Creating the Cards!

A huge component to annoying other players in Yeti Mountain is not only the marbles, but the cards that you can play. Playing a card at just the right time can tremendously infuriate your opponents! Just when they think they're about to capture the Idol, you send them back three spaces. When it's nearly their turn and they're about to make their way off of the last bridge, you hit them with that unsuspecting Snowball.

Without the cards Yeti Mountain would not be as exciting nor as enraging. Here is a list showing all of the cards that have been drawn for Yeti Mountain:

(There are 3 different versions of the "Avalanche" card. Once moves a player back 3 spaces, another 2 and another moves them back 1)

(Just like the "Avalanche" card, the "Map" card has 3 different variations. One moves a player ahead 4 spaces, one moves them ahead 5 and the other moves them ahead 6.

(This is the "Supplies" card. Players pick this card up when they pass by the lodge. They can trade it in for a full hand of cards. It can completely change the course of the game if played at the right time!)

If you have any questions on some of the specifics, please ask and I will try my best to answer them!
If you have any feedback on how I could have improved the designs, I would love to hear it!

Thanks,
Marlon :)

 

Art by: Rachael Greenfield (http://craftysalad.tumblr.com/)

Yeti Mountain Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/YetiMountainBoardGame/
Prefundia page(Sign up on the email list here!): http://prefundia.com/projects/view/yeti-mountain/8917/
Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/yeti_mountain_the_board_game/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ElementaryCeo

 

Designing the Idol!

When designing the Idol for Yeti Mountain, my first thought was to make the Idol a card and not a physical playing piece. This would help reduce the creation cost of the game significantly because it would require one less injection mold(about $2,500+) and no plastic to create.

Here is a picture of what the playing card idol was going to look like:

After pondering, and discussing with a few other people, the idea of having a playing card, instead of a playing piece, just didn't seem as fun. Also, unlike before, I am now going to produce the injection molds myself, using a CNC machine, which should reduce the creation cost of the game drastically. I also bought an injection molding machine recently which I will use to manufacture, not only the idol, but all of the playing pieces for the game.

I used Autodesk Maya to design a 3d Idol that I will use to create an injection mold:

I then 3D printed out various versions of the Idol to see what it was like as a physical object:

Another advantage to having a physical idol, is that I can easily integrate it with the other playing pieces. I have some small edits left to do to the marble launcher, but the Idol sits on top of the launcher with the Yeti:

I haven't created any of the injection molds yet, but my goal is to start producing them once the final prototype board has arrived!

If you have any questions on some of the specifics, please ask and I will try my best to answer them!
If you have any feedback on how I could have improved the design or the overall process, I would love to hear it!

Thanks,
Marlon :)

Yeti Mountain Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/YetiMountainBoardGame/
Prefundia page(Sign up on the email list here!): http://prefundia.com/projects/view/yeti-mountain/8917/
Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/yeti_mountain_the_board_game/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ElementaryCeo

Crafting the Marble Launcher.

A key Component to Yeti Mountain is the marble launcher. The marble launcher allows players to shoot snowballs (marbles) down a variety of shoots, so that they can stop their opponents from stealing the idol.

My original plan for the marble launcher was to create a giant Yeti head, similar to the giant head used in Fireball Island.



I started off by creating a silicone mold of the original Fireball Island marble launcher. I then cast a few resin prototypes.



From here, I used plasticine, an exacto knife and some pliers to turn Vul-kar into a Yeti. I am not the best at sculpting, especially faces, but it turned into something like this (This photo was taken after the Yeti was removed from the mold. That is why it looks like it was destroyed):



I then used the same technique as before, and created a mold of the Yeti out of silicone. This allowed me to create quite a few Yeti's quickly and cheaply.



After I had the finished product, I decided that it didn't actually look that great. I am now modeling the Yeti on the computer and 3d printing out various prototypes. By using this method, I can easily adjust the Yeti and then produce it quickly.



