Let’s say I want to create some trading cards similar to Pokémon cards. How do I do that?
In what context? The graphic? The player account data? Some digital signature if it’s offline version?
Just the sprites, I guess?
Also, where would it be best to publish the game? Should I publish it on Steam, Google Play, the Apple Store or somewhere else?
Anyway, I asked Steam. They said that it’s possible to publish a trading card game on their platform. They also said that if I want to, I can create my own booster packs with my trading cards and sell them through micro transactions.
So I’m going to try that for starters.
I’d still like to know how you create the sprites?
Hire a designer would be the obvious answer.
I’d like to create them myself.
Look for some designs on Internet and mimic their style with your own graphics. You can use a painting application.
This this a real question? Same way you make anything on a computer, you get a program to make the desired files you need.
In this case, any of the countless art programs that are out there. Photoshop and the rest of the Adobe suite, Krita, Aseprite, etc etc etc, depending on the style of art you want.
I already found a style that I’d like, like I said in my original post.
I tried creating some cards with a basic painting program, but the result was terrible.
Yes. No one is good at art on their first go. Don’t be too dissuaded by that.
In any case, card game art is a combination of elements. The card frame is generally created in a graphics design program (for example Adobe Indesign). As are the symbols/icons, usually.
Then the card usually features a piece of art. Which… can be created by the infinite different ways one can create art.
In many cases the cards aren’t all manually created as well. MtG has their own programs where they can input a bunch of data and it generates the final product for them (of which they can tune afterwards, I believe). Probably something I’d personally do if I needed/wanted to make a card game with any significant number of cards; though I’d do this inside Unity with editor scripting.
Like a lot of game dev things, it’s complicated, and there’s usually many, many steps involved. And you usually won’t get it right the first time, or the first dozen or so times.
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Cards aren’t a single image. They’re a composite of multiple image and text components. My current work project is a card game and we have around 30 UI components (containers, images, and texts) making up a single card that is rendered by UGUI. We use Figma to do the design work with Photoshop to create most of the images.
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I see, I will keep that in mind.
To create the illustrations, you can use Photoshop, Clip Studio Paint, Krita and a graphic tablet.
However, learning to draw illustrations is a long process. I’ve been drawing for about 16 months and I’m not yet able to create AAA card illustrations.
I’m going to try to create some cards that looks somewhat okay, then release the game on Steam. You can always mark your game on Steam as early access, while you continue to work on the cards.
My goal is to create a trading card game that will become just as popular as Magic and Pokémon. I have already found a pretty good name for my trading card game, so I just have to learn how to create the cards.
You can but be aware there are potential problems with that including things like the players expecting consistent release cycles. It can very much hurt you more than it can help you depending on how you do it and the players it attracts. Be prepared for things like negative reviews if you decide to make a major change to how you do things.
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