Hello Designers!
Though it may look quiet from the outside, we're hard at work building Goblin Workshop Games and making it your one-stop shop for getting from concept to store shelf. We're extremely excited by the tools and the community we're going to be able to bring you.
Right now we're working out the details of our print on-demand functionality and should have pricing very soon. We're also commissioning our first couple of die cut templates: 2.5"x3.5" cards, 2.5x1.67" cards, and .75" circle tokens. (Yes, that's right - die cut chipboard tokens) We plan to have dozens of dies by the time we officially launch, but right now we've being selective. In another month or so we may open for a limited beta to select designers who have card games that are ready for printing.
In addition to POD services, we aim to offer direct integration with Vassal (www.vassalengine.org) and GIMP (www.gimp.org)!
Vassal is an open-source board game engine that allows a designer to create their game and play it online with others. Building a Vassal module can be a little daunting at first, but we're working on robust and easy-to-follow tutorials, as well as the ability for our website to read Vassal modules and even create them so you aren't starting from scratch. Once you master Vassal, you'll find it's a fantastic way to try out your prototype before sending it to print. Plus you can play it online with others, reducing your testing cycles dramatically.
Next up is GIMP integration. GIMP is an open-source image editing program and the biggest rival to Photoshop. In addition to offering GIMP template and tutorials, we are working to offer data driven support for GIMP templates. What this means is you'll design your GIMP template, our website will read the layer information, and you'll wire up a spreadsheet of data to that template. Our website will then generate one image per row in your spreadsheet! So if you have a 300 card deck, you'll simply have to create a single GIMP template, point our site to a Google Spreadsheet with your info, tell our system what to do with your data, and bam! - your cards are generated. From there, making adjustments to your cards is as simple as updating your spreadsheet.
Right now we are using Epic Tower Defense as our guinea pig for Goblin Workshop Games. Once ETD makes it all the way through the GWG certification process, we'll open the site up to the entire community. More information about our "Certified Fun" process will be coming up in future threads.
That's all we've got for now! Stay tuned for the latest news and let us know what you think, and/or what your needs are as a designer. The more we understand about what ails you, the more refined our cure will be!
Keep on designing,
- Anthony
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