If you have any questions on some of the specifics, please ask and I will try my best to answer them!
If you have any feedback on how I could have improved the design or the overall process, I would love to hear it!

Thanks,

Marlon :)

Yeti Mountain Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/YetiMountainBoardGame/
Prefundia page(Sign up on the email list here!): http://prefundia.com/projects/view/yeti-mountain/8917/
Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/yeti_mountain_the_board_game/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ElementaryCeo

Forging the Board! Attempt 2 and 3

In total, I crafted three different prototype boards out of clay for Yeti Mountain. The first one, I explained in an earlier post, the second one I ended up forgetting about for a week and the third one, which is now the "official" board!

After the failure of the first board, I smashed up and dumped the remains into a bucket of water. After waiting a day, this resulted in a bucket of nice, wet clay ready to be sculpted into the new board! I started to sculpt the second board but for some reason I completely forgot about it half way through the process. I ended up not liking the way the board was looking and decided to repeat the step of smashing it up and putting it in a bucket of water again. This was the first step in the long process of creating the third and final game board for Yeti Mountain!


Step 1: Sculpting the Prototype Board

When sculpting the third prototype board for Yeti Mountain, I used a similar process to when I was creating the first prototype. I created the board out of clay and slowly sculpted it into something that resembled a 3d board game! I used some new techniques that I learned from creating the first board, such as constantly spraying the board with water, to stop it from drying out and cracking.

A major difference between this board and the first was that I put a lot more thought into the subtle details. Such as how many spaces are on the board? The Yeti should be in the center of the board since it is the main focal point of the game. And of course, make sure the marbles will roll properly along the paths 100% of the time. I wanted to make sure that everything was perfect.

Step 2: Digitizing the Board

Learning my lesson from the first board, I made sure not to vacuum form my own copy of Yeti Mountain, because the clay is too weak. From here it was tough to figure out what to do next. If I couldn't vacuum form my own copy, I'd have to find someone who could do it for me. In order for a company to create an aluminum mold to vacuum form, I would need to send them the digital model of the board. Unfortunately, I created the board by hand, which means I did not have any digital copy of the board to send them.

I did some research and stumbled across a company, about an hour's drive away, that can scan in any object, turning them into 3d files on the computer. I drove down there, had the board scanned and ended up with a fantastic result! It picked up every minute detail. All that was left, was for me to add a border onto the board, so that it will be level when placed on a table!



Step 3: Painting the Board

Now that I had a digital version of the game board, I needed to make it look not so... gray. I found multiple programs that I could paint the board with: Autodesk Mudbox, ZBrush and Rhino. I tried out each program and decided on ZBrush. After a few weeks of trying to paint the board, I created something that looked like this:



Not the most beautiful and intricate looking of boards. After my multiple attempts at painting an immaculate board, I decided that I needed to hire a professional. Someone who could paint a board that would grab people's attention, not a tan and white glob that hardly represents a mountain in the slightest. At this moment in time, the board isn't quite finished with the painting process, but it's getting there. All that is left is to add the spacing, so here is a little sneak-peek of the board.



This is a bit of a brief summary of how I created the board for Yeti Mountain. Along the way lots of problems occurred that took a while to overcome, I even had a problem that took half a year to solve, but I didn't bother writing about them because they're not very interesting problems. :)

If you have any questions on some of the specifics, please ask and I will try my best to answer them!
If you have any feedback on how I could have improved the design or the overall process, I would love to hear it!

Thanks,

Marlon :)

Yeti Mountain Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/YetiMountainBoardGame/
Prefundia page(Sign up on the email list here!): http://prefundia.com/projects/view/yeti-mountain/8917/
Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/yeti_mountain_the_board_game/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ElementaryCeo

Forging the Board! Attempt 1

I'd like to apologize in advance for the lack of pictures. I don't have this board anymore, so I had to use the very few pictures that I took at the time. :)

The board. The key component for Fireball island and in this case, Yeti Mountain. I didn't really know how to go about creating a three-dimensional, terrain-like, board. There aren't many tutorials on YouTube for creating something of this caliber. So I had to figure it out myself...

