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Lovepug13 wrote:
I like this idea......get the price right and it could do well. Good luck

Thanks!

Here's an image of how it all starts to look as tiles start to get added.

These would be good for Zone Mortalis type 40k games or dungeon crawls, etc.

3 Words

Astrogranite BloodBowl Pitch

This is actually an excellent idea.

Definitely a skirmish style 40k type of game, but those are fun anyway

Your sketch is cool. Now add some cavernous sections.
On the samples we looked at, I was suprised at how much detail was possible on the "floor" areas. Small raised or sunken type is possible as are bas-relief logos. The only real limitation is no undercuts, so dont be afraid to add details like stone floors or rivited metal plates. Grating, raised areas, bridges, trap doors.....the possibilities beggar the imagination. I want to encourage you to make these have lots of irrisistable little details, which will take them from being just functional to the next level, and probably help them to sell.

 snurl wrote:
Your sketch is cool. Now add some cavernous sections.
On the samples we looked at, I was suprised at how much detail was possible on the "floor" areas. Small raised or sunken type is possible as are bas-relief logos. The only real limitation is no undercuts, so dont be afraid to add details like stone floors or rivited metal plates. Grating, raised areas, bridges, trap doors.....the possibilities beggar the imagination. I want to encourage you to make these have lots of irrisistable little details, which will take them from being just functional to the next level, and probably help them to sell.

Cavernous is in my plan. As for details like stone flooring, riveted floors, logos, etc. there is a reason for not adding them.

A core concept of this product is, like the packing foam that inspired it, the ability for the user to modify it as they see fit. By adding in details like a stone floor, it presets the detail for the user.

For example, take the tile in the bottom center spot. That tile could be a random dungeon portion, a small inn, a jail, or a starship's crew quarters. The more details that get added by the manufacturer, the more it steers the user instead of letting the user decide its function.

When I get to designing more single use pieces, you may see more designs being added to the models.

That's great and all about the pieces being a "template," but if I am buying a cheap expanded styrene terrain piece it is because I don't want to make it myself. I don't want to buy it and then have to lay down flooring in all of those little spaces, add texture to the walls, etc.

It would be a very awkward space to work in anyway given the confines.

Those little details would also make the product look more 'finished' and less like a cheap block of styrene. I agree that said details would make the product more irresistable. It would give it character and absolutely add value to the product.

I expect that if the business really took off, you could make themed sets, like dungeon, tavern, space station, etc. And also have a 'blank' set. That would be really cool to see, though obviously it would involve significantly more investment and possibly undercut your ability to offer the pieces at attractive prices.

If the pieces were packed with characterful details, I would be much more likely to buy the product, especially if it was virtually paint and play. Your audience might be more limited for themed pieces, but I think themed pieces would greatly raise the excitement level.

I agree. Floor detailing is essential.



Even if all you do is a 1nch grid it would make it really useful for D&D and similar games.

1 1/2" grid and you tap into Heroclix Players

I think a Xenos hive styled base may have possibilities as well. Kind of like the main reactor core area in "Aliens"

Does anyone think that Wilderness tiles would work well with this idea?

With wilderness tiles you would have to cut off the exterior walls (or ignore them), but would let us take the tiles and make rivers, rocks, canyons, and hills as tiles.

The downside is that your tile features (especially hills/cliffs, etc.) would be limited to 3" high. That comes to around 15 feet of in game height, without adding an extra tile, and likely extra cost.

Just something to think about.

I wouldn't buy wilderness tiles. Rivers, hills, rocks, etc. are very easy terrain pieces to make, and work well if they are modular.

But, I could be wrong. I haven't seen any of your designs, so it is possible that a fixed, 18"x18" landscape tile would surprise me.

I like this idea, but I still haven't seen anything that tackles the whole, melting under spray paint. I've undercoated a foam piece of terrain before, and even after three coats of acrylic paint and some flock, etc... my spray coat still melted pieces of the foam.

I would be down with this idea even more if you could get a type of foam that could stand up to spray paints (so we could prime, etc..).

 Alfndrate wrote:
I like this idea, but I still haven't seen anything that tackles the whole, melting under spray paint. I've undercoated a foam piece of terrain before, and even after three coats of acrylic paint and some flock, etc... my spray coat still melted pieces of the foam.

I would be down with this idea even more if you could get a type of foam that could stand up to spray paints (so we could prime, etc..).

