Deck Maker Program – Visionary Design LLC.

This document describes how to make your own decks for Memory or Slider Madness.
Slider and Memory use deck files to store the images displayed on the tiles in the games.  A deck consists of 3 sets of 18 images total.

Simply start DeckMaker by double-clicking the file from wherever you have saved it.  DeckMaker does not need to be stored in any specific directory or have any specific file dependencies.  Once the application starts, you will see a window similar to the one below:

You will notice the 3 list boxes labeled (Round 1, Round 2, and Round 3). These areas are where you will drag and drop your images to once we have sized them correctly for the PocketPC. 

You will need 18 images total to make one round.  These images have to be sized down to 240x268 (width x height) in order to fit correctly in the PPC (PocketPC) window and to account for the limited memory available on the PocketPC.  Simply copy your files by dragging and dropping the file from Windows Explorer or the Desktop to any of the list boxes on DeckMaker.  Make sure each Round has 18 images.  The images do not have to all different, nor do all three rounds have to contain different images.  It will help if they are different so that there are more diverse images in the games.

To create your deck you simply select enter a folder to save your files to.  The above picture shows that the files will be saved in C:\temp\test, which will create a folder on c:\temp\test with 3 files named round1.tkm, round2.tkm and round3.tkm.  This is the format we use for our games.  Once this is complete you can now copy over the folder to your PPC. 

You will need to have a few tools before we can start.  You will need a program that will help you resize your digital images.  If you’re using a scanner or a digital camera, most of these products come with applications to size your images.  If not, there are many on the Internet that will do this.  We found a simple pc application at:

http://www.rkware.com/ImageSizer/

This is a shareware program that will take your current images and convert them down to the right size and format.

There are a few very important factors to remember. 

You must size down your image to width=240 and height=268 and they must be saved in JPEG format. 

When saving in JPEG format, there are usually compression options available from 0-100 we recommend using somewhere around a value of 50 for more compression to save memory space on the PocketPC.

NOTE: When working with digital images, please use a copy of your original to work. The reason we bring this up is just to avoid anyone taking their ORIGINAL digital family photos and resizing them, since they will lose quality.  Always make backups!

Step 1:

Locate your images on your hard-drive that you want to convert.

Step 2:

Resize your images to (240, 268) and save them as a JPEG (JPG).
Make sure to select .jpg image format when you save.

Use a copy of your images or resave them with a different name so you do not overwrite your originals.  Ex (family1.jpg to deck1-01.jpg and so forth up to 018.jpg)

Step 3:

Once you have sized your images (remember a deck consists of 3 rounds and each round has to have 18 images!), launch the DeckMaker program.

You should see an application similar to the picture at the beginning of this document.  Find the location of the pictures you resized for this game.  You can use Windows Explore or My Computer Icon to find the folder where they are located.

This is an example of a directory where I have my images

This is the first set of 18 images that I will use to create round one. Select the images in the folder that you will use by highlighting them.

   

Once you have the files selected, drag them to the Deck Maker Round 1 list box.  You should see the path to the images now in Round 1 list box similar to below:

Now repeat these steps with Round 2 and 3 with different images.  If you don’t have enough images you can just copy Round 1 files over to Round 2 and 3, but when you play the game you will only have one round of 18 pictures.

Once you have added images to all rounds you can then create your deck.
Enter the file path as to where you want to save your decks.  For example, choose to save the deck in c:\temp\kids1

This will create a folder at c:\temp\kids with 3 files in it.  These are your rounds 1 –3 in the deck file format.  You are now ready to copy these over to your PPC.

NOTE if you cannot create a deck for some reason check to make sure each round has 18 images each in and that you typed in a valid path to save your files to.

Next you will need to make sure that your PPC is in the cradle and it is attached to your computer.  Your Active Sync application will have a green circle in it down on your start bar next to the clock if it is successfully connected.

Double click on “My Computer” icon and it will open up a window and find the location of your deck you made before.  In the example we made on in c:\temp\kids1\

Once you have found your directory where you saved your deck to left click with the mouse on the directory to highlight it as shown below:

Now that it’s highlighted we will copy it.  Simply go to the Edit menu and select the Copy menu item.  This will copy your directory into the computer’s memory.

Now Double click on the My Computer Icon again to bring up this window and double click on Mobile Devices to access your PocketPC’s memory. (This may take a few seconds)

Which brings you to this location of your PocketPC shown below:

Double clicking on My Pocket PC will bring up a window similar to below:

Double click on “Program Files” folder to change to that directory.
Then you should see a folder named Visionary.

Double click on this folder to enter that directory. It should look something like this:

Now go to the menu at the top and select Edit and then Paste.  What this does is paste your kids1 folder that you created into the directory where you have your games located.

NOTE: on the PocketPC this might be located in a different folder or on your storage card!

 Congratulations now you are done!

If everything was done properly you should be able to launch the Game and selected the new deck from File/Choose Deck and you will now see your kids1 deck.  Highlight it and select OK.

You have now created your first deck for our games.  Most of all our games we develop will use a similar method to get your images in.

This might seem a bit simple for some people but we had to make sure everyone could understand on how to do this.  If you are still having problems contact us at bugs@visionary-design.com and DETAIL your steps.

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