October 2023

Hello fellow Killer Bunnies fans!

The Journey to Jupiter project is moving along very nicely as I've made a lot of progress in this last month. Let's start with where I left you....

THE BIG ONE

Last month I finished with one of my favorite designs that was an awesome challenge to figure out how to print. It required a special printer to print two colors on the same layer that was also big enough to fit the piece on the print space.

Behold: the 20-hex Funky Force Field.

That's right. Filling not less than 20 hexes along any single direction on the board, the 20-hex Funky Force Field is (by far) the largest marker in the game. As I designed this one, I had two pieces of original art to start with: the card and the marker. As I analyzed each one and tried to imagine how I would represent it in the 3D space, I realized the geometry represented in the 2-dimensional space on each image did not match the other.... I had to pick one or the other, and after talking with Jonathan Young about his vision of this piece in particular, we settled on a hex-based geometry. I needed a design that would print cleanly—as there are design limitations based on the physics of 3D printing—and wanted something that kept that 6-sided geometry. I enlisted the help of my brother, who is a mathematician, to figure out a geometry that would work with my requirements. With Jonathan's vision in mind, and with my brother's genius, together we figured out something that I think is nothing short of remarkable (an effect which is partly due to its sheer size). When it is placed on the board, you can look at the piece from all 3 dimensional angles and find a clear hex pattern that visually matches with the hex-based pattern of the board itself. I also made the design as big as possible while still fitting neatly inside each hex space so it does not overlap with neighboring hexes. 

PLANETS

I've also gotten several more markers to the FINAL PRINT stage! To start, the first planets in the Tier 1 Starter Package are done, and I'm super excited to tell you all about them. :) First off is the text. On each marker, there is a bit of text on each marker and with my new printer (as I told you last month), it's able to do text relatively quite well because it can do multiple colors now. Let me tell you, I really put myself through the ringer trying to figure out how to make that text print cleanly.... It was WAAAY harder than I first thought and took so much time but I finally figured out a process that will reliably work for each planet.

Earth

My previous version of Earth was un-colored, and I realized that when you color it there are a lot more details that show up.... The older version lacked a couple places that I thought would add some good variety if added (even though they aren't technically as big as I had to make them), such as the Great Lakes and that tiny little speck that represents Hawai'i (yes, it's America-centric, but what can I say, that's the geography I'm familiar with). So I painstakingly made all those little changes, including adding a bit of white to represent the icebergs that make up the North Pole at the top. On the markers, there's a background of black around the planets, so to match that I made it so the hex base underneath each planet would print with a black top. I also had wanted each of the planets to be a distinct color, so I had bought two different kinds of blues (one for Earth and another for Neptune) and was planning on having Earth be the normal blue and Neptune be the darker blue. But when I tried out the lighter blue on the Earth it just didn't look right, and I realized I had to print the water of the Earth with the darker blue. With 3D printing, the fewer colors the easier it is to make the print, and my printer does 4 colors max without intervention, but I decided this piece was worth it to go all-out on, so I added a 5th color, accepted the need for the extra time to intervene in the print process during production to change colors, and made the hex the lighter blue and the water the darker blue. I'm pretty proud of this one and I love the end look with all the color.

Mars

For all the planets, I had the goal to make them as true to real life as possible. On the scale I'm printing them all at, they would just look like boring spheres if I did that (because the scale is so small), so I made the decision to exaggerate the topography of each planet well beyond technical reality so that each marker could showcase the actual features of the planet while they're on the board. I think it adds a lot of interesting effects, and for Mars that means you can actually see certain details that you would know if you were an astronomy buff. For example, you might know that Olympus Mons is the largest mountain in the solar system, and true to its nature, you can find it sticking up off the marker, along with the second-, third-, and fourth-largest mountains which neighbor it somewhat. If you look carefully, you can also pick out Valles Marineris on the marker, which is the largest canyon in the solar system.

Another thing about Mars that it's time to introduce is the numbering system. Every Random Location has a number associated with it, and during gameplay you will often roll a die to determine a Random Location to use in a given action. In the new version of Journey to Jupiter, Jonathan placed that number on each Random Location along with the name. Because I'm working in 3 dimensions, and with my multi-color printers, I have the ability to make the text of the Random Location AND the number a lot more visible, so on the top of each peg, I've highlighted the number that is the Random Location and then on the side of the piece (thanks to the 3rd dimension) I have put the name. With the number highlighted like this, it'll streamline gameplay by making it very easy to pick out on the board whatever number is rolled for the Random Location. This includes the Random Locations that neighbor many of the restricted space sculptures that I'll be making in Tier 3. For now, you see the Random Locations on the Planets in Tier 1.

