Hello everyone,

Update 0.20 is now live 🎉

An exporter issue was reported after the December update, but I couldn't hotfix it earlier because I forgot to create a clean v0.19 snapshot before the holidays, so the focus shifted to finalizing and releasing 0.20 earlier than planned.

A large part of this update focuses on under the hood improvements, especially around database performance, memory usage, and responsiveness. Asset loading times should be faster, memory spikes reduced, and some workflows are now smoother. See the full patch notes for details.

It also includes some user requests, alongside a new Package Manager, editor refinements, and a round of fixes and polish.

Note: I’ll remove the 'Beta – v0.14.1 Downgrade (Pre-database changes)' branch very soon. The on-demand database update greatly improved scalability, but initially introduced more frequent loading interruptions for users with hundreds or thousands of assets per category. Since then, the database has been significantly optimized, and the workaround branch is no longer necessary for anyone still using it. After loading a category in the asset browser, reopening it is now near instant for the rest of the session.

As always, thank you for the continued feedback, reports, and patience, it helps shape each update.

• Internal work on the database system, including refactoring, polishing, and architectural improvements. Asset lookups have been upgraded from O(n) to O(1) using new hash table–based methods, alongside updated pooling techniques for better memory management

• These changes result in faster load times, reduced memory usage, and much smaller memory spikes. These improvements will be most apparent in projects with large numbers of custom assets and/or when many built-in categories have been loaded

• Loading time has been improved with near-instant reopening after the initial load

• The filter state is now preserved when reopening the menu

• Now shows the generic loading progress popup if texts have not been loaded yet

• Improved asset sorting method to better respect alphabetical order

• Removed the loading bar inside the asset browser UI. It now shows the generic loading progress popup instead

• Opening an unloaded category now immediately clears the Asset Browser and displays the generic loading progress popup, improving perceived responsiveness during category loads

• The work on the database also brings a smoother loading process when opening categories, eliminating some of the freezes

• Reopening categories is now significantly faster

• To address requests for hiding built-in assets in the Asset Browser, parts of the database have been restructured around asset packages. These packages can be enabled or disabled individually

• A new Package Manager window is available from the top-right navigation menu in the Project Hub/Main Menu. Disabling packages removes them from the Asset Browser and frees associated memory

• Added the new Package Manager window, accessible from the top-right navigation menu. This allows fine-grained control over which built in asset packages are loaded and visible in the asset browser

• Updated the options dropdown button to a three-dots icon to avoid confusion with the copy/paste icon used elsewhere in the UI

Added new special variables:

• {decknum_padded}
  Same as {decknum}, but with leading zeros based on the deck count number length

• {projectnum}
  Calculates the card’s virtual position within the project, based on the decks structure
  (May be expensive on slower systems.)

• {projectnum_padded}
  Same as {projectnum}, but with leading zeros based on the project card count number length

• {projectcount}
  Outputs the total number of cards in the project

• Reduced vertical spacing to better accommodate the expanded list of special variables.
  Updated and clarified several variable descriptions

• Fixed an issue with internal formatting of frame_7

• Fixed several built-in images not using power-of-4 dimensions, slightly improving memory usage

• Fixed an issue where the tooltip could remain visible after switching categories if an asset was hovered just before the new category started loading, causing it to display an asset name from the previous category

• Fixed anchoring of the image-picker panel. It should now be consistent regardless of window size

• Fixed scrolling not working in the layer hierarchy when hovering over a layer header

• Fixed an issue where layer ordering could break when rendering cards in the exporter, causing elements to appear missing

Hello everyone,

Update 0.19 is now officially LIVE! 🎉

This update introduces a wide range of improvements across Card Engine, with a strong focus on workflow flexibility, editor usability, and quality-of-life refinements. Highlights include customizable project file paths, a major overhaul of the text icon widget, more standard-assets, upgrades to the template system, and several editor enhancements aimed at faster iteration and better control.

