Formatting the Ideation Sheet of Uncontained

Creating cards can be a tedious process. Especially if you're mostly alone, and you prefer to work alone, continuously designing and redesigning cards can be tiresome, especially if the game is something new and it uses mechanics that have never been used before, which makes them prone to error.

To compensate on this, I decided to use the Godot game engine to create a custom software that can allow me to generate cards using only a spreadsheet.

This blog will guide you on using the spreadsheet, which I call the "Ideation Sheet".

Card Code / Base Column

This column is responsible for the detecting which image that card will use on the image directory that configured. To correctly set this up, the information on this column must exactly match the file names of its image in the image directory.

For SCPs, if the card code is written like this:

http://scp-wiki.net/scp-038 

It's the same as this:

038

Note that the new SCP Wiki URL doesn't work at the same manner.

Flavor vs Title Column

The flavor column is for the "secondary" title of the card, which you can is as the metal plate name.

For civilians and characters, the flavor column is the same as it is. However, for anomalies and scenarios, the flavor column is actually the title column, and vice versa.

Type Column

The "Type" column of the Ideation Sheet is where you specify what type of card it is, which in turns dictates the type and color of background it will receive, the type name and the card subtypes.

Here are the list of basic card Types that the generator currently supports:

• civilian
• character
• safe
• euclid
• keter
• scenario

Since safe, euclid and keter types are all anomaly cards, they would be laballed as "ANOMALY", but otherwise all of them will have different subtype icons and backgrounds.

Other supported Types are:

• thaumiel
• esoteric (unused)
• utility (unused)
• neutralized (unused)
• faction-character (discontinued)

Hybrid Types are also possible:

These are the currently supported ones:

• safe/character
• euclid/character
• keter/character
• keter/scenario
• civilian/character (unused)

Tag Column

Tags are a way for the game to give variety to the various card types. It's how we introduce  the Groups of Interest and various SCPs. In the cards, they appear as icons on the top right part.

For the "Tag" column of the Ideation Sheet template, here are the list of available right now:

Anomaly tags:

• cognitive - for anomalies that are mind-affecting and cognitohazardous.
• creature - for anomalies that fits the "organism" criteria, including plants and microbes or diseases.
• digital - for anomalies that exist in the internet, digitally or electronically.
• entity - for anomalies that is neither a creature or a human, but something else. Ghosts, demons, etc., often fits this criteria.
• event -for anomalies that are just phenomenon, rituals, processes, etc.
• human - for humanoid anomalies.
• info - for infohazardous, memetic and information-based anomalies.
• location - for anomalies that are on a fixed location. Dimensions or planets, and other immoveable anomalies also fits this criteria.
• object - for anomalies that can be held and arguably is an object.
• ontokinetic - for reality-altering anomalies. Essokinetic anomalies also fits this criteria.
• other - for anomalies that fits none of the other tags.
• contagion (unused) - for anomalies that are diseases or make people sick.

Civilian tags:

• group - civilians that are more than one.
• infected - civilians that is not normal, often affected by an anomaly in a negative way.
• special - civilians with extraordinary potential.
• injured - normal civilians, but weaker.

Character tags (GOI):

• goiscp - characters of the SCP Foundation,
• goisarkic - characters of Sarkicism
• goimcd - characters of Marshall, Carter and Dark
• goibroken - characters of the Church of the Broken God.
• goioccult - characters of the Global Occult Coalition
• goicchaos - characters of the Chaos Insurgency
• goiserpent - characters of the Serpent's hand

Scenario tags:

• kclass - a scenario that fits the disaster criteria, no matter the scale.
• deity - a scenario where a "god-like" entity is responsible.
• operation - a scenario caused not by an anomaly, but rather humanity.

Properties Column

Simple Text Formatting

To start creating a card effect, you first need to set it's trigger. What is the trigger? You know that icons beside the effect of a card? That's their trigger! 

Before writing an effect, you need to add the trigger first. Here are an example:

This effect:

Breach: If [i]Uncontained,[/i] you may [b]Neutralize[/b] an anomaly from any site.

Will be generated as this:

Here are the list of triggers that you can use on the game:

• Breach:
• Active:
• Start:
• End:
• Play:
• Instant:
• Info: (unused)
• Trigger: (unused)

In order to create a "dual trigger" card, you need to add a colon to the end of the first triggered effect. Here's another example:

Instant: When this enters your [i]Uncontained zone,[/i] immediately [b]Discard[/b] a civilian.:Start: If [i]Uncontained,[/i] [b]Move[/b] this anomaly to another [i]Uncontained zone.[/i]

Which will be generated like this:

If you noticed the cards of Uncontained, more often than not, at least a few words will be italicized or bolded. There's actually a reason for them.

Bolded keywords are Major Keywords that were explained on the Rulebook. Here are a few examples:

• Sacrifice
• Discard
• Draw
• Move
• Play
• etc..

On the other hand, italicized keywords are used to emphasize the past tense version of a keyword, a deck / pile, a turn phase or a particular card name. Here are a few samples of italicized text:

• Uncontained
• Drawn
• Draw pile
• Civilian zone
• Action phase
• D-Class Personnel
• etc..

In order to bold a keyword, simply  enclose them inside the bold BBcode:

[b]Keyword[/b]

In order to italicize a keyword, simply enclose them inside the italic BBcode:

[i]Your Text[/i]

Note that you cannot combine or concatenate these two tags to create an "italicized bold" keyword or a "bolded italic".

Property "emojis"

Now, the "Tags" mentioned above are actually useless if the effects themselves don't utilize their existence. So, that's where the "emoji" versions of those tags come into play. These "emojis" or effect mini icons also include the trigger types and other mechanics to the game.

General emojis:

• breach
• /play/
• /start/
• /end/
• /active/
• /instant/
• /xx/ - which is the fancy "X" thing on some cards.

Anomaly emojis:

• cognitive
• creature
• digital
• entity
• event
• human
• info
• location
• object
• ontokinetic
• other
• safe or Safe
• euclid or Euclid
• keter or Keter
• thaumiel or Thaumiel

Civilian emojis:

• group
• infected
• special
• injured

Character emojis (GOI):

• goiscp
• goisarkic
• goimcd
• goibroken
• goioccult
• goicchaos
• goiserpent

Here's a sample "card property" effect where one or more of these emojis are utilized:

Instant: When a /play/ character is [i]Played[/i] against you, you may [b]Play[/b] this to [b]Discard[/b] that character and cancel its effect.

That effect will be generated like this:

Important stuff

Never put a single double quotes as a single quote. Instead of using this 

"

Use this:

''

However, Google Spreadsheets have a problem with  <  ''  > especially if they they're the very first character on a cell. In order to achieve that, simply do a triple quotes instead.

If you noticed improper spacing with the card effects, simple remove the spacing between an emoji near it. This should remove that unintended spacing automatically.

As much as possible, place commas and periods inside the bold and italic tags.

If you have questions, don't hesitate to leave them down the comments section!