This project helps you to create full size (63x88mm) custom generated Cards Against Humanity cards from plain text. The resulting images should work at Make Playing Cards. 63 x 88mm, 310 GSM linen finish cards are recommended.
This project is still a work in progress. The following issues are yet to be addressed:
- The card images have been tested at Make Playing Cards. They came out well, but I did have some nitpicks which have since been addressed in 0c5223897f587016331eaab0efb7e9081d83ac8a and 270e5fb7ff23eea7f7943f31c9823b647120f4a3. The changes have yet to be tested.
- The generated card images may not match the cards from CAH in all cases (need changes to whitespace length determination, forced newlines)
You will need the following softwares to run CAH Builder:
- Inkscape
- XMLStarlet
- ImageMagick
- GNU Make
- GNU Awk
- rsync
- cat
- cut
- xargs
- 'Nimbus Sans L Bold' font (very close to the Helvetica font used on the CAH cards)
On Ubuntu just run:
sudo apt-get install make gawk xmlstarlet inkscape imagemagick
Edit the media/list file with your favorite text editor.
The format of the file is one line per card. Lines will normally wrap automatically, but you can force a newline using \n.
A single underscore character _ will be extended to the end of the line in most cases (See Underscore Rules).
Apostrophes and quotes will automatically be turned into curly versions: ' will turn into ’ and "foo" will turn into “foo”.
Don't worry about white vs. black cards, or if it is a Pick 2 or a Pick 3, etc. All of that is automagically determined (See Grammar Rules).
When you are satisfied with your list, run:
make -j10
or similar. See the documentation for make's parallel functionality. make will work, but will execute the conversions sequentially and will take a very long time. All of the steps are made to be parallelizable to cut down on time. On my system, make -j10 takes around 5 minutes, while make runs for 20 minutes (full base game, 550 cards).
800 DPI TIFF images will be created under tiff, named by their line number. In addition, the white and black back images will be available.
The project also generates SVG files, PNG files, preprocessed text files, wrapped text preview files, and unprocessed text files in corresponding directories.
You may use make wrap_list to generate the wrapped text preview into a single file called wrap_list.
The conversion steps go from media/list → txt/(line) → pre/(line) → svg/(line).svg → png/(line).png → tiff/(line).tiff.
The source for each step may be modified, and make will re-create only what is necessary for the rest of the conversion.
For example, you may decide to edit svg/3.svg in Inkscape. Using make afterward will regenerate png/2.png and tiff/3.tiff.
Don't be afraid to edit media/list, if you edit a single line in media/list only the corresponding files for that line will be regenerated.
Subject to change. The current rules do not exactly match those used for actual cards. They mostly do.
A single underscore surrounded by whitespace _ will attempt to extend toward the end of the line. If it is not long enough, at least 10 underscores __________, then it will take up the entirety of the next line.
If the underscore is part of a word, such as _-tastic! or includes punctuation: _. the whole token will be extended. If there are not enough underscores the word will take up the entirety of the next line.
You can override these rules and specify any underscore length you want (besides 1) by using multiple underscores. You may also edit the files in txt or svg to correct formatting, and re-invoke make.
As far as CAH Builder is concerned, if it is not a black card, it is a white one. But you may want to look at the list and follow the general pattern.
The white cards are most often physical things or abstract ideas, not commands or questions. They are often prepended as A foo or The foo and usually end in a period.
Every guideline I just mentioned has an exception however, most notably Bees? and YOU MUST CONSTRUCT ADDITIONAL PYLONS.
The black cards are determined in three separate ways. One, if the text is a question. Questions contain at least one interrogative word and end with a ?. Two, if it contains one or more blanks, which are each one or more consecutive underscores. The number of blanks determines Standard vs. Pick 2 vs Pick 3. Three, if it contains the word haiku, it's a black Pick 3 card and that's that.
The files under media are derived from Cards Against Humanity LLC material and are covered under the CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 license.
Everything else is covered under GPLv3 (or any later version).
Details in License.