A lot went into the creation of the board, so I will try to remember as much of the construction as I possibly can. My first plan for creating the board was to vacuum form my own board. This would require me to have a prototype "mold", a vacuum forming machine and plastic to vacuum form.

Step #1: Creating the prototype mold:

In order to create a vacuum formed game board, I needed to make a physical model of the board. There were two types of boards that I could create, a male part, or in this case board, or a female part. Here is a great website that explains the difference between male Vs. female: http://www.empirewest.com/thermoforming-male-vs-female.html. When I started the creation of the board, I was not aware about this, so I just decided to buy 20 lbs. of clay and sculpt my own board. Later on, I bought another 20 lbs. from Amazon because I needed a bit more. It's surprisingly cheap!

I started to slap clay onto a wooden board and slowly sculpt it into a terrain. I then added in the pathways and the crossings, where I would place the bridges. I also added in a space where the Yeti would go and little indents for the Snowballs.



 I didn't really put much, if any, thought into the layout of the board. I only thought about getting the snowballs to roll properly and made sure that the playing pieces would fit on the board.



I let the board sit in my garage to dry for the vacuum forming process. When I checked on it the first day, I noticed some cracks occurring, I left the cracks because they added a neat, natural texture to the board. When I re-checked the board the cracks became bigger, a lot bigger. Parts of the board where completely decimated. I filled in all the holes with clay, sprayed the board with water and covered it in cling-film. This helped reduce the cracking!



In order to prepare the board for the vacuum forming process, I needed to drill lots of mini holes into the board. This would let the air from the vacuum pass through the board and pull the plastic down, causing it to take shape.

Step #2: Creating the Vacuum Forming Machine:

Making a vacuum forming machine sounds very complicated and impressive, but anyone with some handiwork skills, shouldn't have any trouble! There are many great tutorials on how to create a machine that will vacuum form. And they will also show you how to create a box to heat up the plastic so that it can morph around your object. This is the tutorial that I used: http://makezine.com/2011/09/08/how-to-large-homemade-vacuum-forming-machine/.

Step #3: Vacuum forming the first board:

I probably should have stated this earlier, but this overall process that I'm explaining at the moment, was a failure. Saying that though, I learned a lot of useful and valuable information that helped me in my future attempts, which I will post about later!

While I was heating up the plastic to vacuum form, I placed the clay model on the vacuum forming machine and turned it on. Once the plastic was very malleable, I placed it on top of the board. It suddenly sucked down and took the shape of the model! At first glance, it looked amazing! I had finally made a 3D board! However on closer inspection, the vacuum was not strong enough, and places such as stair cases were actually slopes. Where there were supposed to be corners, there were curves. Overall, the board wasn't playable.



This wasn't the biggest problem. The power of the vacuum former was strong enough to completely destroy the clay board. This made it unusable for another attempt.



At the time I was very annoyed, but in hindsight, I am very happy this happened. It forced me to have to recreate the board. I realized this after attempting to playtest the board, which was proven to be very difficult because the pieces could hardly stand.



I then decided to create a second board, which will be explained in a later post!

If you have any questions on some of the specifics, please ask and I will try my best to answer them!
If you have any feedback on how I could have improved the design or the overall process, I would love to hear it!

Thanks,

Marlon :)

Yeti Mountain Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/YetiMountainBoardGame/
Prefundia page(Sign up on the email list here!): http://prefundia.com/projects/view/yeti-mountain/8917/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ElementaryCeo
And Now I even have an Instagram :O what!?https://www.instagram.com/yeti_mountain_the_board_game/

The Construction of the Bridges!