JUPITER

Being a full 9 hexes, the Jupiter token is huge. And because this marker is literally in the name of the game, I knew it was most important for this piece in particular to be perfected. I wanted Jupiter to stand out above all other pieces because it's our biggest planet, so I made the body of the planet as big as I possibly could. This was challenging because I had to balance how much of the marker would overlap on neighboring hexes, as other markers would need to be able to be placed there. I think I found a good balance in size, and when it came time to tune the design of the moons, I decided to make them smaller than the planets to add some variety with a "small, medium, large" effect among the "moons, most planets, and Jupiter" respectively. Again, I made sure the topography of the moons matched real life and was also exaggerated enough for the texture to show up on each piece. So this means each moon has a unique shape and you can see the different textures if you look closely. For the "topography" of Jupiter, because it's a gas giant, it's technically all flat, so I did my best to match the contrasting colors to height to make sure they could still be seen when printed. One feature in particular that I paid close attention to was Jupiter's Eye (well-known for being the biggest storm in the solar system), making sure it would show up if you looked at the marker closely enough.

I also revamped the Weird Gravity Lagrange Points (the hexes in between each moon and Jupiter), making them match the 2D art that is on the marker more precisely than my previous version. I had to do a bit of research about Lagrange Points to help my design intuitively match the idea that Jonathan was representing. Turns out, they're kinda really cool.... 

I went through so many versions of this Jupiter marker before I finally got it right. Just to kind of give you an idea, this is where I throw all the old versions:

STACKING (again)

I just wanted to revisit the stacking system really quickly to show you the progress I've made in getting through the design of each piece. Pieces stacking on top of one another does not happen very often when playing Journey to Jupiter. It can happen if markers are randomly assigned to the same space (a 1-in-2,463 chance) or if a ship carrying multiple markers is destroyed—the result being to place all markers that were aboard the ship on the hex space it used to occupy. Plus, if that all happens on top of a planet, then the markers would need to stack on top of THAT as well. Even though this situation is not likely, I wanted my pieces to be designed to handle any situation that arises. In addition (true to my perfectionistic nature...) I also wanted any piece to be able to stack on any other piece, so that the player wouldn't have to fiddle around with getting the markers in the proper stackable order when the situation arose; I wanted the player to be able to just stack the markers in whatever order was convenient.

This month I was able to finish ALL 5 markers that stack: Carrots, Pineapples, Transport Pods, The Minilith, and (last but not least) The Yellow Ball With a Red Stripe. The Transport Pods are special because they always go on the bottom and a player may not pick them up into a ship. Every other marker needed to be in any possible order above that. To that end, I designed the Minilith to be just big enough to fit neatly inside the peg hole (the one that's already underneath each marker for the Random Locations), and I made the topmost green leaves of the Pineapples all end in a flat, even point that also fits just inside the peg hole. The tops of the Carrots are already nice and flat, so they stack really well already. I sized the YBRS (being spherical) so that it can utilize the curve of the cylindrical peg hole to stack. With all those details accounted for, ANY piece can stack on ANY other piece. Which means a scenario such as the following (which IS ... technically ... possible...) can be accommodated with my pieces:

WEIGHTING

Another detail that I wanted to refine (I don't know how big of a deal it actually is, but I couldn't keep myself from perfecting any possible detail...) was the relative weights of each marker. I decided to make them all weigh the exact same amount (to the precision of a tenth of a gram), which took a LOT more trial and error than I expected. I maxed out the weight of the Minilith (which is the marker with the least amount of volume, excepting the Transport Pods—which are quite small) and then matched the Carrot, Pineapple, and YBRS to have the same weight, no matter what their volume. I then measured the weight of the Earth marker (which—due to its additional color requiring the printer to print a little extra on the inside—is naturally the heaviest of the planets) and matched the other planets to be the same weight (except Jupiter because its piece takes up 9 hex spaces so it'll be heavier). This just adds a tiny benefit of allowing the weight of each piece to be familiar to the player as it rests in the hand as they gain experience over time moving them around during gameplay. Again, probably not a big deal at all, I just ... couldn't help myself....

STATUS UPDATE

Here is the status update for the month (with a reminder of the system I introduced last month):

• Design status

  • ROUGH DRAFT: the model is still in its first design.

  • REFINED: the model is past its first design but still has at least some tweaks left.

  • FINISHED: the model design is done.

    • note: if there is no design status, all the work (including printing work) has been completed for this marker.

• Print status

  • PRINTED: the model's most recent design has been printed at least once.

  • POLISHED: the printing settings for the individual model have been tuned at least some.

  • FINAL PRINT: the model's FINISHED design has been printed in full color with all its settings tuned. 

    • note: if there is no print status, the model's most recent design has not yet been printed.

Markers:

Planets:

And so, with the Carrots, Minilith, Earth, Mars, and Jupiter all refined and completed, I can now finally present to you the Tier 1 Starter Package!

You'll notice that there are quite a few Carrots in this one. Here's why: originally the game starts with 8 Carrots. However, because the Kickstarter—that we knocked out of the park—was so successful, Creative Team Alpha gifted everyone the 8 Promo Carrots in every copy of the game, which means I'll need to give you 16 Carrot markers total to match every Starter Deck of Jupiter. The extra 4 Carrots, to bring the total to 20, will come in my Tier 1 Booster Package, which I am closing in on finishing and hope to be done with by the end of November at the next update.

Until then, thanks for following!

~Hale-Bent