Hello everyone,
This update brings a highly requested feature, the ability to set quantities for each card in the editor and through CSV imports. The exporter will add the additional cards to the page, or flow to additional pages if needed.
Alongside this, the editing experience has received major improvements, including a fully reworked grid system and viewport system with smoother zooming, sharper visuals, and better overall performance. The font selection menu, editing controls, and general UI have also been refined to make designing and managing cards faster and more intuitive.
CSV NOTE: Every old column has been moved one cell to the right, as the first column now serves to set the quantity of each card to export. You will get an import error informing you that a number was expected from the quantity column if you try to import a CSV with the old structure.
As always, thank you for your continued feedback and support, keep sharing your ideas and bug reports on the Card Engine Discord or Community Hub!
Patch Notes
General
Removed the almost transparent project name text from the bottom left
Improved loading times for fonts in both the asset browser and the font selection dropdown menu
Added card quantity to export functionality to Card Engine. You no longer need to create duplicate cards for this purpose
CSV
Added a quantity column to the CSV files generated to configure this new card data
CSV now takes template cards into consideration when retrieving tags. This should prevent confusion if exporting a CSV file with no cards in any deck in the collection
Will now throw an import error message if there is less header cells than the importer requires
Editor
Added an input field in the top left panel to specify the quantity to export
Added a minimum font size field to the text UI layout. This gives more control over text scaling. The previous single value font size continues to act as a max value
Font size can now be set as low as 1 pts using the new minimum value field
Changes to number-input field margins for better alignment
Object names in the layer list will now try to use the object tag if it’s not empty
The grid system has been reworked from scratch
New shader based approach improves grid performance significantly by moving the calculations entirely over to the GPU
The grid is now generated from the center of the card instead of the lower left
The minimum grid size is now 10
New viewport system that better handles different card sizes
Adjusted zoom constraints
Reworked zoom and drag logic
Added horizontal and vertical pan scrollbars that appear as you zoom in
Added a reset camera button that restores the camera to its default position and zoom
Added a padding input field to the editor config menu for controlling padding with the new editor viewport and zoom constraint changes
Moved the close button to the top-left for more visual space in the viewport
Selection and dotted outlines now become thinner as you zoom in
Made the editor interface background slightly transparent as slightly seeing the cards in the background looked kinda cool
You can now mouse-wheel-drag from anywhere within the viewport to move the card. It no longer needs you to hover the cursor over the card to move it. Use the new reset camera button if you somehow drag the card out of the viewport by accident or double click the mouse wheel
You can now hold the arrow keys for continued precision movement. The speed increases the longer you hold it
Changed the template info popup text slightly to make it clearer
Duplicating elements will no longer offset their position. This behaviour was for easier selecting the duplicated object, but it’s made redundant by the layer UI overhaul in update 0.17
The resize cursor should now scale better across a wide range of windowed app sizes
Font selection dropdown menu
This is the dropdown menu from clicking the font button under the text section with an object selected, not the texts found in the asset browser.
Removed the loading text
Sequential loading times has been significantly increased. After the first initial time opening it, the list can practically appear in an instant
The list now scrolls to where you was previously upon being reopened. This combined with “instant” loading should make it a significantly more pleasant experience when testing different fonts
Variables
Added a new built in variable {deckcount} which formats to the total amount of cards within the deck
The {decknum} variable now defaults to 9 instead of - so that it looks better on Templates
Text formatting
Added a new tag to text formatting for curving text, . This tag requires the end tag to apply
Combine the new curve tag with variables like the built in {name} variable to get a simple curved title: {name}
The curve tag can take two values, the first is curve strength and the second is a character rotation multiplier. The latter is entirely optional as text is rotated automatically along the curve. E.g. . Use . for decimal and , as separator
Project Hub/Main Menu
I’ve updated the website and documentation, and added a Documentation button to the Main Menu that links to the new, more guide-oriented documentation page
Help centre window
Added a new Bug report form on the website. Changed the Steam community link to this new bug report form
Project Card Size window
Small changes to the preview-card design
Now displays estimated corner size value in both pixels and real life measurements instead of the old % value
Raised the corner rounding max value to 256 px
Raised max px value to 2048 (≈173.4mm)
Card collections (Decks/Templates/Recycle Bin)
Some changes to deck UI design
Decks can finally be moved up or down in the list (Excluding the default deck, which will continue to be locked at the top)
Pre-made template TCG/Poker card examples
Updated designs and texts on most of the cards to showcase newer features like shadows, outlines, text icons, text formatting and variables
Exporter
Now that you can set quantities for each card, both in the editor and through CSV imports, the exporter will automatically duplicate those cards as needed, flowing them onto additional pages when required
Fixes
Fixed an issue where importing a CSV could cause the last card opened in the editor to not properly have the changes applied. It would look like all cards in the collection got updated correctly, but when the last edited card would be reopened in the editor, or the project reloaded, that single card could be reverted to the pre-CSV import state
Fixed an issue where CSV could change objects with no tag if the corresponding column header tag was removed from the CSV file before importing. (This meant the system saw an empty header tag, so it applied this data to objects that also had no tag)
Fixed incorrect scaling on the + icon of the create new card buttons inside card decks. The icon will no longer disappear when the collections are zoomed out max on a lower resolution
Clicking to copy a card ID to the OS clipboard now correctly prefixes it with the required CSV 'ID' string
Fixed an issue where the clipboard could fail to copy and paste shadow and outline data
Fixed an issue where the clipboard could fail to copy and paste text content when copying and pasting entire layers
You can now use both , and . (comma and punctuation) when typing in decimals in number fields. This will make it easier for those on different keyboard layouts (Europe/Asia). Please do let me know if there is a field I might have missed
Fixed the ‘Learn more’ button in the template info window sending you to the Frostzone home page instead of the documentation page for templates. (This was a redirect because of changes to the documentation url)
Fixed an issue where cards rendered in the collections could render wrong text if the text object were missing an object ID, causing it to default all missing object ID texts to the first text data found. This only happened if importing very old XML data or opening very old projects from before Object IDs were even introduced, and a card face refresh (E.g. flipping the collection) would fix it
Fixed missing + icon in the color swatches section of the color picker
Fixed a small graphical flicker that could occur when transitioning from main menu project loading to project initialization loading
Fixed a bug where the {decknum} built in variable also counted pooled, disabled cards, causing it to show wrong numbers after deleting cards in the same deck