On August 10, 2019, I decided to take on a project to re-generate all of the Descent Second Edition cards that were used by the D2e Card Viewer. I did this because many of the cards in use were barely legible. In addition, they came from many different sources, so their "look and feel" were not at all similar.
In order to perform this labor of love, I had to learn, from scratch, several pieces of new software including, but not limited to:
Adobe inDesign
GIMP
FastStone
GitHub Desktop
and several others. The big one was learning how to use Adobe inDesign. Quite frankly, I would have never made it without the invaluable help and patience of @Sadgit . I think within the first week of this effort, I communicated with him no fewer than 1,647,232 times - and I am pretty sure this number is low, especially if you add in all the questions I asked. I am not sure what he thought about teaching a 78 year old - old dog new tricks, but I really do appreciate all of his patience, input, assistance with support files, etc. He provided the initial starting point, and my OCD and desire to see a better "product" provided to the community supplied the rest of the necessary drive.
It took a little more than 2 months to generate 1,746 cards. I found this an incredibly rewarding experience, as I learned some new skills while having fun doing it.
Unfortunately, about three-quarters of the way through, we found out in an AMA that there would be no more physical stuff for D2e, but, what the **** ...
Now, I should point out several things. My desire to re-create these cards was to create a product that was far more legible, consistent in look and feel, etc. I believe I have achieved all of that. Still, for some of the sets of cards, there simply weren't very good digital assets available. As such, some of the cards aren't as nice as I would like them to be. I did, however, make liberal use of things like master pages, layers, etc., so if better digital assets become available down the road, I can easily change things out and re-generate even better looking cards.
Finally, I would like to provide a shout out, and give much consideration and thanks to @Sadgit , @Zaltyre , and @Felin . These community members were invaluable resources for learning key things, gaining access to certain digital assets, and finally assistance in testing and reviewing all of the new cards to make certain that any errors (which are all mine by the way) were corrected.
Considering the amount of cards generated, and the amount of information on those cards, it is still possible that errors slipped through; if in the course of using the D2e Card Viewer you notice any errors, please let me know, and I will fix them.
Thanks to all who use the tool and who have provided valuable feedback in the past. It is communities like this one that make me want to continue efforts such as this ...
- any2cards
Edited by any2cards