The Orqwith Set

Post by **Wubble** » Tue 20 Mar, 2007 7:18 pm

Hi All

I've created 4 decks for the program

1. The Orqwith Tarot
2. The Orqwith Mega Minimal Tarot
3. The Orqwith I Ching
4. The Orqwith Oracle

They are all available in my shared files and they almost definately will not be too everyones taste but I'd appreciate thoughts and comments on them as long as it's constructive otherwise I may cry.

1. The main deck of the Orqwith set of cards. Not a great deal of symbolism in the cards designs themselves however there is a little bit more than would appear at first.

This set has changed radically, numerous times since I started working on it months back the day after I first installed the program.

2. Each card has upright and reversed canned answers relevent to their correct Tarot Card. However I've removed all reference to which card is which as it's not strictly relevent since the cards are so minimal the only distinction between the majors and each of the suits is the colour of the card.

This deck is to use with spreads where there are direct questions or direct areas each card is relevent too and you are looking for direct advice ... to YOU! I spent way to long messing around with the language tring to make it more relaxed. I think I failed as I got sick and tired of editing it over and over again.

3. Ask your question, draw one card, then Ctrl-G to gather the cards and repeat.

The deck is designed to work as one card draw at a time due to the fact that each question asked should have the option of each card as a reply.

Basically an 8-Ball but if anyone from Tyco asks I've no idea what an 8-Ball is and you havn't seen me.

4. To fill out the Orqwith set of cards I created this I Ching Set in the same overall style of Orqwith.

I can't profess to know a great deal about I Ching but this works for me.

And if anyone really cares go here for more info on Orqwith

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scissormen

In fact now I wish I'd made the characters look like Scissormen. I'll do that in my next deck I think.

Cheers

Mark

Post by **WebWeaver** » Wed 21 Mar, 2007 1:24 am

Hi Mark, I'm not seeing the decks. I was going to check them out, but can't see them. :o(

Shari

Post by **Wubble** » Wed 21 Mar, 2007 8:40 am

Hi Shari

I turned my machine off at 1am G.M.T.

They should be visible from now: 9am G.M.T.

Post by **Programmer** » Fri 23 Mar, 2007 10:17 am

Hi Mark,

I had a look at the Orqwith Oracle last night - like it! A couple of years ago I got a Star Wars version of the 8-Ball which obviously gave above average results because it was able to use the Force. Where does the Orqwith Oracle draw its inspiration from - is there a clue in the name?

I will try to grab the others over the weekend.

Richard

Post by **Wubble** » Fri 23 Mar, 2007 10:58 am

The name itself comes from a DC Comic published back in the 80's called Doom Patrol.

Orqwith is the name of a city that exists only in the blurred bit of our vision when we focus on something. You may see something out of the corner of your eye and then when you look at it, it goes.

That's the entry way to Orqwith. I particularly liked that story and the fact that there is no u after the q in the name.

My first web domain way back when was called Orqwith.

The development of the set came about by a couple of things. I was intrigued by the shareware app and was working on a deck just to see how it would go.

I've always been interested in Tarot and stuff like that as I am a Shaman in rl. But I'm not one of these long haired, dreamy, hippy types. The concept of astrology is a farce to me. The idea that the way the stars were laid out the day I was born, could have any influence on my life is absurd.

However as a Shaman and agent of Chaos I belive alot more in the random turns and readings of cards or images right here and now.

And as such I wanted to make a deck that wasn't all fluffy and full of horrible imagery from the 17th Century.

So I started researching the way everything works and trying to make something that worked within the default sizes that the program starts with so that the imagery was not blurred or artifacted in anyway and then my natural design love of The Designers Republic and eBoy came into it as eBoy in particular works with a limited palette and so it went from there.

It's kinda clinical but for my own purposes I designed that cards to have an immediate iconic meaning rather than a meandering look at the image and contruct your own meaning type of thing.

The majors for example are all the same. and each suite has its colour based on percieved tarot logic, and each of the minor arcana is different in some way. Each suit has its own icon etc. The backgrounds are supposed to give an impression of a real texture you could feel if you were to touch the screen.

When I was working on v1.0 of the deck I started to look more into the other things the program could offer and started research I Ching and Oracles.

So I thought I would work on three decks at the same time and try to keep the imagery along the same lines. The I Ching is clearly the easiest of the three once you have all the rune bits sorted.

So as the graphical style of the Tarot changed I spent time bringing the others into line to keep them a set. For example the decks all have the saem back and the same style of background texture.

The Mega Minimalist deck was a reaction to me spending so much time fine tuning the carddata.xml of the first main deck. I just wanted something that could throw out advice in spoken English without a huge amount of knowledge required in how to interpret things.

In essence I decided that since the program by definition allows for canned replies, there should be no shame in taking this and doing some form on Homeopathy on it and refine it down to the Nth degree.

So that left me with 4 graphical iconic (kinda) decks with varying degrees of variance between cards.

The graphics are to please the art snob in me and the carddata is to please the hippy in me.

As far as development of the main deck imagery went. I had a very very large PSD file with everything in layers.

It's kinda funny I suppose when you look at the cards I can understand why people woudl think they are simplistic but all I know is that every single card has been tweaked and is directly relevent to every other card.

I orignally was going to do a basic deck with lots of comic images from my favourite artists in it but I thought that was a bit of a cop out.

I always tell people I'm a graphic designer so I put my money where my mouth was and I enjoyed it.

I'm happy with the results and whilst I know they will not to be everyones taste I hope a few people like them.

God I talk bollocks don't I! :) Too many years in Marketing.

Post by **Wubble** » Fri 23 Mar, 2007 11:02 am

The other thing I have done is work on specific spreads for each deck but there's no way of linking the spreads to the deck so I havn't published them.

Something for you to think about. How can specific spread made for a deck be added into the deck folder so they show up if that deck is in use.

Post by **Rhutobello** » Mon 26 Mar, 2007 2:25 pm

I think you might have that action today.

Go to edit spread, choose your spread, scroll down on the first page, there you will find an option switch to deck and the option to scroll and choose the deck you want to assign the spread to.......if I have understood you right :)

Post by **Programmer** » Tue 27 Mar, 2007 12:37 pm

That is true, Rhutobello. The other thing you can do is assign a deck/spread combination to any of the number keys (or just a deck, or just a spread). I think what Wubble is after though is a way of distributing decks so they come with an associated spread. There isn't any way to do that at the moment.