Hey. I have made the most awesome 2 player card game (using normal, 52 "poker" cards), and got all the rules written down in a simple document. The whole thing works perfectly smooth in IRL. 

However, it would be really nice if it was possible to create a digital online 2 player version of it, but it seems more complicated than I initially thought it would be, which is of course a bit demoralizing.. So.. What's the best way for a noob to get started? 

I've tried googling "how to make a card game", "how to program a card game", and dozens of other things, and I've tried watching youtube vids etc. but mostly what comes up is weird role playing card games or whatever they're called, or then simply websites that let you create your own physical playing cards, and I'm not interested in any of that. 

I've also tried GameMaker Studio, but I gotta say that it's very unintuitive for a beginner. All the tutorials I can find are about shooting games etc. and that's very different from a card game.

I don't understand the whole "play" thing with frames.. It's not like I'm making a movie, and the frames are more a matter of the player's actions, since it's a card game.

Unity is even worse, same with GDevelop and Construct2. 

I've been searching and searching and reading and reading for the past 2 days, and it's only lead to even more confusion.. Can it really be that there doesn't exist a specific card game designer program, where you can somehow type in your rules, provided they aren't too complicated (which the rules in my game aren't), and then choose background and import images of 52 playing cards and then render the whole thing.. I mean, can it really be so difficult to create a simple card game? Seems like I would have to study programming languages for like 5 years in order to just make a simple card game with around 15 rules or so. (haven't exactly counted them, but it's rather simple).

And if so, then how much would it cost to hire a good programmer to get it done, you think?

18 minutes ago, ModumRocks said:

I've tried googling "how to make a card game", "how to program a card game"

This is where your problem is. Making a card game is the same as making a shooter or any other type of game.

There is no make a X game tutorial that is going to show you how to do everything and all you have to do is follow it.

22 minutes ago, ModumRocks said:

I don't understand the whole "play" thing with frames.. It's not like I'm making a movie,

Yes it is like your making a movie. The deference is recorded and then played back to the audience at a latter date, a game captures the data and then plays it back just after it is captured.

Think of the screen as a camera that is recording whats happening in the digital world, it's your only way to see the world of numbers in a way that makes sense.

27 minutes ago, ModumRocks said:

Can it really be that there doesn't exist a specific card game designer program

There isn't one like you want. You have to make it yourself.

26 minutes ago, ModumRocks said:

I've been searching and searching and reading and reading for the past 2 days

29 minutes ago, ModumRocks said:

Seems like I would have to study programming languages for like 5 years in order to just make a simple card

It takes around a year to make a simple game 353 days to go.

29 minutes ago, ModumRocks said:

And if so, then how much would it cost to hire a good programmer to get it done, you think?

This sounds simple so say anywhere from $500- $60 000.

Can't tell you more without details.

Have you considered asking for a programmer in the Hobby Projects section under Careers here on Gamedev?

Thanks for your reply. 

Think I'll just give up here then. Don't have that much money. Sounds like 60k dollars is if you want a pro looking game with zero flaws, which I want, if anything. And I'm not interested enough in programming to study it for at least a year to make that card game.

Probably impossible to make money from selling it anyway, no matter how good it is. So guess that the world just missed out on a really nice card game. That sucks.

17 minutes ago, ModumRocks said:

Probably impossible to make money from selling it anyway, no matter how good it is. So guess that the world just missed out on a really nice card game. That sucks.

Selling is the hard part and making money from games isn't ever as easy as people like to say it is.

18 minutes ago, ModumRocks said:

Sounds like 60k dollars is if you want a pro looking game with zero flaws

About right. Will be a team making the game. Chances are you could get a mostly flawless game for around $2000 if your game really is simple.

I do find that developers often think there games simple but making them proves to be very hard.

20 minutes ago, ModumRocks said:

Think I'll just give up here then.

Very well then. You could post it somewhere and hope someone makes it or you can make a real world card game with it.

For developers spending a few years learning how to make there games is nothing. Find that thing, that idea that is worth spending time and money on and you will have found something worth doing.

29 minutes ago, ModumRocks said:

Thanks for your reply. 

Think I'll just give up here then. Don't have that much money. Sounds like 60k dollars is if you want a pro looking game with zero flaws, which I want, if anything. And I'm not interested enough in programming to study it for at least a year to make that card game.

Probably impossible to make money from selling it anyway, no matter how good it is. So guess that the world just missed out on a really nice card game. That sucks.

