jonahss

That'd be cool! Talisman is an entertaining game.

I think the reason I was able to buy these e-innk displays so cheap is that they're the exact size of grocery store shelf price tags.

Agree on the suite of games, just like a deck of cards :)

Ah, the cards have buttons next to them on the base. I figured they could display icons on the card next to each button (each spot on the base has 3 right now). I call it the 'ATM' style UX.

Thanks!

Yup, you called it. The cards are totally passive. Just the screen and an eeprom memory chip, no battery.

All the compute happens in the base.

Color e-ink way too expensive for now, but if Wizards of the Coast wants to invest 100MM we can make em in color, thinner, and flexible!

I spent about $5000 over two years. Not bad at all, really. A lot of that was registering an LLC and a Fusion360 license.

I feel ya.

I'm trying to target $80 for a "starter set" of the base and 3 cards. I think this is doable at real scale.

Yup, going for a witchy occult mysticism vibe

Oh the display is only like $4-6 on Alibaba. After you add the resin and my custom PCB it's like $20 at the low scale I'm purchasing.

added mailing list signup to the bottom of that post, thanks.

Oh! I've got a mailing list signup on wyldcard.io !

Should have added that call-to-action to my post; *facepalm

Your idea is kind of like the hologram chess that Ed plays in Cowboy Bebop

Ah, not at this time, but maybe I should open source em?

Thanks!

Yeah, it's a weird in-between. I don't think a game publisher would take a risk on it, but neither would silicon valley VCs.

Kickstarter would be my bet too. I was going to put this project down for a little while and start a "real" startup though.....

oh my gosh, I love it! Thanks!

I'm glad you kept the total card count low, that's a limiting factor because of their price and size.

I'll try it out!

See my other comment. I wanted to learn rust, but by the end, once I knew it, I wouldn't have chosen rust for a prototype if I started again.

These prototypes are running on a raspberry pi, though I wouldn't want to put them into production like that.

Thanks!

I knew no Rust at all before starting. Yikes was it frustrating to learn a completely new language. I had to go through the whole rust book, not skipping any basics, in order to get there. I also assigned myself a homework assignment to get used to the concepts. See the other blog post on wyldcard.io/blog

Honestly, by the time I got to the finished prototype, I could have just done the whole thing with Javascript. Although intending to use an SDM32F7 for the finished project, it was really convenient to use a raspberry pi for development. Using VS Code, I could program remotely on the pi from my Mac and iterate really quickly.

the awesome-embedded-rust[1] repo was very helpful.

TBH, embedded rust really feels like it's not ready for hobbysists who aren't embedded experts already.

[1] https://github.com/rust-embedded/awesome-embedded-rust

Hm, that'd work with the other comment about putting contacts on both sides.

The cards themselves are completely passive and unpowered. Base does everything.

Bought off Alibaba, I think they're so cheap because they're designed for grocery store shelf price tags.

Good Display GDEW029T5D

Ooh thanks, I'll check it out!

I'll totally start a new project once holograms get good and cheap enough ;)

Thanks! Well, not "shipped" per se. Nobody's got one but me so far :P

Yes! Going for a mysterious witchy/occult vibe.

I come from a web dev background, and spent the last 3 years running the cloud and embedded firmware teams for a 3D printer startup. I learned that hardware isn't so hard, once you get past all the mystery. My coworkers gave me tips on which tools to use, and helped me when I got stuck.

The best advice I got was "Read the datasheet"

The biggest step for me was deciding to spend money on experimenting. With a budget, suddenly it was fun to order stuff, buy tools, try things out.

Rust Book was the best for learning Rust.

Heh heh, that's like phase 4 ;)

I want kids to be able to play at school or at camp, so didn't add any connectivity. Plus I'm trying to stay cheap. But I can imagine adding bluetooth to the base or to your phone or something. Then I can go all "BILLS PC" and let you store your spirits on the cloud, let you load them in and out of cards, etc etc.

Except I don't want to turn it into an online game. Computer games are awesome, I think it's lame to emulate physical cards with a computer, a'la' Hearthstone.

Yeah! I was going for a Tarot/Occult vibe.

Turning 90 degrees... maybe I could do some magic with magnets.....

Bought off Alibaba, I think they're so cheap because they're designed for grocery store shelf price tags.

Good Display GDEW029T5D

Ha! I'm really trying to keep the price down, these are the cheapest screens I could find and they're still ~$4.

If they took off and were produced at scale, we could definitely do color, and make them thinner and flexible as well!

I so agree! MTG is desperately scraping the bottom of barrel for new mechanics.

That's why I wanted to get this concept out there, to inspire the next thing.

Ah yeah, originally I wanted the contacts to wrap around the edges of the card, so then you can stack them and address whichever one in the stack you want.

Maybe I should raise the priority on that.

Definitely I'm into the idea of evolving, or breeding cards like pokemon. Powerup or 'combine' would be cool too.

Yeah, I'm going for an occult/mysticism/witchy vibe.

Magic the Gathering has a monopoly on fantasy, and the cyberpunk genre is played out. Plus I want the inner-workings to be somewhat mysterious.

I had a lot of fun thematically laying out the contacts. For example: Keter is VCC and Malchut is GND

I'll add that to my list of fictional card games!

I took inspiration from Yu-Gi-Oh, Card Captors, Angelic Layer...