Intro to Stack

Like mentioned in the About SPARKLING! guide page, the TCG is largely created and managed thanks to a script called Stack. As a result, it's automated a lot of features and services common to TCGs and handles them on-site but to someone who has never joined a TCG that uses Stack, things may be a little confusing—even more so if you're new to TCGs in general—so this part of the Beginner's Guide aims to help someone in this position by walking them through certain features that might not be intuitive or easy to figure out on your own.

ACCOUNT

When you sign up with the TCG, you filled out a join form; this creates your site account which you'll need to log in to every time you plan on doing something in the TCG, as many parts of the site are only accessible to members when logged in.

You should be directed to what we call your Account Overview upon every login, which gives you a summary of some of your current stats and info in SPARKLING! If anything looks amiss, you can update it through the Edit Profile page or report it as an error/fix that needs to be made on the forums (just find the correct thread for what you need). There's also a link to change your password at the bottom of the navigation menu on the left of your account page!

Only some sections of the account will be covered in detail below, as other parts are fairly straight forward and/or have all the information you'll need on their pages/forms already. These sections are ones we deemed needing extra info for that might not fit on the page itself!

REWARDS PAGE

Speaking of that navigation menu, you'll notice there are a lot of links. The first one we'll go over is Rewards — you can find a link to this section of your account both in that same menu, as well as on the right-hand sidebar under the Member Panel header (do note "Account" and "Member Panel" are the same thing).

Whenever you receive a manual reward that was sent by an admin or staff member for something, or a reward from a site form you submit that isn't given to you instantly, it will appear on the Rewards page as a link! The link will be the name of the reward or gift you received, followed by the date it was sent; clicking on the link will allow you to collect that reward which will also then save it to your account's site logs.

There will have been a date listed, following the name of the reward before you collect it, as well; this is the date that reward was sent! Once you click on the link to collect the reward, it will be logged under the date that you collected it on, not the date it was sent.

TRAINING ACTIVITY

Next is the page/form for the Training Activity portion of the Training Journal — which, if you forgot or didn't know, is what we call our version of the trading rewards you'll likely see in other TCGs.

Because trades will take place off-site, there is no way for the site to save a copy of your trading logs unless you add them yourself, which is what we require members to do in order to collect Training Journal rewards! This is because the form that rewards you for trading is based on the number of trade points you have logged on your account and the only way to add trade points is to add your personal trading logs to the account.

How do you do this? When you go to the main Training Activity page, you will either be shown a form to "Add Trade Logs" or "Redeem Rewards" — if you are shown the Add Trade Logs form, that means you do not have enough trade points in your account to redeem for a reward so you will need to add enough trading logs until you do! See the next header to learn how.

If you are shown the Redeem Rewards form, that means you DO have enough trade points and can redeem as many completed Training Activity Pages as the form says you can. There is no way to edit this amount as the script already takes into account how many trade points you have, then divides it by 20 to get the total amount of completed pages you can redeem, and fills in the form for you!

Then, all you have to do is submit the form and it will give your rewards, in addition to also saving everything to your site logs. Once you redeem those rewards, it then updates your available trade points count by deducting the amount redeemed as well!

ADDING TRADE LOGS

This form is where you'll actually add your trading logs by filling in the provided fields and submitting it. Please fill out only ONE FORM PER TRADE with a player! If you're adding multiple trades at once, you'll need to return to the "Add Trade Logs" page and fill out a new form for each trade.

The fields the form will ask for are:

• Date – the date you completed the trade (not when you submitted/added it to your site account)
• Traded With – the name of the player you traded with
• Outgoing – the list of cards* you have TRADED AWAY
• Incoming – the list of cards* you have RECEIVED in return

* Remember to use full filenames and card numbers for every card, even if you traded multiple cards from the same deck (e.g. makinishikino-shiningflowerbouquet01, makinishikino-shiningflowerbouquet02 and NOT makinishikino-shiningflowerbouquet01/02) and include the filename of any Producer Cards traded as well (e.g. mc-Cassidy)

When you submit the form, the script will then count how many cards you traded away and convert it to Trade Points which will then be added to your account's total automatically!

Also important to note: do not include anything else in the outgoing and incoming fields aside from the list of cards (and Producer Cards, if any) traded, especially if it's separated by commas as the script may count it as a trade point if you do! If you made a typo or error when adding trades, you can report it on the forums so it can be edited but do let us know if your trade point count needs to be updated as well if the error you made would have affected it.

SPARKLE SHOPPE

As seen on the shop index, there are several different categories of items available to purchase (or will be available in the future). Click on any of the banners to see the inventory for that shop category and from there, you can see a quick description of each item! For further details about an item, if there's any, please click on Preview Purchase button underneath; you will be redirected to a page with more info and a purchase confirmation form.

If you decide you DO want to purchase that item, type in the number of times you want to buy that item as a numerical digit (e.g. 1 or 5) in the indicated field! Even if you only want 1 of that item, you still need to type in that amount for the form to go through. You will then be redirected to the pick up page for that purchase which you can then add to your trade post and log accordingly!

If you decide you DON'T want to purchase that item, no worries! Just go back to the previous page or close the tab/window. Purchases are only processed if you fill in and submit the purchase confirmation form! When a purchase is processed, it also deducts the required amount of currency to pay for it from your account automatically so make sure you have enough ribbons and/or EXP before buying anything!

FAQ

I tried purchasing an item and got an empty page!

• Double check that you actually entered in the amount of that item you want to purchase! The number you see already in the text box when clicking on an item to buy is just a placeholder so even if you also only want to purchase 1 of an item, you still need to type it in before submitting for the form to work. if you do that and you're still getting an error, please report it on the forums!

Can I purchase different items at once/the same time?

• Unfortunately, due to coding restraints, this is not possible at this time! You will need to return to the shop index or a specific shop category for each item you want to purchase, and go through the forms/purchasing process every time. We apologize for the inconvenience!

Can I use a mix of currency to purchase something?

• No, you cannot! Whatever currency an item costs, is all it will accept to purchase it. You cannot combine both ribbons and EXP to purchase anything!

DONATIONS

For the time being, we will be handling deck donations on-site, both to claim decks and to submit the donations for them! This may be a new feature for some members so we'll go over how to do it below, but the benefit of this feature is that rewards will be sent to your account immediately upon submitting the donation, in addition to semi-automating management of the donation claims page.

To start, all players must first claim the decks they want to donate for the month via the Deck Claims form in your account! General claiming rules, as well as a detailed guide on how to fill out the claim form (especially for the Features field which has the most steps/info), can be found there along with the actual form you'll submit.

Once you make a claim through that form, it is then added to the Claimed Decks list! Any decks there must be donated within the same month they're claimed or they will be removed the following month, and must be re-claimed and donated (either by the original claimer or someone else - whoever gets to it first!). But all claims are reserved for the player who made them so no one else can claim or donate those decks unless the claim is not donated and is cleared from the list!

After checking your claim(s) is/are on that page and everything looks good, go back to you account and click on the Donations tab; you'll see a copy of your claims there as well, along with other decks you've donated since joining that haven't been made and added to upcoming yet. Find the claims for the current month and click on the Donate button to be brought to a form where you can submit the image donation for that claim! Simply paste the link to the image in the field then press submit – that's it!

If the form goes through with no error, you should then see the count of rewards ready for you to collect increase by 1 (or however many donations you submitted), which you can then collect from your Rewards page whenever you're ready to!

At the same time, the donation(s) will be automatically moved from the Claimed Decks list to the Donated Decks list so deck makers can see what decks are available to claim making, and so other members can see what's already been donated so they don't try to claim the same thing.