genshin tcg duel disk design notes
YES the devices from cloud retainer for kq and zhongli's tcg match are basically just yugioh duel disks. what about it. i didn't call them “duel disks” directly bc. well. it would probably just be funnier to show you guys how the conversation went:
- duel disks sounds more swaggy….
- IT DOES
- BUT IT DOESN'T SOUND GENSHINY
- LIKE HOW
- BE SERIOUS
- YOU CAN TELL IT WAS LIFTED STRAIGHT FROM YUGIOH
- IVE NEVER WATCHED YUGIOH SO I WOULDNT KNOW.....
- to make it sound genshiny we have to sound like we're doing a name change to avoid copyright
- at the very least, calling it a duel disk ruins MY suspension of disbelief
i also altered their design from yugioh duel disks to accommodate obvious gameplay differences, like the usage of physical dice. i actually found a tcg battle simulator spreadsheet from the keqingmains site which ALSO designed a duel disk sort of thing. probably better than i have but i didn't think to look this stuff up when writing bc um. googling fandom things is embarrassing; i prefer to either have a wiki tab open at all times, or go directly to the proper url as i have memorized.
(i'm going to talk abt the zone positions on this thing with like. formal anatomical terms. so if you need a reference, here's wikipedia)
but anyway, i designed the disk by first counting out 33 pokémon cards from 2007–2009 to get an idea of how big a deck would be and how much space a proper layout would occupy in order to determine the wieldiness of it all on an arm. i came to the conclusion that laying out all the cards in full would be much too unwieldy, so please imagine the support and summon zones as having the cards half-overlap so that only the card art is visible in order to condense them
i also felt like the center of gravity on such a disk would cause a lot of wrist strain to keep it from tipping over (or just from asymmetric pressure), hence why the die were moved to the radial seam of the gauntlet to balance it out a bit. and then, bc i'm still not sure if that would be enough to adequately negate the wrist strain if a duel went on for longer than, like, two to five minutes, i changed them from merely wrist-mounted to half-glove gauntlet things because i guess i'm just the type of person to think about fictional duel disk ergonomics!!!
speaking of the die compartment, though, i imagine it would be able to control certain die rolls depending on equipment and support cards, like when you're playing in genshin
could i have just had the disks do electronic dice rolls with the lights on the side? yes. but i also like analogue devices. also yes the various lights will match the color and number of your remaining dice
i originally imagined that artifact, talent, and weapon cards would be equipped by putting them in the same card slot as the character card, just underneath them, but when i looked at the kqm tcg sim spreadsheet duel disk, i realized that being able to See what you have equipped at a glance would, in fact, be extremely valuable. so instead, please imagine there being three slots underneath each character card to lay artifact, talent, and weapon cards horizontally beneath the character they are attached to
the characters in yugioh gesticulate a lot, which made me think a lot abt how the cards would secured to the disk to allow for such wild motion
like, i think the real life toys and models of yugioh duel disks have these, like, corner pocket pieces to keep them in place, but since it looks like it would only ever hold down two adjacent corners, they'd be at too great a risk of falling out in my imagination. i considered clips at first, but then decided that would be too much fine fiddling around to be practical. also card damage probably. bc it's like. if you want them to be held in place by friction alone, you're going to have to balance the magnitude of friction against the chance of card damage against ease of retrieval. unless they use card protectors, but teyvat doesn't have plastic so that's not a consideration here
anyway my conclusion is that they use elemental magic to keep their cards in place <3
you guys also have no idea how much time i spent thinking abt shit like “mechanical joint stability” and “the more parts an object has, the more likely it is to break” for this stupid single-chapter gag LOL
but like for real, with something like this, if you were to be able to fold up the blade like origami, it's going to have delicate mechanical joints held in place by what, pins? or screws? in MY right-to-repair-loving opinion, it would be the latter
but it also kind of makes me (i mean you) think abt how you'd do maintenance to those joints… like, let's consider for a moment what kind of metal these things must be made of. probably some sort of aluminum alloy to keep it lightweight. how likely are they to get dented, though? i imagine it wouldn't be that difficult to accidentally bang a disk against something.
it's also a children's card game; should we consider their safety in child combat (sibling fights) as well? like can you imagine a spring popping out when having stupid armblade duel disk fights (because that's what children do)? would all the plates fall apart? would there be any pins to fly out and potentially hurt someone? plus, the edge of the duel disk is fairly thin, which can hurt if you happen to ram it into someone directly. i imagine if you make the joints loose enough, then force would have a more difficult time traveling through the disk, but that sounds like it would be, like, SUPER annoying when trying to have a stable surface to duel on
which kind of just returns me to my original thought of “what happens if the joints just naturally loosen over time as a result of regular wear and tear? screws that tiny are going to be a hassle to deal with, and what do you do if the holes get stripped (too big for the threads to meaningfully grasp)?
anyway. that's probably plenty of nonsense about a one-chapter gag device.