Here are the prototype dice for my game. Some of the symbols are likely to change, and the final colors will almost certainly be a little different, but as an early version I think they work quite well.

Bought the dice themselves from blankdice.co.uk. Printed on sticky paper, cut into squares, and stuck on.

Here are the tokens for my game. The hexagonal shapes are Mana Gems in each of the four elements. The triangular ones are Mana Prisms. These are nice and large, approximately 1 1/4 inches in diameter.

Printed on sticky paper, cut with a circle punch, and stuck onto plastic chips.

Here are the cards in my prototype's three main decks, all 72 of them. Lots of placeholder artwork visible here, but I think it still looks good. And I'll be replacing the cards gradually as more illustrations are finished.

Whew. That's a lot of cutting and sleeving. :)

Here is card number four, an 'earth' type:

And here is card five, a 'wind' type:

Technically, the earth card is a 'nature' card, a keyword I use when a card has equal amounts of earth and water in it. Mechanically, this makes no difference, but artistically it explains the dominant green colors.

And with that, that's all five card elements in the game. Yay! Thanks to Justin Lynch and Jes Cole for making these look great!

And here is card number three, a 'water' type card. Like the arcane card, this card stays in play and grants you a benefit each turn. In this case, the card can be activated to produce the mana specified by the symbols.

When this card is first acquired, only the top ability line is unlocked. The hexagonal symbols on the left are Mana Gems, tokens that can be added to the card to unlock the rest of the card abilities in order from top to bottom.

And another one...

Yay second card! This card differs from the first in its purpose. Where the first card is an item (something you'd want to sell to customers), this card represents a tool, something the artisan uses to help create other items.

Whereas the first card is a 'fire' type card, this card is an 'arcane' type. Arcane is the game's fifth element, representing a fusion of the other four elements.

Same caveat applies...  this card is 'done' in the sense that the concept is completed. I might end up making font changes or other little tweaks.

Card template?
Check.

Illustration?
Check.

Game icons?
Check.

Fonts?
Errr...  ummm...  check?

Cleared for liftoff.
3...  2...  1...  launch!

The first completed card for Manaforge! Yay! I use the term 'completed' loosely, of course. Everything is subject to change right up until the game goes to the printers. And I'm not 100% happy with the fonts, so I might have more hunting to do in that regard. Still, I think it's a pretty good first step.

Now that I'm working with artists, I'm starting to have to consider how my game will look once it's been printed. I've been using prototype cards and stickers that I've printed on my home computer for a while now. But I never really gave much thought about the differences in color between the computer screen and the printed version. I had noticed before that some colors didn't quite come out the same on paper, but I chalked it up to having a cheap printer.

Apparently this is more of a problem than I thought.

I know about color spaces in general. Computers represent colors using RGB (Red-Green-Blue) additive pixel values. Printers use CMYK (Cyan-Magenta-Yellow-Black) subtractive ink dots. But I guess I thought that the two were roughly equivalent, that a color on the computer screen would come out the same as on paper, if you just calibrated everything correctly. I guess not.

Then I saw some diagrams. Stuff about how some colors that can be viewed on the computer screen don't really have equivalents when printed. Some colors show up muted, dull, or grayish. I guess that meshes with what I was seeing; I was trying to use bright cyan colors for some of my icons and they came out looking kind of a dark greenish-blue.

From what I've been researching, a partial solution to this is to have the source image files be in CMYK format. If the art is originally made using those colors, then the translation to paper won't be as dramatic. Great, so I just ask my artists to give me files using that format.

Except, CMYK isn't a format. Okay, I can work around that. Some file formats handle CMYK data. PNGs don't. :(  Hrm, okay. TIFFs do. Better. But TIFF doesn't handle transparent bits, and I need icons and such that aren't exactly square. PDFs? Same deal. PSDs. Okay, that works. Those handle that color space, and can do transparency.

So...  what do I do with a PSD? I have editing tools that can convert those to other formats, but in the process, the image would get converted from CMYK to RGB, kind of defeating the purpose of having the artists give them to me in that format to begin with.

So, that just leaves... Photoshop. Meh. Expensive, and I'm not really that good with it. For putting the art pieces together, there's also InDesign. Again, meh. Same price problem, and I don't know that one at all.

Are there any other tools out there that can handle this type of file, from input through the pipeline to output, and that don't cost budget-shriveling sums of money? (Is this something the industry needs? Perhaps there's a potential for new software here.)

Oh well, at least Photoshop has a free trial. :P 

I guess it was bound to happen. Not like I could call myself a real game developer while only having ideas for one game in my head.

I don't even recall exactly what I was reading at the time. I think I was browsing through the forums at Board Game Geek, and I found a discussion on types of game mechanics. That nowadays there aren't really any new game mechanics, just rehashes of existing ones. I think the thread was something about applying transformations to existing mechanics to try to create new ones.

I was reading through the messages, not really paying that close attention. 'Mutate like this...', 'change this part around...', 'break down instead of build up...', blah, blah.

I didn't notice my muse (the same one that gave me the idea that became Manaforge) sneak up behind me, tap me on the back of the head, and say "Here's an idea."

Ummm...  thanks? Now what do I do with it?

Granted, this idea isn't really what anyone would consider that innovative. Other people create new ideas by taking an existing idea and rearranging it somehow. Me personally, I'm better at taking two existing ideas and combining them. And that's basically what this new idea is, two mechanics smooshed together. However, to the best of my knowledge, nobody has done this before.

I'd consider using the mechanic in my current game (or in an expansion), but it's really such a core game mechanic that it wouldn't fit well in what I'm doing now.

So, essentially, I have an idea for a new game.

Great! Except, that I don't want to dilute my focus on Manaforge. I think one of the reasons why that game is still chugging along in development is because I've been able to focus solely on that.

So, I guess this idea goes on the back-burner. Maybe it'll sit there quietly and wait until I can come back to it. Maybe it'll sprout legs and start running around my head until I give it some attention. I don't know how other developers handle multiple projects. Me, I don't multitask well. I'm afraid Manaforge will suffer if I try to work on a second thing at the same time.

We'll see.

So, going with my new idea for a story, I've started looking at re-theming my game's cards. The premise of the game before was wizards building defenses for a town, so the cards included stuff like magical crystals that projected barriers around the town, and huge summoned monsters that would stomp the invaders flat. But with the new theme (wizards crafting magic equipment), those types of cards don't make sense anymore.