which do you think has the most potential for fun?

Diablo III

this is intended to be a series of boards with different characters (was my first attempt at realistic images)

Aliens

a start on a PC/related related theme.

Some ideas already in the game description.  

Pellets

not much thought into this one other than a start on a PC/arcade related theme

"Capture the Flag", tentatively titled - name obviously subject to change (especially since there's already one of that name.)

some ideas are in the game description.

Forbidden Island

this one needs help with factories, I think other than that it's relatively in working order (i'm sure it needs more tweaking for fun/balance gameplay )

I'd vote for one of the last two

The 'CTF' board would just look epic to play no matter the game dynamics

and the island one sounded cool if you can figure out the factory stuff

The FI board doesn't seem to be in working order at all.  I see squares in the fill map section, but no assigned territories or borders.  Is the link correct?

I think I may have played a Dev game on Diablo a while back.  Love me a good dualing map, but I think this would be a challenge to get right.

I was never a fan of the board size for aliens.

CTF looks beautiful, but pulling off a good HEX style game (especially if you see this as a dueling map) is tough with the current set of Designer tools.  Man, I would be all over making more maps if there was a good Individual Movement Count feature.

DIII: Personally, i didn't find this board had any teeth. It was alot like just rolling against an opponent, and best dice won.  You'd have to redesign it to make it tactically interesting - find a way to add some Game to the board. I like the image but the game was just meh.

Difficulty to make it work: 3/4 bottle of cheap French wine (that maybe you'd cook with... if you were desperate)

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Aliens has huge potential in the small scale battle field arena- and I like the idea of various starting scenarios That demand various tactics.  Lots of potential for teams - multiple players with different setups and configurations.  You'll have to invent the game - and figure out how to make it work. Lots of design, testing and balancing. 

3 tumbler difficulty. Something peaty and smokey - that you kinda like, kinda don't, but your gonna keep drinking it.

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Pellets is gonna be a fun crossword like board - and probably will be easy to balance and finish:  

Difficulty level: Single shot of double malt Scotch, rocks and good company.

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CTF.   Love the image here - would love to see it turn into something. The small scale tactical battle comes to mind again - with all it's challenges.  Kjeld's Arena is getting close, but I'd say it's the only one that has really successfully nailed this down.  Maybe, something like Waterloo if you can come up with an interesting unique game mechanic. The dev for this one will be riddled with little challenges to overcome.

Difficulty:  Tequila. But the party's been going on for 5 or 6 hours already.

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 FI - yeah, like M57 I can't see whats going on here. Just squares and water. It's pretty! but, I dunno...

So, I say most potential for fun: prolly aliens - board I most likely to see a game on, definately that CTF board. 

sorry, yeah Forbidden Island had the wrong link; i've fixed it now in the OP (it's actually 6451, not 6450).

I'm kinda with you all on DIII; that's part of the reason it's been in hock for years now. Cannot figure out a way to make it tantalizing. Anyone willing/desiring to figure it out? If not, it'll just likely sit in hock until some inspiration comes. 

M57, if i reduced Aliens to fit on one screen or just in general too many territories?

Really, it's all about screen size - more and more people have wide monitors so maybe it's not so bad - but the north-south thing is important.

FI could be really interesting if you get it worked out. 

CTF.

M57 wrote:

Really, it's all about screen size - more and more people have wide monitors so maybe it's not so bad - but the north-south thing is important.

yeah i remember disliking that too. working on resizing it, I'll still need to think about implementation options... 

ratsy wrote:

FI could be really interesting if you get it worked out. 

Frankly I feel extremely stupid when it comes to Factories. I thought i had it figured out (with Korrun's help); but I got tired of tweaking with no knowledge of how it was going to affect things without reloading, restarting and watching playback of a couple turns in the history. maybe someone else can take the xml and fix it in a hour, where it would take me weeks. 

berickf wrote:

CTF.

got any ideas on gameplay? 

ratsy wrote:

 The dev for this one will be riddled with little challenges to overcome.

 

that's my dilemma. it's going to take me HOURS just to get the fill board made up. It is a gorgeous board, but do I want to spend all that time just to get it workable and THEN have to put more time in to make it playable? 

maybe i just make the visuals and provide some consult to someone else to make gameplay work!

weathertop wrote:

ratsy wrote:

 The dev for this one will be riddled with little challenges to overcome.

