playing-card-gen

Generate custom playing cards, especially for tabletop games.

With json configuration files and a csv decklist file, these scripts will render images suitable for printing (e.g. at MPC) and/or use in Tabletop Simulator. The configuration describes the layout of the card and details of the generation process. The scripts will load assets, render cards based on the configurations and decklist, and save the results in png files. Check out the example/ folder for example assets and configurations.

Features

• Generates formatted images from assets and decklists in either local folders or Google drive.
• Uses flexible configuration to define card layout and other build parameters.
• Includes rendering features such as static and card-specific text and images, and embedded symbols in text.
• Generates Tabletop Simulator saved object files for quick development iterations.

There are two example generation configurations, which describe how assets are retrieved and how and where results are saved. example/example_config_local.json uses local assets while example/example_config_google.json leverages Google drive. example/deck_config.json describes the card layout and other card-specific features.

To initialize the python virtual environment

Requires python 3.11.

python -m venv env

# on macOS
source env/bin/activate

# on windows (in powershell, Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned)
./env/Scripts/activate

# exit venv
deactivate

2. Install dependencies

pip install -r requirements.txt

To run the generator using local assets

cd src
python run_gen.py -h
python run_gen.py --gen_config "../example/gen_config_local.json" --deck_config "../example/deck_config.json" --decklist "example.csv"

See example/deck_config.json for an example of how card formats are described in configuration. Most importantly, each type of card is a list of layers, which can be:

• Text: static (same on each card) or card-specific text, supporting vertical and horizontal alignment settings, colors, font size, and embedded symbols.
• Image: static or card-specific images.
• Symbol rows: an array of images with a specific orientation, for e.g. describing the costs or suits of a card.

The example exhibits many of the layer configurations and can be adapted as needed. Check out src/layer/card_layer_factory.py for the source of truth on the layer types and parameters.

To run the generator against google drive

1. Create a Google app

Once you have created your app, navigate to the APIs and Services dashboard. From the Enabled APIs & services tab, enable the Google Drive API and Google Sheets API APIs.

From the Credentials tab, click + CREATE CREDENTIALS and select OAuth Client ID. Select Desktop App from the dropdown and create the credentials. You will have an opportunity to download a json file containing the client ID and secret. You can also do so from the Credentials tab in the dashboard. Save the json file somewhere; the example configurations look for credentials.json in the root of the repo. Note credentials.json is in the .gitignore.

2. Use the run_google_drive.py helper script to initialize assets

Since the google client can only interact with files it created, use the run_google_drive.py helper script to

• Create an empty spreadsheet,
• Upload image assets

See the script parameters by running the following. You can find the folder IDs from google drive in the last segment of the URL path when browsing https://drive.google.com.

python run_google_drive.py -h

3. Generate cards

Update example/example_config_google.json input/folder with the ID of the drive folder you uploaded assets to in step 3. Create an output folder and update output/folder with its ID. Then generate the cards pointing to gen_config_google.json.

python run_gen.py --gen_config "../example/gen_config_google.json" --deck_config "../example/deck_config.json" --decklist "example.csv"

To generate a Tabletop Simulator object

If you've generated the cards and uploaded the results to Google drive (output/type is google), you can automatically generate a "saved object file" for use with Tabletop Simulator. Add the --tts parameter to run_gen.py to create the json object file. The script will also attempt to copy the file to the TTS saved objects folder so it can be easily loaded into the game (update output/tts/saved_objects_folder if the default path doesn't work for you).

python run_gen.py --gen_config "../example/gen_config_google.json" --deck_config "../example/deck_config.json" --decklist "example.csv" --tts