Well, keep in mind, the foam will be base-colored gray. (The beads are black, and expand to become gray).

That said, spray paint will always be an issue with Polystyrene foam. The best I can do is up the density of the foam, so the foam that does get melted by the paint isn't as bad. On the user end, you have to either spray in quick light coats, switch to an Acryllic spraypaint, or hand paint over the Gray.

I believe there are certain types of latex spraypaints that don't melt foam.

Yes there are. They are acrylic spray paints used for floral work.
The foam coat product I mentioned before is also spray paintable.
A brushed on coat of latex primer will usually solve any spray issues. It isn't the paint itself, but the propellant that causes the melting. In some cases all you need to do is hold the can further away than usual while spraying.

To the OP- The canyons sound like a good idea, i can almost visualise them. But I'm curious about the 3" depth? Can the "boxes" be deeper or is it a limitation from the manufacturer? I'm also wondering if they could just cast hills and rocky outcroppings individually, without the box shape.
At Cold Wars last year an awesome table was set up for Pulp Adventure games, which had an Egyptian tomb complex theme. It was made from about two dozen stackable and interchangeable wooden boxes (with lids). Some of the boxes were twice the size of the others to accomodate bigger rooms. One had an underground river running through its lower level with the upper floor broken and a perilous temporary bridge across the chasm. I think your proposed product could be used to easily duplicate the layout of that game, for much less cost.

 snurl wrote:

To the OP- The canyons sound like a good idea, i can almost visualise them. But I'm curious about the 3" depth? Can the "boxes" be deeper or is it a limitation from the manufacturer? I'm also wondering if they could just cast hills and rocky outcroppings individually, without the box shape.
At Cold Wars last year an awesome table was set up for Pulp Adventure games, which had an Egyptian tomb complex theme. It was made from about two dozen stackable and interchangeable wooden boxes (with lids). Some of the boxes were twice the size of the others to accomodate bigger rooms. One had an underground river running through its lower level with the upper floor broken and a perilous temporary bridge across the chasm. I think your proposed product could be used to easily duplicate the layout of that game, for much less cost.

The 3" depth is a limitation of my design, not of the manufacturing process. One reason I can keep costs low is by keeping everything in the same "shell".



As such, all tiles made fit within this same box. This allows me to keep the overall start-up cost of each tile low, since the over-all mold is the same, the only thing that needs changing is the inserts. If I made canyons and such so that they no longer fit the mold, a new one needs to be made. It can be very expensive.

Thanks. Now I get it. Makes sense. Seems to me 3" would be OK for interior stuff but about 5" would be more like it for outdoor things.

 snurl wrote:
Thanks. Now I get it. Makes sense. Seems to me 3" would be OK for interior stuff but about 5" would be more like it for outdoor things.

If I have to go up to 5", it will have to be down the road a ways. The price of a new mold is expensive, while the price of a new insert is not.

IMO, you should stick with 3". With miniatures based terrain, it gets hard to manuever if you go beyond that.

Heck, dropping to 2" might even be beneficial, since many miniatures expand beyond the limitations of their bases (unusual posts, minotaur horns, etc.).

Eric

If you can strike a balance between functionality for the gamers and detail for the painters you will sell a lot of these.

Very interesting idea. It seems that I'm late to the party, but I would make the suggestion of 12" sections rather than 18" or 24".
2 foot sections only give you 4 separate sections on a 4x4 table,and when dealing with specific dungeons and such that;s not alot of variability. Also, there's the problem with shipping and stocking 2 foot boxes.

One foot sections give you 16 separate sections on a 4x4 which is enough for tons of variability and it's far easier to ship (and for stores to stock) a one foot box. Also, if you want to sell alot of these, you're going to want to sell more than 4 sections to a given customer. I imagine you could sell each one foot section for a bit more than 1/4 the price of a two foot section.

I had thought that 1' sections might be a good idea, especially in terms of storage. However, that may be a little tight in terms of designing the space inside of the 1' sections.

It might be hampered by (a) looking visually uninteresting, at least in terms of the individual tile in isolation, and (b) have more space on the table taken up by the thicker outer walls of the tiles.

I would also suggest that your tiles have standard positions for doors in each outer wall of the tiles, which are marked, so that it is easy to cut doors into the outer walls of the tiles and have them all line up with those in other tiles.