This will serve as the final update of the year, and I would like to say thank you to everyone who has shared their ideas, suggestions and bug reports throughout the year. You've helped shape Card Engine into what it is today.

Happy holidays, and enjoy the update 🎄

• Decreased transparency of the Demo watermark in the editor

• Added a check to ensure the project card size config menu only appears automatically once, instead of every time a project with zero cards is opened

• Made the Card Engine logo almost transparent in the set project card size window to make it easier to read the text values on small landscape card sizes

• The app now supports custom file paths when creating new projects

• You can now “add” folders to the Project Hub. For example, you move an existing project folder from the current Documents path to another drive. You can then simply click the “Add project” button, find it in the native file browser and then have it reappear in the Project Hub

• You can manually edit the custom project paths list in a new Projects.xml file found in the Documents/Card Engine folder

• If not set, the project will be created in the default Documents location, matching previous Card Engine versions. Custom Linux paths may be configurable via the new Projects.xml file in the Card Engine Documents folder, but Linux is not officially supported so this has not been tested

• Settings files etc will continue to use the Documents folder

• Custom path projects can only be removed from the project list in Card Engine. This prevents accidental data loss if a user assigns the wrong folder. The Default Documents path still works as before

• Added a new input validator for project names when creating or renaming projects. The only restriction now is the Windows (OS) illegal Filename characters and reserved strings. This means you can finally use space etc in project names

• Reworked design of the projects list, to make it look less cluttered

• Each project now displays the project folder location below the display name

• Added a button to each project for accessing the right-click menu, making it easier to find where to open the project folder, change the project display name, etc

• Will now scroll to the bottom of the list when adding new projects

• Enhanced the Bold, Italic, and Underline buttons in the text editor. Now, when text is highlighted, these buttons apply formatting only to the highlighted portion. If no text is highlighted, they continue to toggle formatting for the entire text like before

• Will now reselect the text input field after clicking the bold, italic or underline buttons

• Added an overlay to the app window when the asset browser is opened for picking an image, making it clearer where your attention is required

• Clicking outside the image picker will now close it regardless of deselecting an object or not

• Also added the new input validator for when creating new categories and renaming layers, allowing more name flexibility

• The editor config panel no longer closes when clicking outside it, allowing easier testing of different settings without reopening it repeatedly

• Added toggle options for snapping to center, edge, border, safe zone and bleed zone in the editor config panel

• Individual element visibility can now be toggled the same way as layers in the layer hierarchy

• Updated the right-click menu shortcut icon in layer headers and added a similar button to the elements in the layer hierarchy to make the additional options more discoverable

• Added a solution for recovering highlights lost during image tinting. The shader can now detect bright areas and preserve them using a ‘Highlights’ slider. At 0, the image takes the full tint; raising the value increasingly keeps more of the original highlights

• You can now apply ALL changes from the left-side ‘Apply changes’ button in the Template editor. This should make it significantly easier to apply a bunch of changes without having to click ‘apply changes’ on every single element that was changed

• Added headers to the apply to cards window to distinguish between applying changes to all elements and only the selected element

• Changed some apply-changes window labels to make it easier to understand what they affect

• Added a red * marker to the image and text properties in the apply window, and they are no longer affected by the “toggle all” button. They must be enabled manually, and hovering them now shows a warning that they will overwrite existing text and image content

• Added a Layer property to the Apply Changes window. Changing an element’s layer or its position in the layer hierarchy can now be applied to template-derived cards. With this enabled, layer name and visibility will also be applied. Note: layer deletions are not synced, as each card has an independent layer structure.

