CoH CCG

[Blondeshell]

Yes! A gallery would be much more preferable for a browsable list of card images than a straight category listing.  I'd still like to use a standard sortable wikitable with links to the image files, but both pages would be useful, I think.

[Cannonfodder]

Thank you for putting up the CCG stuff!  I'm enjoying reading the cards and seeing the images.

If I were interested in buying some complete boxes or packs of cards, where would be the best place to go?

[TonyV]

I think they've been out of print for a while. You could try your local comic book store(s), but your surest bet is probably eBay.

[Blondeshell]

The cards I've put up so far are just from the downloadable demo deck .PDFs -- the real cards are yet to come.  I found some good prices at a couple sites where you can buy full boxes of the boosters and battle packs for both series: www.potomacdist.com and www.universalcards.net.  Potomac Distribution even has a coupon for a free Arena Booster Box on their Facebook page that's good through next week.

[Blondeshell]

Pretty soon, I'm going to start uploading scans of the cards I've accumulated so far.  Before I do that, I'd like to get feedback on an appropriate image size, balancing readability and odds that we'll be asked to pull them down for being too good.

I've uploaded three test images for comparison:

http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/File:Health-223.jpg @ 223 px, which is the same width as most of the cards on the site linked at the beginning of this thread.

http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/File:Health-300.jpg @ 300 px width

http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/File:Health-400.jpg @ 400 px width

I've been saving everything so far at 400 px so I can adjust that down based on what we agree to use.

[eabrace]

I don't have any trouble reading the cards at 223 px (monitor resolution of 1920x1200 on my laptop), so that should be sufficient.  300 and 400 do look much prettier, but I think 300 approaches too good and 400 is pretty much over that line.

[Sekoia]

What's the small print at the very bottom of the card? I can't really read it well at any resolution. If it's important, it should probably be noted in the description eventually since it's not legible.

Is the goal here to archive these cards for posterity's sake, since they are out of print and likely to become scarcer and scarcer? Or is the goal merely to just document them for the reference? If we're looking to archive, then I'd say go with 400 pixels. If we're looking to document, then I'd lean towards 300 pixels but 223 could also work.

If we get asked to pull them down for being too good, we can probably just negotiate a downsampled size at that time instead. If they notice the 400 pixel images and complain, then at that point we can use a script to downsample them all to 300 or 233. It should be fairly straightforward to automate that, if the need arises.

Is it possible to scan them in as PNG instead of JPG? Given the type of images these are, they will probably store well as PNGs, and PNG is lossless which means they'll rescale without gaining artifacts. If we're just documenting, then it's not really a big deal; but if we're archiving, then having them in a lossless format is preferable.

[SaintNicster]

What's the small print at the very bottom of the card? I can't really read it well at any resolution. If it's important, it should probably be noted in the description eventually since it's not legible.

Is the goal here to archive these cards for posterity's sake, since they are out of print and likely to become scarcer and scarcer? Or is the goal merely to just document them for the reference? If we're looking to archive, then I'd say go with 400 pixels. If we're looking to document, then I'd lean towards 300 pixels but 223 could also work.

If we get asked to pull them down for being too good, we can probably just negotiate a downsampled size at that time instead. If they notice the 400 pixel images and complain, then at that point we can use a script to downsample them all to 300 or 233. It should be fairly straightforward to automate that, if the need arises.

Is it possible to scan them in as PNG instead of JPG? Given the type of images these are, they will probably store well as PNGs, and PNG is lossless which means they'll rescale without gaining artifacts. If we're just documenting, then it's not really a big deal; but if we're archiving, then having them in a lossless format is preferable.

Mostly copyright information.  I think there is also a card identifier number on the last line.

[GuyPerfect]

I've been saving everything so far at 400 px so I can adjust that down based on what we agree to use.

In cases like this, I always upload the hi-res version for those who care to view the image in more detail, but scale down in the article according to the size I want it to be presented with.

I recommend uploading your 400px versions and putting them into the aricles with |223px]] at the end.

[Blondeshell]

For normal articles, I'd say that's the perfect way to do it.  However, since the card images contain all the information that there is, they themselves become the "article" with a direct link to the image from the overall listing chart.   See the promo cards section for an example of that.

(BTW, the line of text at the bottom of the example is just copyright info and such -- "Illus. Octographics.Net, © 2006 NC Interactive, Inc. & Cryptic Studios, Design © 2006 AEG. SO 178 • 180")

To be honest, I hadn't thought about this project as being either an archive or a reference.  I came at it from a perspective of simply seeing a gap of information that needed to be filled.

(a few hours go by in the middle of composing this reply . . . )

After looking at the official Magic card site and giving it some more thought, I think I'm being inspired to revise and expand the structure of this stuff.  I do like the look of having the card image and text nicely formatted all on one screen (example), and doing actual articles for the cards gives us flexibility for image sizes and other notes.  It also satisfies accessibility issues for people who might have images turned off.  Get a few templates set up and it'd be all golden.

The hierarchy of the articles would keep the actual card pages in the namespace of the set listings (i.e., City of Heroes Collectible Card Game/Arena Cards/Level Up!) so they stay grouped together, but then I'd set up redirects to each card so that they're able to be found easily (i.e., Level Up! (CCG), Statesman (CCG)).  To make an easy-to-navigate category listing, I think I'd only put the redirect pages in categories and not the actual card pages.  That way they can be sorted alphabetically rather than lumping everything under "C."

So, thoughts to any of this? Yay or nay?

[eabrace]

I think if you're feeling up to tackling all of that, it's a great idea.

To make an easy-to-navigate category listing, I think I'd only put the redirect pages in categories and not the actual card pages.  That way they can be sorted alphabetically rather than lumping everything under "C."

There's a trick you can use with Category tags to sort articles by something other than the name of the article.  If you use the format [[Category:<Category>|<Sort Text>]], the article will be added to the <Category> Category and be sorted within the category listing by <Sort Text> instead of the name of the Article.

Here's an example.  Note that when you look at the list of subcategories on that page, they're sorted by the username instead of all being stuffed under the letter 'U'.

[Blondeshell]

There's a trick you can use with Category tags to sort articles by something other than the name of the article.  If you use the format [[Category:<Category>|<Sort Text>]], the article will be added to the <Category> Category and be sorted within the category listing by <Sort Text> instead of the name of the Article.

Ah, so that's the same way that the mission templates are sorted.  That would keep things a bit more traditional rather than assigning categories to the redirects.

[Blondeshell]

Okay, I've got a few sample card pages uploaded to my user space, and you can find them at http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Category:COHCCG_Images.  I've intentionally mis-coded some information in order to test the different options of the template (which I'm very proud of, BTW  ;D), including automatically assigning the cards' categories.  Please take a look at them and let me know if you have any feedback on the layout and formatting.

I'm pretty sure I'm going to add all of the actual card entries to the COHCCG namespace, even though it's a redirect.  This is because, although the cards will be sorted using the category trick mentioned above, they'd all still have "City of Heroes Collectible Card Game/Arena Cards/" in front of - every - single - entry - on the list.  Putting the cards under the redirect will shorten that to just "COHCCG/<card name>", which is MUCH easier to process visually.

[Cannonfodder]

I liked the sample articles you put up.  Works for me.  Card image on the right perhaps?