Hmm. Oddly enough, I disagree with Weeble.
I prefer your initial idea of not marking any door ways. The product is FAR more usable that way.

Heck, if I still played RPG's and was going to use these, I wouldn't want any doors. I'd leave them with no exterior openings at all and use some sort of a mobile door, even if just made from card stock, printed with a cool pic from the internet, to hang over the edge wherever I wanted a door.

Eric

 MagickalMemories wrote:
Hmm. Oddly enough, I disagree with Weeble.
I prefer your initial idea of not marking any door ways. The product is FAR more usable that way.

Heck, if I still played RPG's and was going to use these, I wouldn't want any doors. I'd leave them with no exterior openings at all and use some sort of a mobile door, even if just made from card stock, printed with a cool pic from the internet, to hang over the edge wherever I wanted a door.

Eric

Size and doors are two issues I've argued over on this idea.

1' Tiles, while maximizing modularity would actually hurt the product. First, Little of the production cost is due to the raw materials, Instead its due to cooking and cooling times on the foam. Changing tile size actually means that the consumer gets less sqft/$ than with larger sizes. Second, Due to the foam material itself, there are certain minimum specs I need to maintain, regardless of the size of the tile. 1" outer walls, 1/2" inner walls. This means that the usable size is decreased farther than the tile size. (a 2x2 tile has 22x22 inches of design space, a 1x1 has a 10x10. Meaning that while dropping tile size 75%, I'm losing 80% design space).

That being said, I have settled on a final tile size of 18". I ended up getting some size templates made and 18x18 simply wins the transportation factor hands down. At 18" square, a tile will sit snugly in a passenger chair and be stackable. At 24x24, it sits cockeyed, won't be as stackable, and a poorly closed car door will damage the tile, it provides a good deal more modularity than 2x2, and is, IMO all around a better size. Though not as cost effective for the consumer as 2x2.

Doors, Exterior Doors are not workable into the Due to manufacturing limitations. I am planning on having cardstock doorways to place along exteriors. Hopefully this will be a free download, along with flooring textures. Interior doors are another matter entirely. Here I had to strike a balance between "immediate" usability, and user tweakability. My plan is to have pre-cut openings into rooms. I will have cardstock standies available in a number of door styles to fill these gaps. These standies will also include blank "wall" tiles as well. This will allow a bit more customization off the bat. Then, there is also the fact that this is made out of Foam. Because of this, it is possible to "move" an opening by cutting an identical sized slot, and moving its fill to the old one.

That makes sense. 18" sounds like a good comprimise. That puts a 3x3 grid on a table that's slightly bigger than 4x4.

Does this mean that the floors will not be textured? That seems like a rather large drawback.

Eilif wrote:
That makes sense. 18" sounds like a good comprimise. That puts a 3x3 grid on a table that's slightly bigger than 4x4.

Does this mean that the floors will not be textured? That seems like a rather large drawback.

That is correct, floors will not be textured (beyond the normal texture foam has, which is fairly "Cobblestone-like". (See Pic Below) There are reasons for this though, as I've mentioned earlier. Part of the plan for this product is for many of the pieces to be "Genre neutral". By putting in some sort of textured floor, I start imposing a genre on it. I think by offering printable flooring of different types, I offer a decent compromise.

Also, the more complex the mold, the higher the machining costs are for the molds. Textured floors start to add an extra layer of complexity that can greatly increase the mold costs, bringing the cost out of the realm of possibility for this product.

Good luck

Just an update.

I've finished putting together a prototype of the product. This is pieced together from Foamboard, not EPS, also, it is glued together, whereas the final product will be one solid piece. However, this should give you fairly good idea of how this thing will be shaped when its finished. Forgive the chunky look of the cutting. My knife has dulled quite a bit. Needless to say, the final piece will look much better than this.

Later, I plan on smoothing out the edges, and probably putting on a coat of textured paint.

Enjoy!

Some shots of this gussied up.

The protype showed me some things I needed to fix. The entire thing lost an inch in height, as 3" walls made some rooms a pain to reach into, and stuff from other products (those stairs are Terraclips) don't work well at that height.

The prototype was really meant as a proof of concept, not for display, so don't hold its shoddy craftsmanship against me. (I can't cut foamcore to save my life.) I did hit the thing with a coat of "Stone" spraypaint, just to give it a look closer to styrofoam. Its not the gray color I'm getting the real things made from, but its better than foamcore.