Fire Emblem Cipher card coveup tool (interest check)

[TripleCritical]

Hello everyone!

Would you be interested in some sort of easy-to-edit layout to coverup the orginal text of the cards? Something that could allow you to make something like this?

I have recently introduced some new friends to the game, but they couldn't keep up with having all the translations in scattered papers, so i started doing some editing and came up to a layout to cover and add text quickly. It's not the very best as of yet but I can share it if it may come handy to someone else.

Have a good day!

[Prince of Iris]

I think I'd be happy to see this be made.

[Tuvy2]

Nintendo should just stop having a stick up its but and realize that America likes fire emblem to!.... But this seems like a good concept!

[Kirie]

I would also be interested in such a thing; I think it's a pretty awesome tool. :)

[Flamy]

I'd be down for some.

might wanna make sure you get the good skill names tho like ETERNAL COURSER

[TripleCritical]

I think I'd be happy to see this be made.

Nintendo should just stop having a stick up its but and realize that America likes fire emblem to!.... But this seems like a good concept!

I would also be interested in such a thing; I think it's a pretty awesome tool. :)

I'd be down for some.

might wanna make sure you get the good skill names tho like ETERNAL COURSER

Oooh, so nice to see some interest!

This is the direct dowload link for the PS tool (from Google Drive)

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B6iEPqx8alEYdkFXWERlMnQ1VTg

Some notes:

- Some cards have a slight different layout than others and you may need to tweak the position of some layers.

- Showing/Hiding layers and folders is the key to use this tool quickly as possible.

- Some icons may be missing or aren't the best quality-wise. You're gonna be in my heart forever if you can help me finding them!

- Remember to crop the whole picture before saving!

I made a blog with a guide (Warning: I am not English native, please don't be too harsh on my typos...), some links, infos and such.

http://tccipher.tumblr.com/

I would like to hear some feedbacks and critiques about if you are trying it. I find myself ok with this, but others may not, or you may have a better idea than me. You can ask also for help if something isn't clear to you. My most active contacts are in the guide and in the file's introduction if you need a quick reply.

Thank you again for showing interest!

[Prince of Iris]

Thanks for this. I can tell you put a lot of thought and effort into organizing it all, and I think this has plenty of potential to be used as a baseline for card edits. I want to provide some suggestions to help improve it.

From this page, can you add these icons under the skill resource folder:

- all seven symbols (Blade of Light, Exalt's Brand, Medallion, etc.)

- Bond Skills (the yellow one, abbreviated BS)

- the Support and Bond skill timings (the yellow and pink ones)

- the support skill type that works on both attack and defense (it's just the two of them fused together)

I think that's all you're really missing from here.

Some other things involving the text:

- Can you separate the "Attack" and "Support" text from the colors that cover the bubbles? In other words, allow a way for a user to insert their own text there if they don't want to use those particular words, but still keep what covers the original Japanese text. If not, at least add a gold option.

- A similar request for the Class field. The original card text distinguishes the class tiers from each other (base, advanced, etc.) but with this you only have to settle with just "Class" and either a gold or silver background.

- Add an option to choose between either the usual black or the gold background for the character name/title field (and add a gold option for the range field too). Some characters from Series 5 like Micaiah, Sothe, and Ike use special gold backgrounds because they're master class tier.

- Maybe do something else about how "Range" looks? I honestly don't think it looks all that great having it oriented vertically. Maybe abbreviate it to "Rng" if you have to.

Thanks for your time! I hope this feedback helps.

[TripleCritical]

Thanks for this. I can tell you put a lot of thought and effort into organizing it all, and I think this has plenty of potential to be used as a baseline for card edits. I want to provide some suggestions to help improve it.

From this page, can you add these icons under the skill resource folder:

- all seven symbols (Blade of Light, Exalt's Brand, Medallion, etc.)

- Bond Skills (the yellow one, abbreviated BS)

- the Support and Bond skill timings (the yellow and pink ones)

- the support skill type that works on both attack and defense (it's just the two of them fused together)

I think that's all you're really missing from here.

Some other things involving the text:

- Can you separate the "Attack" and "Support" text from the colors that cover the bubbles? In other words, allow a way for a user to insert their own text there if they don't want to use those particular words, but still keep what covers the original Japanese text. If not, at least add a gold option.

- A similar request for the Class field. The original card text distinguishes the class tiers from each other (base, advanced, etc.) but with this you only have to settle with just "Class" and either a gold or silver background.

