Producing the Game Pieces
The two main pieces of any board game are the board itself, and the other game pieces that you need to move around the board. In this section we will have a look at designing the game pieces. As per the requirements of the task, all the game pieces, including movers, dice and other items, need to be original designs using Tinkercad. You can not simply find a file to print, nor can you use pre-fabricated items such as dice and counters. Using 3D printing allows for almost endless customisation of game pieces your movers can be created based on the theme of the game, and you can have different movers for different players. You can also customise the dice so that different dice have different numbers or even symbols. The files I used to create these game pieces are below as is a link to the example of a build journal, something you will need to keep as you progress through the build.
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In Tinkercad we build shapes using two types of blocks, solids which add material, and holes which remove material. By choosing and making blocks of different shapes, sizes and types, we can form almost any shape
In looking at the horse movers for this game I have used only one block shape, a cylinder, some stay circular whereas I have stretched others to make ellipse's. The orange cylinders are solids that are building up the counter whereas the black cylinders have been made into holes to cut spaces where the nostrils, eyes and ears are. It was also designed with a gap underneath to glue in the metal discs. |
If your group is looking at trying to incorporate the electronics you may wish to use these aluminum discs to create electrical connections. The come in two sizes and can be glued onto the bottoms of your design. You can also incorporate it into the bottom of your mover by creating a hole in the bottom of your design, you can see this in the Tinkercad models towards the top of the page.
If you are looking at putting it into your design make sure you leave 0.5 mm on both dimensions (width and height) to give enough space to insert the disc and glue. |