Orphalese Tarot Zone Community Forum

Hello All,

I just had this idea pop into my head (kind of inspired by Marvin's offer to make me a deck and kind of inspired by a Pendulum Chart Book I have at home). Sorry Richard, it's another pie in the sky idea, but somebody else might find it interesting, so I thought I'd post it.

The Pendulum Chart Book contains a series of Pendulum Charts (that look like pie charts) for a variety of different things. You use the Chart to wave your pendulum over and it divines the answer by swinging in the direction of a pie section (that is labelled according to the topic). So for example, if there was an astrology chart, it would be divided into 12 sections and have one sign in each pie section.

At the front of the book, there is a Master Chart that contains a pie with the names of every chart in the book. The idea is that you wave your pendulum over the first chart to see which full chart you should be working with on that day.

So, I was thinking, how would it be, to have a deck that comprised of all of your installed deck backs, and you could use that to determine which deck you should be working with?

What does everybody think?

with love
purple_scorp

I think the idea of a random or intuitively-directed deck picker is intriguing. I wonder about using the card backs for that purpose, though, because there are several Orphalese-prepared decks that have no card-back images.

How do you envision it working? Would you randomly deal a card, thus randomly picking a deck? Would you purposely select a deck by clicking the chosen card-back?

-- Cowhead

Hi Cowhead,

apologies for my delay in getting back to you, I've not had access to Tarot Zone over the weekend.

As I said in my initial post, I'm kind of following an idea that is used in a Pendulum book that I have. But also, sometimes when I want to read, I don't really know what deck to use. In that case, I would lay all of my decks on the floor, and run my hand along them, to see if any of them are emitting more energy than others.

So rather, the deck selects me, more than me selecting a deck.

The way I see the Orphalese back deck selection working is exactly as you mentioned. Randomly dealing a card from a deck of deck backs. So, the deck backs actually now become individual cards in one deck. To hide their identity, you would deal them face down and you would need a master deck back (the Orphalese logo or something similar would be good).

You could either deal from the top, or, my preference would be to select one from the cards fanned out (the free selection option). Once displayed, an added bonus would be that it would change to that deck if you clicked on that card.

Of course, you would need a deck back for every deck. Which might mean a bit of creative designing for those decks that don't currently have backs. (I've made a lot of my own deck backs anyhow so I don't see this as a problem.

What do you think?

with love
purple_scorp

Hi Scorp,

I can see there being problems with this because not all decks are the same shape - some of them are landscape, as opposed to portrait etc. What if I added card backs to the Compare Cards feature though? Then you would see all the backs laid out and would still have the option of choosing one with a single click.

Richard

Hi Richard,

that sounds like a pretty good compromise. It would also help to signify which decks didn't have their own unique backs.



Thanks,
purple_scorp

Hi Everyone,

If you don't mind a few of my thoughts on the subject...........

1) As per Dominatrix's view(s): Resize all card & shapes to be uniform.
2) Write the Name (in a nice font!) on the card backs of the deck.
3) As this would be a continously growing deck, it would have to be updated regularly............ (A semi-full time job!).
4) Richard, do you have a Official Logo for the Orphalese Tarot? (To be used for the card back).
5) Who do you want to do it? I have a nomination if he's not busy, & wants to do it!
6) Lastly, has anyone else have any ideas?

Later,

Marvin

Hi Marvin,

Thanks for your input

If Richard puts the card backs in the Card Compare facility, then some of your suggestions may not be necessary. For example, you don't really need to write the deck name on the card itsElf, as this is available on the status line, when you put your mouse over it. And perhaps it's not important to know the name of the deck anyhow, if, a simple click on the deck back loads that deck for you.

The backs deck would be dynamically updated if it was in the Card Compare, so nobody would have to maintain/update it.

Alternatively, if Richard was to make it a backs deck on its own, perhaps he could do a search for back.jpg in the Packs folder (and sub-folders) and return the display in a new backs folder. Making that grow dynamically, without anybody having to update it.

I would be against resizing all cards and shapes to be uniform because I think then some decks would lose their individuality. But, I would have nothing against seeing a uniform title card for each of the decks. So, now I'm thinking perhaps we need to invent a new title card for each deck which is uniform in size and shape for all Orphalese decks?

(Richard, are you beginning to regret the day I signed up for registration, hehehe)

Regards
purple_scorp

Ha ha, not at all. I already made the change so the backs will show up in the compare cards, it will be in the next beta/release, probably this weekend.

I am still not convinced about the deck though. I am sure everyone has decks they would rather were included, and others they would rather were left out. Whether the deck were created programatically or in the normal way by copying files, I can see the next question being how one could limit it to certain preferred backs. People would have to go through and delete cards to suit their tastes and renumber them accordingly. By the time someone has gone to that amount of trouble they might as well have just created their own tailor-made deck in the first place.

It occurs to me that part of this request is to do with the idea of choosing a deck at random. Does anyone think it would be a useful feature if there was a Choose Random Deck option somewhere?

It could be, if only to include more of a random element into the selection process......

As far as the selection of the cards/decks, it might be done as a deck xml type file, with the person inserting which decks that they want included, or how many decks at the same time......
(I would say light hearted, serious, and grim options)

Also, the deck options would be one possible choice of location, or the main menu, or both.

I hope that this helps,

Marvin

Hi Richard,

I'd like the Random Deck Selection and it could be as simple as loading a random deck each time you open Orphalese (rather than loading the deck you used last. Although I'm now thinking a new strategy. .-)

It would involve the introduction of a new drop-down field in the deck file to categorise the deck type (Tarot, Oracle, Divination, Cartomancy, Other etc). This could then be used as a filter when selecting which deck to load (this would be a good way to help with sorting decks in the list anyhow). You could also add a choice, Load Random Deck and then filter on Category type - so we can choose from which category to load the random deck from - Tarot, or from Oracle, or from All Categories.

Alternatively, as a Random Deck Select method, create a tick box on the deck table to select whether or not you wanted that deck to be included in the Random deck folder. I was initially thinking that your program could search for decks with a tick, and copy the back.jpg from individual files into a master folder. Then you would need to generate a new number sequence 00.jpg to whatever in the Random folder. This may need to be a file that gets rebuilt from scratch each time you select Load Random Deck (otherwise it wouldn't know which backs to delete - as the cards would be renumbered and lose the identity of which deck folder they came from). Of course, each back is going to be called back.jpg which might be confusing in the Random folder, until your program can renumber the sequence, which gets me back to creating an additional card for each deck - a title card that could display the image of the deck box etc. That could be named within each deck folder using the format DeckNameTitle.jpg. That way, when they were copied into the Master Random folder, there would be no file name conflicts.

Just some thoughts, spinning around in my head.

Regards

purple_scorp