- Add an option to choose between either the usual black or the gold background for the character name/title field (and add a gold option for the range field too). Some characters from Series 5 like Micaiah, Sothe, and Ike use special gold backgrounds because they're master class tier.

- Maybe do something else about how "Range" looks? I honestly don't think it looks all that great having it oriented vertically. Maybe abbreviate it to "Rng" if you have to.

Thanks for your time! I hope this feedback helps.

Thank you for your kind words! I will try my best to improve the layout.

I use the icons provided in the card database pages (This one). Most are already cropped and the quality is good. I will try to crop the missing icons off the page you provided, thanks!

Regarding the other critiques:

- The text is separated from the bubbles but it have been rasteryzed, so there is no way to edit it as is. I will change it with the original text layer.

- ... I have never noticed the text in the first part of class thing changes from promoted and base units... I will be sure to change it asap.

- Same as above! (I know very few of the green set!)

- Honestly, I find myself ok with it. It can be read fully if printed. I will add the .psd of the range icon in a separate file, so people can edit that one as well.

[Prince of Iris]

With the latest version of the tool, this is what I finished with. I just used the same Tiki in the example to save myself some trouble, though I would like to try my hand at entirely new cards too. This looks really nice, doesn't it?

Some comments:

- I wasn't able to figure out how to change the length of the skill icons to fit the skill names on GIMP, so I moved over to another program that I normally use, Paint.NET, to move the pixels as needed, since I knew how to do so there. I tried following the instructions on the blog on how to do that on GIMP, but I wasn't able to understand how. My problem was that I just kept moving the whole icon graphic instead of what I selected, which was frustrating and made me give up on using GIMP. Due to how the two programs differ in features (for example, Paint.NET doesn't use trees to organize layers unlike GIMP, which makes it very tedious to navigate), it probably would've taken me less time to work on this if I could've done everything on GIMP as intended. Could you explain again how you managed to change the size of the skill icons to fit the skill names?

- I wasn't sure what kind of particular styling you did with your text, so I just did my own thing and tried to mimic yours as close as I could. I used the font called Chiaro Std B, which I personally like a lot because that's the same font that the 3DS Fire Emblem games use, and I thought using that font would help provide a sense of familiar flair that would make the result look more attractive. I am interested in knowing what font you used though, out of curiosity. It looks nice to me too.

- Regarding the new icons you added, I really appreciate that you did so quickly. I have a small issue with the faction symbols you added however, although it's really on me for not noticing sooner. In the original Japanese skill text on the cards themselves, when they use the faction symbols, they do not use the version with the black squares like on the left side of every card, but transparent ones that already exist elsewhere on the official site (namely the card list section, but not the specific card profiles). I think these would be much better to use than the black square versions. Could you take the time to replace these?

- I still think there should be a gold background option for the range field (for the aforementioned master class characters), as well as a way to not use the "Range" text like how you separated "Attack" and "Support" from their bubbles. I didn't come across either of these in this new version so I thought I'd just mention them again.

Thanks again for your time!

Edited November 25, 2016 by Prince of Iris

[Flamy]

With the latest version of the tool, this is what I finished with. I just used the same Tiki in the example to save myself some trouble, though I would like to try my hand at entirely new cards too. This looks really nice, doesn't it?

Huh? What's with the use of "Dragon Seal" and "Ancient Dragonkin"? I'm guessing it's character limitations, but I'd like to know.

[TripleCritical]

With the latest version of the tool, this is what I finished with. I just used the same Tiki in the example to save myself some trouble, though I would like to try my hand at entirely new cards too. This looks really nice, doesn't it?

- First of all, that .psd file is not suited to run on GIMP, because it cannot support text and hidden layers from PS. I will do a GIMP-friendly version when the PS one will be completed (because I need to study more about GIMP). It's the first time I hear of Paint.net so I can't help you at all...

I have made the sizing of the Skill Icon easier in the 0.96 Ver, no more need to cut/paste stuff!

- Ah, I noticed you used Chiaro std! I have it as well, but I prefered to use Georgia (bolded) because it can be easily read even if printed in small sizes. Chiaro looks very good tho.

- I got the factions icons now, added them.

- There is an additional tool to make custom range icons. I thought the whole thing inside the layout would make it even more crowded that it is. Anyway, I forgotten about the gold range, now the icons are up.

Added all the new stuff here.

