Deck Behavior Unexpected and Non-Responsive

I should begin by saying that this is my first module design, so I am probably making some basic error somewhere. However, I have watched and worked through all of Joel Toppen’s fine tutorial videos, and I followed his tutorial nearly exactly when designing the deck in my module. However, no matter what I do, the deck appears face up, not face down, the cards draw face up (which I suppose is not surprising given the first observation), and have no right-click commands despite the fact that the prototype on which they are based contains two. However, when I draw a card by dragging it off the deck stack, the log window correctly identifies it (and it is not the card pictured at the top of the deck, so the “always shuffle” appears to be working) and the module can tell to what zone I have dragged it. I feel like I have copied all the relevant bits from the tutorial and other functional modules I have examined, so I am at a loss. Any help or suggestions would be appreciated. The details of my deck setup are included below.

In my card prototype, I have Mask, Marker – Layer = Encounter, Can Rotate - Rotate Card, and Return to Deck as Traits. The Mask points to a valid card back image (which I can see in the Properties editor) and is controlled by the Mask Command Flip Card Over (CTRL F). I have even gone for an additional level of “card-back-ness” by choosing the Use Image display style and pointing it at the card back image as well. The game piece layer is actually working, so I won’t go into that, and I will skip the rotation since I don’t know that it isn’t working other than I can’t activate it. The Return to Deck command points to a deck called Discard Pile (Menu Command: Discard, keystroke CTRL D).
The cards in the deck were loaded using a single Add Multiple Cards Command, and the images were associated with the Basic Piece trait. The deck appears in the correct location and has been explicitly attached to the only map board. Contents are Always Face Down and Always Reshuffle. The only other command in the Deck Properties editor is Restrict Adding Counters, set to {Type==“Card”} to prevent board pieces from getting incorporated into the deck pile (which otherwise happens).

Hi, did you add the prototype to the cards? Double-check the spelling.

If it’s not the prototype, then all I can suggest re the above info is to back up a bit by adding a new test deck (make sure always face down is on for this one too, but do nothing else), and then add a new card to it (just one card - no prototype - just a simple mask trait in its trait window with your card back image for the mask). Give that a shot, then if that’s working start adding other traits to that card to test those. Then finally compare the two decks/cards and try to discern the problem.

One other currently unimportant note… you’ll want to add another marker trait (Type = Card) for that deck restriction to allow the cards back in if necessary.

Hope you solve it!

I checked the prototype specification; it appears that I added it correctly. So I created a test deck and then created one card, using a single card image and the same back as for the actual deck. This worked fine, including the Flip command which only appeared after the card had departed the stack, as it is supposed to. I then added each component of the prototype, checking them carefully to ensure they were identical to the prototype version and testing them one at a time, and each appears to work perfectly, including the Discard function, which correctly discarded to the Discard Pile deck I had created. I became bold and tested the Discard Pile’s Shuffle and Return to Draw Deck function, and suddenly the errant draw deck which had been face up appeared face down! I started drawing cards from it. Unfortunately, they were all drawing face up and had no active features until I finally hit the test card, which still worked perfectly; when I drew it, the original draw deck now appeared face up.
So I tried the next obvious thing; I added a second test card to the test deck using the Prototype trait instead of the set of Traits. This card failed in exactly the same way as all of the original cards, and the test deck behaved the same way as the original deck when it had the one functional card in it. There is clearly some problem with the prototype, but I cannot fathom what it might be. However, it does indicate a path to repair; I will now attempt to Edit All Contained Pieces and replace the Prototype with the individual Traits is was supposed to bundle. I will report the results.

I replaced the prototype-bundled traits with their explicit counterparts and the deck is now fully functional. Something about the prototyping created the problem, but I don’t know what. The only thing I can think of is that I bundled the Mask trait into the Prototype, but the Mask trait normally comes with the basic Card; perhaps removing it from the Card and adding it to the Prototype was not OK?

No problem removing that defaulted mask and including it in a prototype. The mask trait allows for creative positioning of other traits in its window, which you can read about in the pinned forum posting at the top of this board’s listings (Trait order in counters), but that shouldn’t be the problem here.

I guess I’d recommend testing just a new prototype now. Add two new pieces to the main map using a single at-start stack and whatever images for them. Add only your discard trait into one of them; in the other add only a prototype trait called abc. Create new prototype abc and add that same discard trait into it. Save and try them both out. If both work, then I guess use that prototype instead of the other one, and start moving stuff into it, re-testing it every so often, including renaming it.

If new prototype abc doesn’t work, then I’d try creating a completely new module with that same basic two piece set-up on a simple map, one using a prototype, the other just a test trait of some sort, and see if that fixes it.

Good luck.