 

that's my dilemma. it's going to take me HOURS just to get the fill board made up. It is a gorgeous board, but do I want to spend all that time just to get it workable and THEN have to put more time in to make it playable? 

IMHO:

Some of the problems can be designed out from the beginning, but you have to have a plan as to what kind of game you want it to be.   Is it going to be a 'everyone starts everywhere and duke it out' kind of game or a 'everyone starts somewhere and has to come together' kind of game. Is it going to be a game with goals or a game for domination? 

Then if you think about the situational, or tactical interest on the board and kind of plan it out, it saves you having to make all the mistakes that come along with doing them after. 

Those small battle maps I think have two major issues - there is lots of territory and therefore typically lots of bonuses - the game kind breaks when there are hundreds of units involved. 

Getting units from one place to another: movement and/or restricting movement. 

Rasty wrote:

Those small battle maps I think have two major issues - there is lots of territory and therefore typically lots of bonuses - the game kind breaks when there are hundreds of units involved. 

Getting units from one place to another: movement and/or restricting movement. 

Ratsy nailed it - I can't think of the third one, but these are two out of three of the major design obstacles of a hex board - or tessellating board of any sort really. Unrestricted individual unit movement might be #1 problem in my book.  Neutral walls are ugly and temporary - I've worked on factory driven solutions, but they are tedious and ultimately ugly in play.

Other solutions are limited in scope and are usually costly in terms of taking away other functionalities.  We all agree that factories are a beautiful, beautiful thing, but to really take them to the next level requires what apparently amounts to a re-build of infrastructure, and there are ideas out there, but implementation is clearly more that Tom is willing to undertake - and who can blame him? In many ways what we have here at this point is pretty incredible, and Tom's work in keeping it operational is outstanding.  Honestly, part of me is thankful that there hasn't been a significant addition to the engine because I can see myself getting re-addictied to board design if that was to ever come to fruition.

I'd work on Pellets, Alien, and Forbidden Island in that order, if I were you. I don't think Diablo III has much potential, to be honest, and CTF -- while it may be cool eventually -- will be a major time suck for no guaranteed payout of being an outstanding board in the end.

Pellets can be a quick and easy basic board if you keep it simple on design (i.e. not too many fancy features). Similar things have been done, but most players seem to like simple and familiar boards in any case (see the success of HexVoid in the current voting).

Alien needs work to make the graphic fit on screen, per M57's comment, but other than that can be brought to fruition fairly quickly. Honestly, you might just be able to scale it down to 70% of current size and it would almost fit. The territories would be a bit small, but not impossibly so.

Forbidden Island promises to be a lot of fun, but will take A LOT of dev testing since it's so complicated. So make that a long-term project!

Too bad there is no way to adjust the number of attacks players have separately. Forbidden Island would be nice with some character powers. The explorer could have extra sight, the engineer could have extra units, the pilot could have a special attack to the landing pad. If the navigator could be given an extra attack...

Korrun wrote:

Too bad there is no way to adjust the number of attacks players have separately. Forbidden Island would be nice with some character powers. The explorer could have extra sight, the engineer could have extra units, the pilot could have a special attack to the landing pad. If the navigator could be given an extra attack...

I do recall the suggestion being offered before, and the thought that comes to my mind is that the  number of possible Character Powers are endless and selection of these powers would be limited and arbitrary.  I.e., who decides what they are and how they are implemented? Factories is a perfect example of a feature that enables an array of unthought of functionalities. In fact, factories make possible some of the things you describe above - Used in conjunction with a player capital, things like extra sight, extra units, and even special attack windows are possible. Maybe not easily or cleanly, but it's there.

Adding to the scaffolding to make factories even more powerful seems more prudent. Token Territories and Card driven factories are examples of features that would do this.

Macro functionalities like Movement Count - where the one easily defined and contained system offers a world of options would be the other way that makes sense to me.  Token Territories and Card driven factories fall in this category too.

..my 02 cents

I'd be all for some sort of "factory" that can add to or take away from number of attacks, fortifies, cards... Cards would be fun. Take this territory get an extra card, take that territory lose all of your cards... Token territories should probably be higher on the new feature list though... </unhijack>

"Capture the Flag", tentatively titled - name obviously subject to change (especially since there's already one of that name.)

some ideas are in the game description.

My wife gives her compliments to the artistry of the CtF map. She said, "aww... that's adorable, and I've never thought something on wargear was adorable!"