[Prince of Iris]

- First of all, that .psd file is not suited to run on GIMP, because it cannot support text and hidden layers from PS. I will do a GIMP-friendly version when the PS one will be completed (because I need to study more about GIMP). It's the first time I hear of Paint.net so I can't help you at all...

I have made the sizing of the Skill Icon easier in the 0.96 Ver, no more need to cut/paste stuff!

- Ah, I noticed you used Chiaro std! I have it as well, but I prefered to use Georgia (bolded) because it can be easily read even if printed in small sizes. Chiaro looks very good tho.

- I got the factions icons now, added them.

- There is an additional tool to make custom range icons. I thought the whole thing inside the layout would make it even more crowded that it is. Anyway, I forgotten about the gold range, now the icons are up.

Added all the new stuff here.

Oh, so you made this using Photoshop. My bad, it looked like GIMP to me, so I went with using that. I'll try to find a copy of Photoshop to use and see if that makes anything easier for me. Thanks again for the quick update!

Huh? What's with the use of "Dragon Seal" and "Ancient Dragonkin"? I'm guessing it's character limitations, but I'd like to know.

Nah, character limitations weren't really the reason why I used different names, since I knew how to change the size of the icons to fit the text as needed. I used different translations because I preferred these over what already exists. I will mention though that I think name length is still something worth considering too.

I made an effort to look over the scripts of both the Japanese and English versions of Shadow Dragon and compared how things on the card and other relevant terms were localized in the game, and based my text off what's officially used. As an example, Shadow Dragon and the series in general seems to greatly prefer referring to the dragon tribes as dragonkin, as far as I can tell (I think Tellius is the big exception, but don't quote me on that). Tiki's title does literally mean Divine Dragon Princess, but the exact same title is used in her Shadow Dragon ending and was localized as Dragon Scion instead, so I went with that.

With the support skill, I should mention that's technically a mistake of mine. I believe I had initially settled with Brand as opposed to Seal, but I guess since I was juggling between a lot of different words with that skill, I ended up using Seal by accident and never realized it until now. When I get around to touching it up again, I think I'll probably go with Dragon Brand like I wanted.

I personally like that all of the support skills are "emblems", but when determining if those should really be used, I didn't feel they were most appropriate. This is because while Fire Emblem really loves to stick the concept of an emblem (in the form of a crest, seal, brand, etc.) in a variety of names for items and such, it generally reserves the explicit emblem word for nothing more than the titular Fire Emblem itself. The key point is that emblem is a word that Fire Emblem uses very sparingly. So in a card game based on Fire Emblem where many units have an "emblem" skill, it didn't sit well with me that the word emblem appeared very often, when the series itself treats the word almost as if it's sacred, despite the many references to it.

This line of thought was the basis for seeing a need to use a different translation for the support skill. I chose Brand since that seemed to be the least conflicting word to use (to avoid results that are similar to pre-existing but unrelated terms like Hero Crest or Seal Attack). The fact that Brand is a bit shorter than Emblem was also appealing to me. So we end up having new names like Guard Brand, Hope Brand, and Miracle Brand that I believe accomplishes a number of things:

- They make the skills easier to say vocally (Brand's one syllable versus Emblem's two).

- They avoid using a special word that the series has its own unique approach to using, promoting parity and authenticity.

- They cut down on valuable text space on the card.

For reasons like these, I'd much rather use Brand than Emblem. It just seems to work out better to me.

I also used Dragon over Manakete because I don't believe Manakete is ever supposed to be translated from anything but the Japanese term Mamkute, whereas the skill name uses a more generic dragon word.

I don't have any expectations on how these translations of mine may be received. You may or may not agree with them for one reason or another. But I did put a level of care into the names that I'm personally proud of, and would always be interested in however else someone may try their hand at them if they have their own preferences.

Edited November 25, 2016 by Prince of Iris

[Flamy]

With the support skill, I should mention that's technically a mistake of mine. I believe I had initially settled with Brand as opposed to Seal, but I guess since I was juggling between a lot of different words with that skill, I ended up using Seal by accident and never realized it until now. When I get around to touching it up again, I think I'll probably go with Dragon Brand like I wanted.

I personally like that all of the support skills are "emblems", but when determining if those should really be used, I didn't feel they were most appropriate. This is because while Fire Emblem really loves to stick the concept of an emblem (in the form of a crest, seal, brand, etc.) in a variety of names for items and such, it generally reserves the explicit emblem word for nothing more than the titular Fire Emblem itself. The key point is that emblem is a word that Fire Emblem uses very sparingly. So in a card game based on Fire Emblem where many units have an "emblem" skill, it didn't sit well with me that the word emblem appeared very often, when the series itself treats the word almost as if it's sacred, despite the many references to it.