• Updated tooltips on the ‘Apply to cards’ buttons to reflect the new apply ALL changes functionality

• Added frame_34 to the Frames category (Standard License)

• Added frame_35 to the Frames category (Standard License)

• Added frame_36 to the Frames category (Standard License)

• Added frame_37 to the Frames category (Standard License)

• Added frame_38 to the Frames category (Standard License)

• Added frame_39 to the Frames category (Standard License)

• Added frame_40 to the Frames category (Standard License)

• Added elements_59 to the Elements category (Standard License)

• Added elements_60 to the Elements category (Standard License)

• Added elements_61 to the Elements category (Standard License)

• Added elements_62 to the Elements category (Standard License)

• Added elements_63 to the Elements category (Standard License)

• Added elements_64 to the Elements category (Standard License)

• Added elements_65 to the Elements category (Standard License)

• Added Shapes_31 to the Shapes category (Standard License)

• Added Shapes_32 to the Shapes category (Standard License)

• Added tabletop_icons_239 to the TabletopIcons category (Standard License)

• Added tabletop_icons_240 to the TabletopIcons category (Standard License)

• Added 2 new artist-designed example card frames

• Per element layer height (Sibling index) is now stored in the cards.xml file

• Per element visibility is now stored in the cards.xml file

• Added cut marks around the edges when exporting in Paper mode, making it easier to line up a ruler and trim cleanly with a utility knife. The marks follow the Flow system and stay aligned with cards regardless of size, spacing, or paper format

• Added ‘Alternating’ as an option under ‘Order’ (Renamed to ‘Layout’ in the new version). This allows exporting alternating front and back pages

• Updated some tooltips for clarity

• Will now scroll to the bottom of the list when adding new decks

• Updated UI design to match the aesthetic of the rest of the app

• The Text Icon Picker widget has been fully overhauled, improving both appearance and functionality to match the quality and features of the rest of Card Engine

• Clicking icons in the widget will now select them in the widget and show a larger preview where you can set the color, see the full tag <sprite=XX>, restore default or change the icon to another one from the asset browser

• Color data is now saved per icon for easier consistency

• Added a Global Size modifier configurable per icon

• Added a Global vertical offset modifier configurable per icon

• Added a preview-text to show the icon in a text with all modifiers etc before you click insert

• Will now scroll to the bottom of the list when adding new variables

• Reworked the ‘help center’ into a much smaller and simpler pop-up window

• Removed the ‘Activate/Deactivate Debug Mode’ button. It was originally exposed to users due to an old template sync issue, but the bug hasn’t reappeared in months and is considered fully resolved

• Fixed the Demo watermark not updating to the new card size if changing project card size with the editor opened

• Fixed a bug where the decimal parser could fail to register negative values

• Fixed an issue where custom categories would remain open after being deleted

• Now uses the actual project folders for last modified data timestamps, instead of cluttering the ProjectData.xml file with it

• Fixed the scroll view in the Project Hub not scrolling if the pointer was in between two project rows

• Fixed the new-deck-button-text unintentionally changing color when switching to light mode

• Fixed some issues with colors in the layer component when switching to light mode

• Fixed the rename layer and create category input field-texts not changing color when switching to light mode

• Fixed the I-beam cursor not showing when hovering the rename layer and create category input fields

• Fixed the + button in the header of the variables window not switching color when switching to light mode

• Fixed custom variables fields not switching colors to light mode

• Fixed the deck topbars not switching color when switching to light mode

• Fixed an issue where rounded corners could fail to apply to some of the cards during the initial loading process, but would be fixed by refreshing the decks list

• Fixed the scroll view in the variables window not scrolling if the pointer was in between two rows

• Fixed an issue where the tooltip would not show if the cursor quickly entered a tooltip trigger, left it, then returned before the tooltip delay timer reached 0

• Fixed file path displays where / and \\ were mixed, resulting in malformed paths

Hello everyone,

Here's another hotfix for some issues that came up after update 0.18

As always, thank you for your continued feedback and support, keep sharing your ideas and bug reports on the Card Engine Discord or Community Hub!

• Fixed incorrect anchor for the top-left navigation bar

• Fixed the preview texts in the variables window not rendering text icons when using the <voffset> formatting

Hello everyone,

Here's a hotfix for some issues that came up after update 0.18

As always, thank you for your continued feedback and support, keep sharing your ideas and bug reports on the Card Engine Discord or Community Hub!

