I asked GPT-4 to help me create a Dobble card deck

My first try of GPT-4 from OpenAi. My prompts are quite messy but the interlocutor was very helpful.

The first result is not very good and the final script needs more work, but the core logic is done. (Here a generated card)

Hello, I want to create a gobble card game. How much symbols do I need to create a set of 50 cards ?

In a Gobble card game (also known as Dobble or Spot It), each card has a unique combination of symbols, and each pair of cards shares exactly one symbol in common. To create a Gobble card game with 50 cards, you’ll need to determine the number of symbols per card and the total number of unique symbols required.

The game is based on projective geometry and can be represented by the formula:

n(n - 1) + 1 = total number of unique symbols

where n is the number of symbols per card.

For a Gobble card game with 50 cards, you will have:

50 = n(n - 1) + 1

Solving this equation for n, you’ll find that there isn’t a whole number solution. The closest solutions are n = 7 and n = 8, which result in 43 and 57 unique symbols, respectively.

So, if you want to create a Gobble card game with 50 cards, you can either:

  1. Create a game with 7 symbols per card and 43 unique symbols. In this case, you will have 7 extra cards that you can use as additional variants, bonus cards, or even for replacement cards in case some get damaged or lost.
  2. Create a game with 8 symbols per card and 57 unique symbols. In this case, you will need to remove 7 cards to have exactly 50 cards, but the game mechanics will still work correctly.

I have a folder with 43 image files in it, can you give me a lang="python" script that read this folder and prints an array (the card set) of array (each row is a list of the file names that will be the symbols on the cards) ?

Sure, here’s a Python script that reads a folder containing 43 image files and generates a card set with 7 symbols per card, where each row represents a card:


import os
from itertools import combinations

def generate_gobble_cards(folder_path):
    # Read the folder and get the image filenames
    image_filenames = [filename for filename in os.listdir(folder_path) if filename.endswith(('.png', '.jpg', '.jpeg', '.gif', '.bmp'))]

    if len(image_filenames) != 43:
        raise ValueError('The folder should contain exactly 43 image files.')

    # Generate cards
    cards = []
    n = 7

    # Add the first card
    cards.append(image_filenames[:n])

    # Generate combinations of the remaining symbols
    remaining_symbols = image_filenames[n:]
    combos = list(combinations(remaining_symbols, n - 1))

    # Iterate through the symbols of the first card
    for i, symbol in enumerate(cards[0]):
        for combo in combos:
            if symbol not in combo:
                new_card = [symbol] + list(combo)
                cards.append(new_card)
                combos.remove(combo)

    return cards

folder_path = 'path/to/your/folder'  # Replace with the path to your folder containing 43 image files
card_set = generate_gobble_cards(folder_path)

# Print the card set
for idx, card in enumerate(card_set):
    print(f'Card {idx + 1}:', card)

Make sure to replace ‘path/to/your/folder’ with the actual path to the folder containing your 43 image files. This script assumes that the folder contains exactly 43 image files. The script will generate and print the card set, where each card is a list of image filenames representing the symbols on the card.

Can you modify the script so it creates me from the same folder only a set of 10 cards with a minimal number of symbols ?

Sure! Here’s a modified version of the script to generate a set of 10 cards with a minimal number of symbols:


import os
from itertools import combinations

def generate_gobble_cards(folder_path, num_cards):
    # Read the folder and get the image filenames
    image_filenames = [filename for filename in os.listdir(folder_path) if filename.endswith(('.png', '.jpg', '.jpeg', '.gif', '.bmp'))]

    if len(image_filenames) < num_cards:
        raise ValueError('The folder should contain at least as many image files as the number of cards required.')

    # Determine the number of symbols per card
    n = 2
    while (n * (n - 1) + 1) < num_cards:
        n += 1

    # Generate cards
    cards = []

    # Add the first card
    cards.append(image_filenames[:n])

    # Generate combinations of the remaining symbols
    remaining_symbols = image_filenames[n:]
    combos = list(combinations(remaining_symbols, n - 1))

    # Iterate through the symbols of the first card
    for i, symbol in enumerate(cards[0]):
        for combo in combos:
            if symbol not in combo:
                new_card = [symbol] + list(combo)
                cards.append(new_card)
                combos.remove(combo)
                break

        if len(cards) >= num_cards:
            break

    return cards

folder_path = 'path/to/your/folder'  # Replace with the path to your folder containing image files
num_cards = 10
card_set = generate_gobble_cards(folder_path, num_cards)

# Print the card set
for idx, card in enumerate(card_set):
    print(f'Card {idx + 1}:', card)

Make sure to replace ‘path/to/your/folder’ with the actual path to the folder containing your image files. This script will generate and print a card set with the specified number of cards (10 in this case) and a minimal number of symbols per card. Keep in mind that the folder should contain at least as many image files as the number of cards required.

Can you modify the script in order to create a new directory called cards and for each card in the card_set, create a new image file in the cards directory using its symbols and imagemagick.