This line of thought was the basis for seeing a need to use a different translation for the support skill. I chose Brand since that seemed to be the least conflicting word to use (to avoid results that are similar to pre-existing but unrelated terms like Hero Crest or Seal Attack). The fact that Brand is a bit shorter than Emblem was also appealing to me. So we end up having new names like Guard Brand, Hope Brand, and Miracle Brand that I believe accomplishes a number of things:

- They make the skills easier to say vocally (Brand's one syllable versus Emblem's two).

- They avoid using a special word that the series has its own unique approach to using, promoting parity and authenticity.

- They cut down on valuable text space on the card.

For reasons like these, I'd much rather use Brand than Emblem. It just seems to work out better to me.

I don't have any expectations on how these translations of mine may be received. You may or may not agree with them for one reason or another. But I did put a level of care into the names that I'm personally proud of, and would always be interested in however else someone may try their hand at them if they have their own preferences.

Yeah nah, the Manakete/Dragon appropriation is fine, but... Iunno, Brand seems... iffy, to me. Maybe Crest would be better, but that also suffers from a future skill potentially sharing the same name.

That aside, I'd say you'd be a good localizer, and I'd totes hire you to localize Cipher for the EOP masses. :V

[Prince of Iris]

Yeah nah, the Manakete/Dragon appropriation is fine, but... Iunno, Brand seems... iffy, to me. Maybe Crest would be better, but that also suffers from a future skill potentially sharing the same name.

That aside, I'd say you'd be a good localizer, and I'd totes hire you to localize Cipher for the EOP masses. :V

Thanks for the words, I appreciate them!

I really like Crest myself. To be honest I think I may even prefer it over Brand, but the main thing that discourages me from using that instead is that I strongly dislike the idea of ending up with Hero Crest (the support skill for certain Lord characters like Marth, Ike, etc.), since that also shares its name with the Fighter/Mercenary/Myrmidon class change item from the GBA games. Because of this I still find Brand to be the least conflicting name, because at its worst, it would have Hero Brand, which is similar to but not quite exactly Hero's Brand (the Lodestar class change item in Fates). I may or may not change my mind about it.

@TripleCritical: Here's the latest version I have as of this afternoon. I did three things here:

1. Optimized skill text spacing to be more consistent and in line with the original Japanese card.

2. Replaced the Blade of Light icon with a new version.

3. Edited the Range text to be abbreviated and vertical, but still read from left to right.

For number two, I ended up not using the new graphics you included in the latest release, because unfortunately they look pretty crummy on non-white backgrounds. That's not your fault, since the graphics were like that to start with. So instead of trying to clean them up, I went to go find yet another alternative that required little graphical work on my part. I ended up finding even better quality symbol icons from the official site's Cipher Symbol Derby page (the only downside is that they don't have the ones for purple and yellow here). I imported the icons, saturated them by 200%, and sized them down. The end result isn't quite a 1:1 recreation of the original symbol graphic on the card text, but I think this is much nicer than the original black square version. If I could figure out how to neatly crop something like this (from the official card profiles), then I think this would be the very best solution. Let me know what you think of all this.

Lastly, for number three, you can see I dealt with the range a bit differently from you. I initially tried this, but I wasn't satisfied enough with the result, so I made an attempt that looked similar to the original Japanese while still being easy to understand in English and keeping a decent balance in spacing in relation to the number(s). I'm not sure how much better I can improve it.

[TripleCritical]

@TripleCritical: Here's the latest version I have as of this afternoon. I did three things here:

1. Optimized skill text spacing to be more consistent and in line with the original Japanese card.

2. Replaced the Blade of Light icon with a new version.

3. Edited the Range text to be abbreviated and vertical, but still read from left to right.

For number two, I ended up not using the new graphics you included in the latest release, because unfortunately they look pretty crummy on non-white backgrounds. That's not your fault, since the graphics were like that to start with. So instead of trying to clean them up, I went to go find yet another alternative that required little graphical work on my part. I ended up finding even better quality symbol icons from the official site's Cipher Symbol Derby page (the only downside is that they don't have the ones for purple and yellow here). I imported the icons, saturated them by 200%, and sized them down. The end result isn't quite a 1:1 recreation of the original symbol graphic on the card text, but I think this is much nicer than the original black square version. If I could figure out how to neatly crop something like this (from the official card profiles), then I think this would be the very best solution. Let me know what you think of all this.

