How do I do this?

For context real quick (doesn't matter if you play this type of game or not) I'm making a pack opening simulator for a card game, I'd like to make a deck builder.

How would I take a bunch of sprite objects and have them listed out for a search, but also be able to have those objects not pop up if the variable for how many of a given object you own is 0 without having any gaps between anything?

Sorry if this is poor wording, feel free to ask any questions out of confusion.

How would I take a bunch of sprite objects and have them listed out for a search, but also be able to have those objects not pop up if the variable for how many of a given object you own is 0 without having any gaps between anything?

what ?

I asked ChatGPT to decipher this post:

Yeah, I get what they’re asking. They’re making a pack-opening simulator (like for a collectible card game) and want to add a deck builder. The issue they’re facing is displaying a list of cards in a searchable way without gaps, while also making sure cards with a quantity of zero don’t appear.

Breaking Down the Problem:

• Listing cards for a search → They need a way to display all the cards they own.
• Hiding cards with zero quantity → If a card isn’t owned, it shouldn’t be listed.
• No gaps → If a card is removed, the list should shift up to keep things tidy.

Cameron9990 Is this what you are asking?

...correct

Check out this demo:

howtoconstructdemos.com/template-for-a-card-game-shuffling-a-deck-of-cards-dealing-cards-to-two-players

It may not be exactly what you are asking, but it shows how to sort and re-arrange cards.

Well one way would be to have one sprite type and call it “card”. You’d have all the different looks of the cards as different animation frames, and you’d set the animation speed to 0. Basically you’d create or destroy individual cards to add or remove cards you own.

You’d then select certain cards from that with conditions to pick them.

Or do you need to arrange them differently? Post a picture of what you have in mind, or a video of a similar game.

There’s always many ways to do things. One way could be:

Use an array or json object to store a list of all the cards. In it you could store things like the name of the card, the file name of the image, and if it’s owned.

Then you could make a second list of owned cards or use find() with the name to filter the list. Basically by looping over the complete list and building the filtered list from that.

Now to display those cards you’d loop over the filtered list and create the cards and position them like dop suggests.

If looping over the lists becomes too slow you could only loop over part of the lists per frame.

You could also possibly not have to create all the cards from the filtered list to display them. Depending how you display them you could calculate what cards would be visible and only create those.

Finally if video memory becomes an issue with so many unique cards you would need to do some kind of memory management. So instead of adding all the card images to the card sprites animation, you’d add them to the files folder of your project. Then you’d load/remove the images on the fly to the card sprite as needed at runtime. It’s probably more tedious to do than it sounds. You’d want to keep track of what images were loaded to avoid repeated loading.

Anyways, that’s a fairly low level overview of what might be needed. There are probably many simplifications or shortcuts.

There’s always many ways to do things. One way could be:

Use an array or json object to store a list of all the cards. In it you could store things like the name of the card, the file name of the image, and if it’s owned.

Then you could make a second list of owned cards or use find() with the name to filter the list. Basically by looping over the complete list and building the filtered list from that.

Now to display those cards you’d loop over the filtered list and create the cards and position them like dop suggests.

If looping over the lists becomes too slow you could only loop over part of the lists per frame.

You could also possibly not have to create all the cards from the filtered list to display them. Depending how you display them you could calculate what cards would be visible and only create those.

Finally if video memory becomes an issue with so many unique cards you would need to do some kind of memory management. So instead of adding all the card images to the card sprites animation, you’d add them to the files folder of your project. Then you’d load/remove the images on the fly to the card sprite as needed at runtime. It’s probably more tedious to do than it sounds. You’d want to keep track of what images were loaded to avoid repeated loading.

Anyways, that’s a fairly low level overview of what might be needed. There are probably many simplifications or shortcuts.

I'm currently using a Dictionary to store the info on what cards are owned. How would I only spawn the cards that have Dictionary data?

Loop over all the keys in the dictionary and create a card for each one?

Loop over all the keys in the dictionary and create a card for each one?

I tried, for me it's making a random card for each one instead of the exact card.