Sunday, March 23, 2014

dxContent 3D Dungeon Tiles Get Walls!

Technically we have "half" walls that work with dxContent 3D Dungeon Tiles or can be used on all types of battle mats or even classic cardboard tiles.  Walls are available now in the dxContent store!

Lets take a quick look at the walls in full glory!

A column of dwarves come upon a battle with two viscous beasts.


Why Half Walls?

The big benefit of "half" walls is that you can see the minis - very important for games like D&D or Pathfinder.  The "half" walls are 2 inches long (a scale 10 foot wall section). 

(NOTE: We expect to add 1" walls at some point.)

Here are some of the renderings we showed our focus group of gamers that demonstrate the full wall height problem.  Both renderings have the same red minis in the same locations... the full height walls (while cool looking) obscured too much... hindering the game.  We showed views at different angles to simulate standing or sitting at a game table... and in all cases our players preferred the half walls.

Full height walls obscure the action

"Half" walls are the perfect solution!


The careful observer will see half doors, half bars, and a half arrow slit in the renderings.  Yes, we've got plans!  We've already got a prototype door model we are playing with.  So as you can see we'll be adding a variety of models to the "half" wall line.  We have a whopping eight model variations in our initial half wall offering.

Tiles Optional

Another neat thing about our "Half" walls is that they can be used even if you don't use tiles.  I've seen everything from kids blocks to dominoes used to layout dungeons.  We wanted something just as convenient, but something that did not interrupt the "immersion". Here's our half walls being used on a typical laminated battle mat:

Notice that figs can still reasonably fit into spaces that the wall occupies


With small pieces like this... we recommend two small bits of inexpensive, non-toxic, re-usable adhesive like Bostick's Blu-Tack or Elmer's Tac 'N Stik to hold them in place but allow for easy re-positioning.

So how did this great idea come about? Well, if there is a limitation to tiles, it is that it can be a challenge to subdivide the tile space into smaller rooms.  Consider this drawing...



We can easily make a 50x60 foot dungeon area... plunk down two 6x6 inch tiles, and two 4x6 inch tiles.  That's easy.  But we always knew that maximum flexibility comes with the ability to easily divide that space up.

Our competitors make some neat stuff with the walls built into the floor sections, but the problem with that approach is that you end up having to own or purchase specific, specialized pieces to make the above map...

The beauty of the dxContent approach to all of our tile products is maximum reusability of every dxContent 3D Dungeon Tile you own.


Monday, March 10, 2014

Is it 2014 Already?

It seems like just yesterday it was New Years Eve.  We had a big rush of orders in December, and one HUGE order that consisted of 1000+ tiles.  We were so darn busy our one year anniversary of making 3D Dungeon Tiles came and went!

I have been busy making tiles to replenish inventory and get some of the newer products ready for production.  We've got some new equipment set up in the shop including a big belt sander (that I dropped on my thumb - oh that hurt!).  We also created molds for 3 new stone texture 1x4s.

I've got a set of new wood-plank style master models ready for mold making... tomorrow I pick up the necessary supplies to make it all happen. Soon you should see...
  • Wood texture 6x6
  • Wood texture 4x4
  • Wood texture 4x6
  • Right and Left wood texture boat prows
After that probably....
  • Wood texture 2x6 (2 variations)
  • Wood texture 2x2 (4 variations)
So those will all fit with the wood texture family like the 2x4:



 I've also got some products surprises in the works that I can't talk about yet.

On the Free DM tools side of things... we manged to get the Pathfinder Monster Database updated as well as adding a few more search filters.

So long for now!