Fortuna is a simple software to create scratch lottery tickets. It can generate any number of tickets and any number of winners. It is written in .NET and it's a multiplatform software. It can be used on Windows, Linux and Mac.

Getting the scratch surface stickers is easy -- you can get them for cheap on AliExpress in various sizes and designs. The trouble is generating randomized printing data.

This software is not intended to be used for real lottery tickets.

It's just a fun project for prizes on parties or similar events. Check your local laws and regulations before organizing such thing, there may be weird requirements for lotteries and even weirder definitions of what a lottery actually is.

First step is to prepare a list of prizes in a CSV file:

# Name;Count
First price with a pretty long name;1
Second price;2
Third price;3
Sorry, bad luck.\nTry again!;10

• The first column is the prize name and the second column is the number of prizes of this type.
• You can wrap long names using the \n sequence.
• You can use any separator, but semicolon is recommended and default.
• The file must be encoded in UTF-8.

For single-field tickets you have to include number of non-winning tickets with appropriate text (see above). For multi-field tickets, enter just the prizes, required number of non-winning tickets will be generated automatically.

Second step is to prepare ticket data. This will generate data to be printed on tickets, based on prizes available.

There are two types of tickets:

• Single-field tickets: each ticket has only one field with a prize name.
• Multi-field tickets: each ticket has multiple fields with prize names. Several fields must be the same to win.

Both types of tickets have serial numbers. The serial number is random and can be composed from any characters. It can be printed in human-readable form and/or as a barcode. If you have a list of all tickets (created from the ticket data file), you can check which tickets are winning and which are not.

Run the fortuna prepare single command:

Usage: fortuna prepare single [options] <input-file> <output-file>

Run the fortuna prepare multi command:

Usage: fortuna prepare multi [options] <input-file> <output-file> <ticket-count>

Next, create PNG images containing the fixed background of all tickets. Size of the images has to match the resolution you want to use for print.

For example to print A6 (quarter of A4, 105 x 148.5 mm) tickets at 300 dpi you need the following image size:

• Width: 105 mm * 300 dpi / 25.4 mm/in = 1240 px
• Height: 148.5 mm * 300 dpi / 25.4 mm/in = 1754 px

The image has to have space for the prize field(s) and optionally the serial number and serial number barcode. Examples:

• Single field: PNG, PSD
• Multiple fields: PNG, PSD

Layout files are JSON files containing definition of the areas on image where fields, serial numbers and barcode are supposed to be generated and how they are supposed to be formatted.

This is example for a single-field ticket:

{
  "BaseImage": "ticket-single.png",
  "BarcodePosition": {
    "X": 200,
    "Y": 1050,
    "Width": 473,
    "Height": 100
  },
  "SerialNumberPosition": {
    "X": 200,
    "Y": 1150,
    "Width": 473,
    "Height": 40
  },
  "SerialNumberStyle": {
    "Color": "#ffffff",
    "Font": "Consolas",
    "Size": 24,
    "Bold": true,
    "Italic": false
  },
  "FieldStyle": {
    "Color": "#000000",
    "Font": "Arial",
    "Size": 60,
    "Bold": false,
    "Italic": false
  },
  "Fields": [
    {
      "X": 224,
      "Y": 525,
      "Width": 425,
      "Height": 189
    }
  ]
}

• BaseImage is path to the background image.
• BarcodePosition is position and size of a barcode. The X and Y coordinates are from top left corner. Barcode is always printed in black and the layout should be prepared for it and include the quiet zone for it as well.
• SerialNumberPosition is position and size of a space for serial number. The serial number is centered in this space.
• SerialNumberStyle defines font and color for the serial number text.
• FieldStyle defines font and color for the field text.
• Fields is a collection of field definitions, each having its size and space.

Next, use the fortuna generate command to generate images from the ticket data, layout files and base image.

Usage: fortuna generate [options] <ticket-data-file> <ticket-layout-file> <output-folder>

After running this command, the output folder will contain a bunch of image files, named according to random serial number. You can print these images to obtain lottery tickets.

The --dpi option will not affect the pixel dimensions of the image itself. It will just add the DPI value to image metadata.

If you are printing the image files on regular home or office printer, you'll probably like them to be organized in pages. So you can put together ie. four A6 tickets to form a single A4 page etd. There is the fortuna merge command for that.

Usage: fortuna merge [options] <source-folder> <target-folder> <columns> <rows>

The --dpi option will not affect the pixel dimensions of the image itself. It will just add the DPI value to image metadata.