December 2023

Happy New Year's Eve, Bunny enthusiasts!

I thought the day of 123123 (12/31/23) was a great day to send out my final email of the year! May your next year be filled with bunnies and carrots (hopefully more carrots than bunnies because, you know, that's how you actually win the game...). ;)

I've got a lot to tell you. First off, a fun thing that has happened since my last email was the Winter Solstice (21 Dec, 8:27 pm), which has significant relevance to today's update, so watch out for the easter egg. Introducing ... COMPLETED PLANETS!!

PLANETS

I have completed all the planets for my full vision of the game. And I mean ... ALL of them.... Careful followers would have noticed I only had one planet left to finish, but I actually finished a bonus one: Pluto. This dwarf planet will actually not be in the Markers tier belt come later in the Sculpture tier. It is actually on the board as a fixed (unmoving) Random Location near the very end of the board. I also finished up The Sun (which will also NOT be in the Marker tier but later in the Sculpture tier) because I was just itching to see how everything looked together with all their proper tilts and orientations in place. 

One thing I forgot to mention in my last email was that I got a lot of help in figuring out the actual orientations of all the planets from my mathematician brother who I told you had helped me out with the geometry of the epic Level 20 FFF. He did some magic maths to translate the data I found for the orientations of the planets into how it would actually look on the board. Couldn't have done it without him. Without further ado, there is the final look for every planet on the board, including our friendly dwarf planet Pluto and The Sun that we all know and love (that will come later in the Sculpture tier).

Now, you may ask, why is the Winter Solstice so important to the planets? Well, I'll let you in on a little easter egg that I engineered into the game.... Basically, the Earth is at a tilt, right? Well, in the Earth’s orbit, on the day when the North Pole is pointing directly away from the sun, that’s the Winter Solstice. When earth is on the opposite side of the sun, the pole is naturally pointing directly at the sun (because the tilt effectively doesn’t change directions as it orbits). I had to choose where around the sun I wanted the Winter solstice to be, so here’s the Easter egg: when Earth is on the first position (the shadow space that is labeled "EARTH" on the board) that is the beginning of January!! As a result—because there are 6 Earth shadow spaces—every round the Earth will move two months, so at position 2 it's the beginning of March, position 3 is the beginning of May, etc. As you can tell, I'm super jazzed about it, plus it feels especially relevant given that today is New Year's Eve.

Here’s what I mean: 

So, as you play, you can know that every 6 rounds you have played one year, and you can actually see how the earth is positioned (based on its tilt) in real life at those points during the year right there on the board! Kinda fun. :)

Ok phew! I had to get that out of my system. Now onto the new pieces.

NEPTUNE

This planet was fun and easy to design. No rings to make it complicated. What's iconic about Neptune is a big white streak-of-a-storm that adorns its belt, so I made sure to add that in color for this piece. I also made sure the ringed pattern on the body of the planet showed up clearly so you can see its tilt.

PLUTO (which will come later in the Sculpture tier)

(NOTE: the colors are going to be different than what you see here in order to match Jonathan's design better. I don't like the light tan on what's pictured here.)

There's really only one topographical aspect of Pluto that would show up on my pieces at their size: what is known as its Heart. So I focused on that and made sure it showed up (in very precise detail). If you're a fan of Pluto already, you can inspect the piece and find it on there. Other than that, we don't actually know a lot of the actual topography of Pluto, so I had to do a lot of guesswork, but I kept to the style of Jonathan's original piece with the mottled brown colors. 

THE SUN (which will come later in the sculpture Tier)

Using an ultraviolet imaging map of the Sun, I added the texture you would see if you had ultraviolet goggles (or something like that) to look at the sun with. It was a lot more interesting than just the boring uniform color we see with our naked eye (I mean, not that you should spend any time staring at the sun without eye protection.... Just, theoretically, you know?). I also kept the symbolic rays of the sun that Jonathan has in the original art piece, which works out perfectly because it really shows the accurate tilt of the sun. DID YOU KNOW THE SUN HAS A TILT?!?!? I had no idea, but as soon as I found out, I HAD to add it to my piece. 

UPDATES

All of the other planets have also been updated to match their correct orientations, if you look closely in the picture with all the planets in it. I was looking at Earth and decided it wouldn't look just green and blue from space, but you'd see desert as well. I decided to upgrade it to have parts of the earth be a light tan instead of green to match the actual Earth. It also made the earth appear lighter overall, which alludes to the clouds in the atmosphere, which would actually cover much of the Earth if you were to see it from space. This brings the amount of its colors to 6, which is a lot! But it looks beautiful, so I have to keep it.

Quicker updates for the other changes:

- Mars' ice caps started showing with its new orientations, so you can see both the North and South pole there.

- Jupiter's moons are accurately tilted to match real life AND they are aligned to be at their actual orbit around Jupiter, which is only a few degrees off from the ecliptic plane that Jupiter orbits at, so you can only tell if you look closely. I also kept the text of the moons and Jupiter at their real-life angle (which again is small, so you can't notice it very much).

- Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune all had their arrows moved to be below the planets because the rings' orientations had to change for Saturn and Uranus.

- Uranus got some extra white coloring to show its storms better.

BOOSTER DOTS

I've been keeping a secret that I'm so excited to reveal! On each of the original 2-dimensional markers, you'll see a little dot of color. This tells you what booster deck it came from. Its purpose is to make it very easy to know which pieces to use if you choose to not play with all the boosters. Just pick out the pieces that have the Booster Dots that correspond to the boosters you are playing with. Well, I have very carefully added this system of Booster Dots to my pieces. You'll find them hidden underneath each marker, out of sight except for when you need to pick them out when you're first setting up your game.

TIER TWO: SHIPS

This email's already long enough, so I'll keep this part short. (I'll send you the full details next month.) Bottom line is, I have nothing interesting to show you for the ships this month, but have been tackling the biggest engineering challenge that this Tier has, which is Ship to Stand connections. I'll have TWO versions, one that is an Ultra Deluxe version and one that is a Deluxe version that won't be quite so expensive but doesn't have some quality of life things. They require two different designs and at this point I'm just about done refining them both.

The reason that's important to tell you now is because my pieces will be included in the Killer Bunnies surprise that CTA has waiting for you tomorrow morning.... So keep an eye out for that tomorrow.

And that's it for now! Have a Happy New Year! Thanks for following.

~Hale-Bent