• Fixed shadow data not getting pasted when copying and pasting individual objects

• Fixed the layer UI list disappearing after changing the card size in the project card size window with the editor open

• Fixed the grid not updating to match other card sizes

Hello everyone,

This update brings a highly requested feature, the ability to set quantities for each card in the editor and through CSV imports. The exporter will add the additional cards to the page, or flow to additional pages if needed.

Alongside this, the editing experience has received major improvements, including a fully reworked grid system and viewport system with smoother zooming, sharper visuals, and better overall performance. The font selection menu, editing controls, and general UI have also been refined to make designing and managing cards faster and more intuitive.

CSV NOTE: Every old column has been moved one cell to the right, as the first column now serves to set the quantity of each card to export. You will get an import error informing you that a number was expected from the quantity column if you try to import a CSV with the old structure.

As always, thank you for your continued feedback and support, keep sharing your ideas and bug reports on the Card Engine Discord or Community Hub!

• Removed the almost transparent project name text from the bottom left

• Improved loading times for fonts in both the asset browser and the font selection dropdown menu

• Added card quantity to export functionality to Card Engine. You no longer need to create duplicate cards for this purpose

• Added a quantity column to the CSV files generated to configure this new card data

• CSV now takes template cards into consideration when retrieving tags. This should prevent confusion if exporting a CSV file with no cards in any deck in the collection

• Will now throw an import error message if there is less header cells than the importer requires

• Added an input field in the top left panel to specify the quantity to export

• Added a minimum font size field to the text UI layout. This gives more control over text scaling. The previous single value font size continues to act as a max value

• Font size can now be set as low as 1 pts using the new minimum value field

• Changes to number-input field margins for better alignment

• Object names in the layer list will now try to use the object tag if it’s not empty

• The grid system has been reworked from scratch

• New shader based approach improves grid performance significantly by moving the calculations entirely over to the GPU

• The grid is now generated from the center of the card instead of the lower left

• The minimum grid size is now 10

• New viewport system that better handles different card sizes

• Adjusted zoom constraints

• Reworked zoom and drag logic

• Added horizontal and vertical pan scrollbars that appear as you zoom in

• Added a reset camera button that restores the camera to its default position and zoom

• Added a padding input field to the editor config menu for controlling padding with the new editor viewport and zoom constraint changes

• Moved the close button to the top-left for more visual space in the viewport

• Selection and dotted outlines now become thinner as you zoom in

• Made the editor interface background slightly transparent as slightly seeing the cards in the background looked kinda cool

• You can now mouse-wheel-drag from anywhere within the viewport to move the card. It no longer needs you to hover the cursor over the card to move it. Use the new reset camera button if you somehow drag the card out of the viewport by accident or double click the mouse wheel

• You can now hold the arrow keys for continued precision movement. The speed increases the longer you hold it

• Changed the template info popup text slightly to make it clearer

• Duplicating elements will no longer offset their position. This behaviour was for easier selecting the duplicated object, but it’s made redundant by the layer UI overhaul in update 0.17

• The resize cursor should now scale better across a wide range of windowed app sizes

This is the dropdown menu from clicking the font button under the text section with an object selected, not the texts found in the asset browser.