If it is a truly good card game you might try the companies that make card games.  You generally don't make a lot of money on table top games, their is a strong tradition of making table top games being a "basement hobby", but you might be able to get it published if it is something that they think will sell.  You might try big companies like Hasbro or Wizards of the Coast, and if it something they like you would make more money than if a smaller company publishes it.  You might also try smaller companies that make card games, but don't expect to make a lot of money.  The smaller companies are often one person who runs it all from their home, and they are in it more as a hobby than a business.  If one of them takes an interest in it, understand that you are doing it more to publish your game than to make a lot of money on it.  That's how the "basement hobby" side of table top games is.

Well, my idea wasn't really to sell it, but more to play it with friends. But if I were to spend a year developing it or paying huge sums of money for someone to develop it, then of course I'd see if I couldn't sell it to at least bring my own cost down.

I don't want people to steal the game idea. I'd be mad if I published the rules on some forum, and some guy or a big company stole the idea and made it into a sweet online game and made a fortune. It's got all the things needed for success. I know that most people say that, but if I showed you, you would probably understand. It's simple and very psychological, plus there's a facet of luck involved, and it can be played with or without stakes - and it's not a bad rip-off of any existing game. 

If I ever were to talk about the idea with anyone, I'd first patent it or do some form of NDA. Cause I've heard too many horror stories about people getting screwed over. I actually just want to have my own .exe version of it that connects to a server, and then I can share the game with my friends and play it online, but if there's an opportunity to make a fortune, then I want to be sure that I'm not missing out of it because I didn't protect my intellectual property. 

Thing is, I'm not really interested in programming, I'd just like to have my game in an online version. I think programming is rather boring to be honest. So I could never force myself to be interested in it for at least a year, no matter what - and that's why I hoped that there were some form of card game developing platform making it somewhat easy to make your own card games. After all, the card game industry is pretty huge, so I find it odd that there aren't any platforms just in the vicinity of that. 

23 minutes ago, Kavik Kang said:

If it is a truly good card game you might try the companies that make card games.  You generally don't make a lot of money on table top games, their is a strong tradition of making table top games being a "basement hobby", but you might be able to get it published if it is something that they think will sell.  You might try big companies like Hasbro or Wizards of the Coast, and if it something they like you would make more money than if a smaller company publishes it.  You might also try smaller companies that make card games, but don't expect to make a lot of money.  The smaller companies are often one person who runs it all from their home, and they are in it more as a hobby than a business.  If one of them takes an interest in it, understand that you are doing it more to publish your game than to make a lot of money on it.  That's how the "basement hobby" side of table top games is.

 

I've read about trying to convince the big companies, and apparently it's more or less impossible to even get them to listen to you, since there's a ton of 12-16 year olds constantly mailing them half ideas and/or slight modifications of already existing (and patented) games, which they can't really see any point in. 

So I assume they just delete my mail without even reading it. They don't have time for my "stupid" idea, cause 99.9% of the mails they get are stupid. So I don't really blame them.. But yeah, I could try, but then again, already there it would start costing me money, since a patent here in Denmark is pretty expensive, and I'm not gonna mail them one word about it before I got myself covered. 

A patent here costs around 3k dollars, and if there's only a 0.01% chance of them reading my mail because they're constantly bombarded with stupid nonsense from kids, then naah.. Waste of money.

Yes, they will automatically return unsolicited game submissions unopened.  You would want to, at the very least, contact them through e-mail first and ask if they are interested in a card game.  Most likely, they will say no.  Most people who make table top games do it as a hobby, it's not their day job.  It wouldn't be easy to do just over the internet.  You were wanting to make a computer game, so you probably aren't interested in taking it this far.  But the way that would give you the most chance of success would be to go to the conventions at meet people there.  You might find someone who is interested in your game, or you would at the very least meet a lot of self-publishing "basement hobbyists" who could tell you a lot about how to publish it yourself like they do.  That is an easier thing to do these days than most would imagine.  If it is just a pure card game, and cards are the only component, that is a pretty easy thing to do.

I haven't tried this myself, but Tabletop Simulator might be worth having a look at. At the very least, do some reading on it and see what it's capable of:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/286160/Tabletop_Simulator/

6 hours ago, Lactose said:

I haven't tried this myself, but Tabletop Simulator might be worth having a look at. At the very least, do some reading on it and see what it's capable of:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/286160/Tabletop_Simulator/

Thanks man. Exactly what I was looking for. Hope it can be customized enough though, but I'll give it a try for sure.