Links
Similar games
1,000 Blank White Cards
Dvorak without the rule structure - more of an exercise in artistry and improvisational humour, with a leaning towards the surreal and the non sequitur. The original game for blank pieces of cardboard, with browseable card archives.
Bartok
Another Nomic card game, playable with a standard deck of playing cards and focusing more on memorised rule creation than writing anything down. Essentially Uno (or Eights, or whatever your local species) with a "make up a new rule when you win a round" addendum. Fun.
Mao
Bartok with one extra rule; that all new rules are secret.
Nomic
The original game of self-amendment, which has proven particularly suitable for online play. Nomic.net provides the original Suber ruleset, as well as links to existing online Nomics and a wide range of relevant material and discussion.
Game engines
Apprentice
Apprentice is a lo-fi card-game engine for real-time play; despite the graphical drag-and-drop interface, no card art is used.
Although geared by default for Magic: The Gathering, Apprentice's data files are in text format, and by replacing certain files with correctly-formatted equivalents, it can be altered to run any Dvorak CCG set. The one-deck-per-player nature of the engine prevents it being any use for shared-deck Dvorak games, however.
Requirements
- Windows 95/98
- 2MB of hard drive space
Exporting Dvorak decks
Dvorak decks can be exported into Apprentice using the downloadable APPR2CSV utility, by following these steps:
- Click "Generate Apprentice CSV" in the infobox of a CCG set - this will export the set in an appropriate comma-separated value format.
- Cut and paste the CSV section into a plain text file called "dvorak.csv".
- Run appr2csv dvorak.csv from the DOS command line.
- Make a backup of "cardinfo.dat" from Apprentice's "Sets" subdirectory.
- Rename the generated "dvorak.dat" to "cardinfo.dat", and move it into the "Sets" directory.
- Open Apprentice, and your Dvorak CCG set should be loaded in. If you have any corrupted cards, you can attempt to fix the CSV manually, and should leave a comment on the links talk page so that we know there's a problem.
The Gatling Engine
CCG Workshop's Gatling Engine is a card-game engine for real-time play. It supports a variety of games provided by the site, and a "gatlingDevKit" exists for creation of further games. This engine has not yet been tested for Dvorak decks.
Requirements
- Windows 2000/XP (Windows 98 may encounter stability issues)
- 512MB RAM
- Approximately 80MB hard drive space
- 56Kbs or higher internet connection, broadband recommended
Generic Collectible Card Game
The GCCG Engine is a card-game engine for real-time play. It's not immediately clear whether it's possible to add new card sets to it.
Requirements
- Mac/Linux/Windows. Claims to work on any platform with SDL.
Lackey
CCG engine, not clear if it allows shared-deck games or on-the-fly card creation. Deck creation is based around 'plugin' modules that can be updated as needed.
The wiki now supports Lackey plugin export: just click the appropriate link in the deck page.
Requirements
- Mac/Windows.
Thoth
Thoth is a generic graphical card-game engine, playable real-time or turn-based via email. A couple of Dvorak decks - Time Machine and Mediaeval Warfare - have been formatted for Thoth. Thoth can apparently be used to play creative Dvorak, although this has not been tested.
Requirements
- Unknown, other than being Windows-only.
Nomicville Cardtool
The Nomicville Cardtool is a pretty generic card-game engine, built into your friendly web-browser and primarily designed for long term play. Its very new, and so still in testing. Right now creating games is disabled, but if you want to create a game of Dvorak (or some other card game) contact me somehow and I'll set you up. To create a game, you'll need image files for each card (including a back) and a basic outline of what functions you want the game to have.
Right now, there is a testing game in progress. You can joined that game with the password 'testtest1'. Feel free to explore the features, make suggestions, and try to hack my website thanks to some security hole I probably created while coding it.
Requirments
- A web browser with javascript enabled. Eventually I'll unrequire javascript.
Guide
- Go to the website and sign up for the forum. Integrating it into SMF made my job a whole lot easier.
- From the cardtool page, select "Join a Game" to be taken to the join a game page.
- Select a game and input the proper password. You will either join the game or be told you didn't join the game.
- Your game will appear on the sidebar menu. Select it to be taken to the gameplay screen.
- Basically everything on this screen is collapsible. Click a header to collapse/show the content found in it. This prevents all the hands from cluttering the game.
- Depending on the settings of the game, there will be a varying number of decks and hands. A "deck" is NPC controlled, as in the Draw Pile or the Discard Pile. Every player has equal access to a deck. A deck can be either set as "Discard Pile" which appears face up to the players, or "Draw Pile" which appears face down.
- "Hands" belong to the actual players. Anyone can move a card from any hand, but depending on who you are you see the cards differently in the game status. Hands can have five different types: Pure Private--where only the owner of the hand can see the cards; Semi-Private--where only the owner of the hand can see the cards, but other users may "peek" at the cards; Public--where everyone may see the cards; Hidden--where no one may see the cards; and "forehead" where the owner cannot see the cards but everyone else can. For the purposes of Dvorak, your "Hand" would probably be Semi-Private, while your "Things" would be Public.
- Hand can also be assigned as "value setting" or not. If a hand allows value setting, then you can change the value of a card. This is an easy way to make a card 'tapped' or to put some sort of counter on the card.
- There are several actions that you can take. You can move any card from the game to any other location. You also can move the top card or a random card from any location to any other location. You can peek at any "Semi-Private" hand; revalue any cards in a value-setting hand; shuffle any discard pile(or none) into a draw pile; say something; or attempt to reverse a move. Attempting to reverse a move will try and undo whatever action was done, in the case of someone making a mistake. Certain actions, like a shuffle cannot be un-done.
- There is a moderator side as well, that includes powers like booting players, changing the password, and backing up the gamestate--but that side hasn't been totally finished yet and that is why you are not allowed to actually create games yet--just tell me what you want and I will see what I can do.
Games
If anyone is interested in trying to play a game of Dvorak, feel free to contact me by whatever means you want to. Playing requires images for each card, but if you are feeling lazy you can just pick one of the good decks on this site and i'll take the time to transcribe the cards into images. Ask me if you have any questions. (Email, IM, my talk page here or on my forums all work for contacting me)
Blank card resources
PlainCards
A site that sells cardstock sheets of blank, micro-perforated cards, in various sizes and styles.
Tools
Deck Creator
The first draft of a Windows-based deck editor from Eyecreate.
Magic Set Editor
Magic Set Editor supports the creation and printing of decks. It originally supported only Magic: The Gathering decks, but now can be extended to support a variety of CCGs. It features card backs that can be easily edited by any image editing program, and style markup sheets that can be somewhat easily edited by a text editor.
Dvorak templates for MSE include a plain version and a black version. They're simple templates that can be duplicated if you wish to make one for your particular deck.
Other game sites
Ludocity
A creative wiki for street games and pervasive games, with rulesets being released under creative commons licences. The site includes a couple of card-based games.