• Removed the loading text

• Sequential loading times has been significantly increased. After the first initial time opening it, the list can practically appear in an instant

• The list now scrolls to where you was previously upon being reopened. This combined with “instant” loading should make it a significantly more pleasant experience when testing different fonts

• Added a new built in variable {deckcount} which formats to the total amount of cards within the deck

• The {decknum} variable now defaults to 9 instead of - so that it looks better on Templates

• Added a new tag to text formatting for curving text, <curve>. This tag requires the end tag to apply </curve>

• Combine the new curve tag with variables like the built in {name} variable to get a simple curved title: <curve=1>{name}</curve>

• The curve tag can take two values, the first is curve strength and the second is a character rotation multiplier. The latter is entirely optional as text is rotated automatically along the curve. E.g. <curve=1.2,3.5>. Use . for decimal and , as separator

• I’ve updated the website and documentation, and added a Documentation button to the Main Menu that links to the new, more guide-oriented documentation page

• Added a new Bug report form on the website. Changed the Steam community link to this new bug report form

• Small changes to the preview-card design

• Now displays estimated corner size value in both pixels and real life measurements instead of the old % value

• Raised the corner rounding max value to 256 px

• Raised max px value to 2048 (≈173.4mm)

• Some changes to deck UI design

• Decks can finally be moved up or down in the list (Excluding the default deck, which will continue to be locked at the top)

• Updated designs and texts on most of the cards to showcase newer features like shadows, outlines, text icons, text formatting and variables

• Now that you can set quantities for each card, both in the editor and through CSV imports, the exporter will automatically duplicate those cards as needed, flowing them onto additional pages when required

• Fixed an issue where importing a CSV could cause the last card opened in the editor to not properly have the changes applied. It would look like all cards in the collection got updated correctly, but when the last edited card would be reopened in the editor, or the project reloaded, that single card could be reverted to the pre-CSV import state

• Fixed an issue where CSV could change objects with no tag if the corresponding column header tag was removed from the CSV file before importing. (This meant the system saw an empty header tag, so it applied this data to objects that also had no tag)

• Fixed incorrect scaling on the + icon of the create new card buttons inside card decks. The icon will no longer disappear when the collections are zoomed out max on a lower resolution

• Clicking to copy a card ID to the OS clipboard now correctly prefixes it with the required CSV 'ID' string

• Fixed an issue where the clipboard could fail to copy and paste shadow and outline data

• Fixed an issue where the clipboard could fail to copy and paste text content when copying and pasting entire layers

• You can now use both , and . (comma and punctuation) when typing in decimals in number fields. This will make it easier for those on different keyboard layouts (Europe/Asia). Please do let me know if there is a field I might have missed

• Fixed the ‘Learn more’ button in the template info window sending you to the Frostzone home page instead of the documentation page for templates. (This was a redirect because of changes to the documentation url)

• Fixed an issue where cards rendered in the collections could render wrong text if the text object were missing an object ID, causing it to default all missing object ID texts to the first text data found. This only happened if importing very old XML data or opening very old projects from before Object IDs were even introduced, and a card face refresh (E.g. flipping the collection) would fix it

• Fixed missing + icon in the color swatches section of the color picker

• Fixed a small graphical flicker that could occur when transitioning from main menu project loading to project initialization loading

• Fixed a bug where the {decknum} built in variable also counted pooled, disabled cards, causing it to show wrong numbers after deleting cards in the same deck

Hello everyone,

This update focuses on improving usability and control within the editor, introducing built-in variables with special behavior, a complete overhaul of the Layer UI for a more powerful workflow, and a series of quality-of-life changes. These improvements aim to make the editor more intuitive and flexible, while also addressing several issues introduced with the recent database update.

As always, please continue to post your bug reports and feedback in the Card Engine discord server or the Community Hub.

• Added some built in variables with special behaviour:

• {name} formats to the name of the card

• {project} Formats to the name of the project

• {deck} Formats to the card’s deck

• {decknum} Formats to the card’s position in the deck (e.g., 4 for the 4th card)

• Extended the height of the variables window to give more overview at once, especially now with built in variables showing at the top

• If a user-made variable collides with any of these built-in ones, the user-made variable will take priority, and the built-in one will be ignored

• Reworked UI layout for a cleaner look that’s more in style with the rest of the app

• Each layer will now show all objects placed in a list within the new layer interface. These can be clicked as a shortcut for selecting the objects, giving much better control and overview