Lastly, for number three, you can see I dealt with the range a bit differently from you. I initially tried this, but I wasn't satisfied enough with the result, so I made an attempt that looked similar to the original Japanese while still being easy to understand in English and keeping a decent balance in spacing in relation to the number(s). I'm not sure how much better I can improve it.

Wow, that looks very nice!

Honestly most symbols looks ok, except the green one, which I was aware it was pretty... Meh. I will try the ones from the derby page, thanks again!

Either way, I am very happy of your enthusiasm regarding my little work! I am truly content.

[Prince of Iris]

Wow, that looks very nice!

Honestly most symbols looks ok, except the green one, which I was aware it was pretty... Meh. I will try the ones from the derby page, thanks again!

Either way, I am very happy of your enthusiasm regarding my little work! I am truly content.

Thanks!

Over the weekend I ended up producing three more cards: Sakura (the new one!), Ike, and the Black Knight. For fun, I also combined the two together. Really happy with these results!

I'm still practicing and learning how to be efficient with these edits, so I appreciate that you consider all my feedback to help make anything easier. I thought I should share something new that I learned from handling the graphics.

Apparently the icons for the LvS skills don't really match the size of the blue skill icons, so you always have to play around with their size to get them to look how they do in my works. While it's hardly a big hassle, I think the tool would appreciate seeing this fixed to make editing a little more accessible.

By the way, I could tell that the tool was originally used with Marth and not Tiki! Just a fun observation.

[Flamy]

Wait wait wait, "shatter"? Instead of like, break? Interesting that you say "Field Cost" instead of "Deployment Cost" or just "Cost". The more striking thing is that you don't use Support, and Power is acceptable, since Gaiden used that.

[Prince of Iris]

Wait wait wait, "shatter"? Instead of like, break? Interesting that you say "Field Cost" instead of "Deployment Cost" or just "Cost". The more striking thing is that you don't use Support, and Power is acceptable, since Gaiden used that.

When describing the act of an orb breaking, I decided to use the term shatter because I find that to be much more flavorful and precise term to use for that kind of action. After all, the orb cards are representative of the Archanean Fire Emblem's orbs, which are already thought to be made of a glass-like material (see: Mystery of the Emblem, where the Starsphere is broken into what are called shards). I find it to be a much more interesting word to use than simply break. The idea of a character shattering something as opposed breaking something just sounds more impactful, which is appropriate given the important role that orbs play in Cipher.

Since the beginning of my personal efforts to translate Cipher cards, I have never liked the term Deployment Cost. I've always thought it was way too long of a name and was a mouthful. So initially I tried the alternative of Sortie Cost, which effectively means the same thing and the word sortie has its pre-existing association with Fire Emblem. But for such a important value in the TCG, having it named after a word that some people may not know what it means was something that always bothered me about Sortie Cost, but I stuck with it for some time. Eventually I realized that Field Cost was an even better name to use, because it refers to both the act of fielding something and it helps show the relationship between that cost and the battlefield, where units are placed when you pay said cost with your bonds. So in the end I find Field Cost to be a much more elegant term to use to refer to this.

Simply just calling it Cost may be fine for colloquial, but the official TCG text never abbreviates this and only uses just "cost" to refer to the cost that is paid when you perform skills. For the sake of consistency and to help avoid confusion between it and Class Change Cost (which is distinguished in skill text for characters like Hinoka), Field Cost is the term I've always been using in card text without exception. It just works really well.

I liked Support until I realized that the word is already used for multiple other things. Despite its importance in the game, it doesn't have a very distinctive name, so I sought for an alternative. That's why I changed it to Aid, which I think helps better illustrate that it is power that aids the main unit in combat. I think Aid is less confusing than calling the value Support, and I liked that it was a shorter word too.

-

More on topic, I've made a few other card edits since my last post here: Robin (m), Itsuki Aoi, Lucina, and Roy

[SAIKLEX]

Hi, sorry for the necro-bump, but I've made quite a few card proxies with this template! Below is one I made, I have several already. I was wondering if you'd mind me posting an album of them on here (I plan to do many more!) and also one question- if yes, do you want the credits on the bottom to stay? I might make them smaller if that's cool- I've taken them off my personal ones only because only myself and my brother will ever see them. Thanks!