, can be left blank. Once that's all done, you can go to the Workshop page for your game and edit your first, and hopefully last, set of patch notes. Congratulations, you're a game developer!

[Coping Kobold]

For those reading this guide today, you no longer need to keep the code to update your game. You can select the item from a drop-down in the workshop upload menu.

[Sethfem]

Hi!

Thanks for the tutorial. I was trying to add some cards and I see that there is a text editor in order to add text in the cards. I am trying to export those cards with the text, but I could not find the way. I am missing something?

[Boy slow down dropping allat😭]

noice

[Devlynn]

very good write up, thank you. I wish there was a way to upload the rules as a jpg image...

[Mat - allansianadventurer]

Ctrl+C is copy and Ctrl+V is paste, I think. Just pick up whatever you want to copy, copy it and then paste wherever you want.

[deadlysnuffleufagus]

I'm just wondering how to add a regular deck into a card game. The game I am trying to play with my mom generally uses two decks but I can't seem to find a simple copy and paste feature of any kind. Has anyone found a work around?

[Mat - allansianadventurer]

I'm a little behind on the updates and I don't know what kind of state the game is in now. In fact, this guide will probably soon be outdated, if it isn't already. I'd ask in the forums for help with your problem. I don't know what would be causing so much to load if it's just cards.

[zhek]

This is a super great guide, and i have used it to create a mod, but for some reason anyone who tries to join me must load 400+ objects when i only need to load 50+. Nobody can play with me and im wondering what i have done wrong, but i will keep experimenting.

Thankyou!

[MailOrderPotato]

Beautiful

[Mat - allansianadventurer]

Thanks!