• Objects can be drag and dropped to other layers or objects to rearrange height-layering. (E.g. drag an icon image two objects down in order to get it behind a card frame image)

• The layers themselves can also be drag and dropped to other layers to rearrange the layer hierarchy

• Removed the Bring Forward and Bring Backward buttons from the Transform section of the editor layout. This action is now done exclusively through the new drag and drop hierarchical system

• Removed the Move Up and Move Down buttons from the layer section of the editor layout. This too is now done exclusively through the new drag and drop hierarchical system

• The layer component now stretches vertically in the UI to show as much info as possible

• Increased text-box input area in the right-side panel of the editor

• Added a deadzone to the drag and drop card collection system. This should prevent accidentally beginning and immediately ending a drag action when the intention was to just click a card to open it in the editor

• Improved the algorithm for picking where to place layers in the hierarchy if an object gets applied on a template on a new layer that does not already exist on the cards that derives from the template

• Moved the click-to-copy card ID from the top of the left-side panel in the editor to the top center of the application window, next to the card name. The text can still be clicked to copy it to the OS clipboard for use in CSV.
  (E.g. “New Card (id:123123123)”)

• Fixed the default ‘Texts’ category being visible in the image picker, resulting in a category of blank images if it got opened

• Custom fonts will no longer appear as blank images in custom categories within the image picker
  (These were bugs from the recent database update, where it unintentionally tried to load ALL assets into the image picker, including fonts)

• The database will no longer immediately unload assets when the confirm delete template window appears, fixing an issue where images on the template turned blank in the collection until the card face was refreshed

• Text assets should now correctly flip color in the asset browser when changing between dark or light UI interface without requiring you to reopen the category to trigger a refresh

• Fixed an issue where objects could be unintentionally deleted from cards when merging layers on the template they were derived from

• Fixed the tag input field text not flipping to dark text when light UI interface is toggled on

• Fixed an issue where copying a layer from a card with a template assigned and pasting that layer data onto a layer in the template it was derived from would cause the source card to incorrectly receive all of the pasted layer’s objects on separate new layers, instead of within a single layer

• Card Engine now unloads assets less aggressively, reducing active CPU overhead
  
• Sequential loading of assets will now be significantly faster than the first initial load. (E.g. Reopening a large custom category in the asset browser)

• Reduced memory usage of custom assets by discarding CPU-side copies of textures entirely after uploading to GPU
  
• Added texture compression to decrease peak VRAM usage
  
• Optimized PNG/JPG loading pipeline to prevent duplicate textures in memory while loading, which led to memory spikes
  
• Improved handling of very large custom asset folders (~500+ images) to prevent memory spikes and excessive GC pressure
  
• Custom asset deletion and category clearing now fully release associated textures from memory
  
• Removed outdated beta-specific libraries and systems. Future betas will have dedicated builds, improving memory efficiency slightly

• Project snapshots are now created upon loading a project instead of a mass action for every project upon loading the main menu. This should make loading the main menu significantly faster for users with many projects

• Opening categories now supports incremental loading for spreading large asset loads over multiple frames. This will fix the issue with the system thinking the app is frozen/unresponsive while performing large loading tasks
  
• Added a callback system to the asset browser for building UI lists progressively as assets are loaded in, reducing memory spikes when opening categories
  
• Added a loading progress bar to the asset browser
  
• Removed internal custom asset sorting. The asset browser now follows the order assets are found on your system, as the system already handles ordering effectively. Order may differ from the previous Card Engine sorting based on your system’s default behaviour

• Fixed a memory leak that could occur when opening categories
  
• Fixed the font selection menu only opening when clicking the left-half of the font selection button

• Fixed an issue where the new database system failed to retrieve built-in fonts when using the lite <font=””> </font> formatting system

• The filter input now clears when the menu is reopened
  
• Fixed an issue where the list of fonts could wrap around if opened in quick succession
  
• Fixed an issue where the input text cursor would not show when hovering the filter input