Certainly! To create a new directory called ‘cards’ and save each card as an image file using ImageMagick, you’ll first need to install the Python library wand which is a ctypes-based simple ImageMagick binding for Python. You can install it using pip:


pip install Wand

After installing the wand library, you can modify the script as follows:


import os
from itertools import combinations
from wand.image import Image
from wand.display import display

def generate_gobble_cards(folder_path, num_cards):
    # Read the folder and get the image filenames
    image_filenames = [filename for filename in os.listdir(folder_path) if filename.endswith(('.png', '.jpg', '.jpeg', '.gif', '.bmp'))]

    if len(image_filenames) < num_cards:
        raise ValueError('The folder should contain at least as many image files as the number of cards required.')

    # Determine the number of symbols per card
    n = 2
    while (n * (n - 1) + 1) < num_cards:
        n += 1

    # Generate cards
    cards = []

    # Add the first card
    cards.append(image_filenames[:n])

    # Generate combinations of the remaining symbols
    remaining_symbols = image_filenames[n:]
    combos = list(combinations(remaining_symbols, n - 1))

    # Iterate through the symbols of the first card
    for i, symbol in enumerate(cards[0]):
        for combo in combos:
            if symbol not in combo:
                new_card = [symbol] + list(combo)
                cards.append(new_card)
                combos.remove(combo)
                break

        if len(cards) >= num_cards:
            break

    return cards

def create_card_images(folder_path, card_set):
    cards_dir = 'cards'
    os.makedirs(cards_dir, exist_ok=True)

    for idx, card in enumerate(card_set):
        with Image(filename=os.path.join(folder_path, card[0])) as base_image:
            for symbol in card[1:]:
                with Image(filename=os.path.join(folder_path, symbol)) as symbol_image:
                    base_image.composite(symbol_image, left=0, top=0)

            base_image.save(filename=os.path.join(cards_dir, f'card_{idx + 1}.png'))
            # Uncomment the following line if you want to display the created card image
            # display(base_image)

folder_path = 'path/to/your/folder'  # Replace with the path to your folder containing image files
num_cards = 10
card_set = generate_gobble_cards(folder_path, num_cards)
create_card_images(folder_path, card_set)

This script will create a new directory called ‘cards’ and save each card as an image file (PNG) in that directory. The symbols are composited on top of each other using ImageMagick through the wand library. You can adjust the left and top parameters in the base_image.composite() method to change the positions of the symbols. Note that this simple script assumes all image symbols have the same size and transparent background. You may need to adjust the script to handle different image sizes and backgrounds.

Please replace ‘path/to/your/folder’ with the actual path to the folder containing your image files.

Dobble game card are round, can you modify the script so in the create_card_images function it creates a black circle of diameter 1000, resizes the symbols to fit inside and distributes them in trigonometric order around the center with their top oriented to the center of the circle ?

Of course! To create circular Dobble game cards with symbols resized and distributed evenly in trigonometric order, we can modify the create_card_images function as follows:


import math
from wand.color import Color

def create_card_images(folder_path, card_set):
    cards_dir = 'cards'
    os.makedirs(cards_dir, exist_ok=True)

    card_diameter = 1000
    symbol_size = card_diameter // 4

    for idx, card in enumerate(card_set):
        with Image(width=card_diameter, height=card_diameter, background=Color('black')) as base_image:
            angle_step = 360 / len(card)

            for i, symbol in enumerate(card):
                angle = math.radians(i * angle_step)
                x_offset = (card_diameter - symbol_size) // 2 * math.cos(angle)
                y_offset = (card_diameter - symbol_size) // 2 * math.sin(angle)

                with Image(filename=os.path.join(folder_path, symbol)) as symbol_image:
                    symbol_image.transform(resize=f"{symbol_size}x{symbol_size}")
                    symbol_image.rotate(-i * angle_step)
                    x = (card_diameter - symbol_image.width) // 2 + int(x_offset)
                    y = (card_diameter - symbol_image.height) // 2 - int(y_offset)
                    base_image.composite(symbol_image, left=x, top=y)

            base_image.save(filename=os.path.join(cards_dir, f'card_{idx + 1}.png'))
            # Uncomment the following line if you want to display the created card image
            # display(base_image)

This modified create_card_images function creates a black circle with a diameter of 1000, resizes the symbols to fit inside, and distributes them evenly in trigonometric order around the center with their top oriented to the center of the circle.

The rest of the script remains unchanged:


import os
from itertools import combinations
from wand.image import Image
from wand.display import display

# ... (generate_gobble_cards function)

folder_path = 'path/to/your/folder'
num_cards = 10
card_set = generate_gobble_cards(folder_path, num_cards)
create_card_images(folder_path, card_set)

Replace ‘path/to/your/folder’ with the actual path to the folder containing your image files. The script will create and save the circular Dobble game cards with resized and distributed symbols in the ‘cards’ directory as before.