Materials Used:

• 3D Printer (Afinia H479)
• Paint

Programs Used:

• Autodesk 3ds Max
• Autodesk Maya
• Afinia (for 3D printer)

The Bridge, like the Eskimo, had to first be designed on the computer. My design process was the exact same as the Eskimo's. I first designed the Bridge in Autodesk Maya. I then imported the model into 3ds Max, which allowed me to re-scale the model to the correct dimensions. (Cm: 6.524 X/  1.996 Y/ 2.574 Z)

Then I then exported the model as an .STL file. I opened up the model in the Afinia program and thus began the 3D printing process!


Bridge #1:

When designing the bridge, and the board for a matter of fact, I wanted to make sure that I could use the same bridge for both of the spots that bridges would be placed in. The main reason for this was to reduce the costs for the board game if it were to ever be put into production. This would also reduce the setup time by a few seconds because you wouldn't have to figure out which bridge went in which spot because they would both fit!

There were many problems that I noticed with the first bridge, but there were three major problems. The first being, the bridge was not long enough, it could barely fit into the gap and even then it was balanced precariously. The slightest jog would knock it off. Not good for a game with so many moving pieces. The second major issue was that the ends of the bridge did not form a pivot, this means that the bridge would not tip well when hit by a snowball. The last problem was that the bridge was very skinny and easily prone to breaking.

Bridge #2:

For the second bridge, the main changes that I made were making the ends of the bridges pointier so that they could pivot easily when hit by a marble. The second change I made, was elongating the stilts at the bottom of the bridge which made it so the marble had a 100% chance to tip the bridge.

I still needed to make the bridge longer as it had the same problem as the first bridge. Also, the bridge was very thin making it difficult to place an Eskimo onto it without taking a lot of care.

Bridge #3:

Bridge #3 only had one change made to it. The bridge was widened so that multiple Eskimos could be placed on the bridge effortlessly.

The bridge still needed to be longer, so that it could fit across the gap properly. You may also notice that strange white blob with a green dot on the top of the bridge. That was not part of the design. When the 3D printer prints an item, it creates a plastic "raft" for the item to be printed on top of. In this case, the raft slightly fused to the top of the bridge and could not be fully removed.

Bridge #4:

Finally! The 4th bridge was extended by an extra 50% compared to the previous bridges! This made the bridge even more accessible for placing multiple Eskimo's on. Also, the bridge did not require to be carefully balanced on the board, you could place it down quickly and not have to worry about it tipping over!

While testing out the bridge, the little stilts at the bottom snapped due to the flimsiness of the bridge. This shows that the bridges had to be thickened up even more.

Bridge #5:

The only difference to the fifth bridge was the thickness. However, I still felt that the bridge was still prone to breaking.

Bridge #6:

Bridge #6 was made even thicker then the past bridge. To test out the sturdiness of the bridge, I threw it against a wall four times and it did not break. :)

Bridge #7:

The last adjustment that I made to the bridge was due to manufacturing reasons. Like with the Eskimo's and their arms sticking out, the stilts at the bottom of the bridge would increase the cost for the creation of a mold. This is due to the fact that they were separate causing a gap to be created in between them. This would make for a more complex mold, thus increasing the cost for creation. I decided to push the two stilts together not only creating one sturdy, stronger stilt but also decreasing the cost for manufacturing.

The 7th bridge I had printed by Shapeways which is a company that can print high quality versions of your models. When I received the bridge from Shapeways, I then painted it with brown paint which I think suits the bridge excellently!


Here is a photo of all the different bridges lined up:



The bridge works perfectly, and is hit by the Snowball every time! Also, I achieved my goal of only having to create one type of bridge that fits in both gaps on the board, reducing the cost of getting the game created!


If you have any questions on some of the specifics, please ask and I will try my best to answer them!
If you have any feedback on how I could have improved the design or the overall process, I would love to hear it!

Thanks,

Marlon :)

Yeti Mountain Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/YetiMountainBoardGame/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ElementaryCeo
Prefundia page(Sign up on the email list here!): http://prefundia.com/projects/view/yeti-mountain/8917/