Just thought it would be interesting to know which each of the board designers felt was their favorite/funnest map to design? Or conversly, their most frustrating maps.

Speaking for myself, I would say my Ravenloft map, due to the wealth of ideas from various players and other designers, the uniqueness of gameplay, and the use of various factories.

Nygma's Most Frustrating Maps to Design:

Mario Kart

Bomberman

Capture the Flag

(Never played them...? Exactly)

Most fun to design:

Stellar Conflict (though I need to get back to it)

Pong (Discovering the power of factories)

Spy vs Spy (First real success, things just kinda fell into place)

It's been all about factories for me.

Anarchy was fun because in that I felt I was doing something innovative with factories, but I wasn't really pushing the boundaries of what factories can do.  I consider War of the Roses and Go-Geared to be my most creative contributions to the site, and I'm most proud of War of the Roses. It's not a tech-tree; it's more of a game in a game kind of design - and figuring out how to get it to work with a modicum of factories felt really good, but the icing on the cake is that it's a pretty damn good homage to the Avalon Hill game I remember playing in college.

Battle Of Waterloo was a laborious and frustrating construct.  I don't use external editors so I had to manually enter all those borders - thousands I'm sure ..and on a hexagonal board with three or four different dice mods depending on terrain. It just burned me out. It seems I'm still fixing errant borders and there's probably still a bad border or two on that thing. Waterloo was my Waterloo.

M57 wrote:

Battle Of Waterloo was a laborious and frustrating construct.  I don't use external editors so I had to manually enter all those borders - thousands I'm sure ..and on a hexagonal board with three or four different dice mods depending on terrain. It just burned me out. It seems I'm still fixing errant borders and there's probably still a bad border or two on that thing. Waterloo was my Waterloo.

Thanks for reminding me.  I keep bumping into this one: Papelotte 7MC-2 <-> La Belle-Alliance 15 (road)

It is road to off road to road and is on default d6/d6 both directions.  Should be D7/D5 one way and D5/D6 the other.

Oh yeah, and La Belle-Alliance 7 (road) -> La Belle-Alliance 3 MC-2.  Just the one direction.  You have it as D6/D5 and it should be D5/D6.

I'll let you know if I come across any more.

Ransbeche 6 (road) <-> Ter La Haye 2 MC-2

It is road to off road to road and is on default d6/d6 both directions.  Should be D7/D5 one way and D5/D6 the other.

LOL

nice idea Thingol...

I'd probably have to say my favorite to design was my first: Circles of Death. it was made before dual layers were an option on the site and i was just learning paint.net! 

There's a number of frustrating boards that have yet come to life. A couple because I still haven't figured out factories, another couple because graphics are taking FOREVER. Yet a couple more cus i can't come up with playable scenarios for the graphics i designed.

Thanks weather.

The following are maps which just couldn't make it live, all because I couldn't make the gameplay functional (and fun) enough...very frustrating:

Tobruk, Battle of the Pelennor Fields (Minas Tirith), Silmarillion (teams version), Castanamir, and Towers and Castles.  The latter was close to a playable map, but I feel just fell a bit short on the fun factor.

Oh! So you're allowed to nominate boards that never made the grade?  Well..

M57 wrote:

Oh! So you're allowed to nominate boards that never made the grade?  Well..

Lol, does that exponentially expand your list?

Good question! In general, design is fun for me when I take a board from conception to execution in one smooth, uninterrupted, and fully-planned process. This means that I have a clear idea of the theme, the game play, and the mechanics from the outset, and then set about making that a reality with GIMP and the board designer. The final key is that the board is fun to play, which doesn't always happen even when I've made the board that I set out to make. I get frustrated when my original idea just doesn't work because (a) I can't produce the graphics I want, (b) the board mechanics are too tedious to input, or they get confused or riddled with technical bugs that take forever to manually fix, or (c) the game play just isn't interesting or balanced, and I have to make major changes to my original idea on the fly, which makes the whole process seem out-of-control. 

Most satisfying boards:

• War of the Ring -- the graphics were a pain to perfect on this one, but it was a ton of fun to adapt the AnA template to Lord of the Rings, and I feel that I made a unique and fun twist on the simulgear 3 v 2 (and 3 v 3) genre.  Also, I had a lot of fun making this map and balancing the scenario -- the mechanics weren't so complicated as to be tedious, and I got to really get into the theme of LotR.
• Dolmabahce Sarayi -- this is one that started off as a bit of a lark, and then turned into a really elegant and unique board. I'm quite proud of how this turned out, and the relative simplicity of the game (since I tend to always want to add more bells and whistles to my boards).
• Gates of Hell -- again, like DS, I felt I achieved a level of elegance and balance with both the game play and the graphics on this one. Plus, I really enjoy playing this board, so that's a plus.
• Arena -- I wanted to make a big, strategic, complex board based on terrain, and I think that succeeded pretty well. I also had a blast with making the graphics for this one, which involved my first foray into Illustrator. That said, it was also a frustrating design process, which is why I put Arena in both lists!

Most frustrating boards:

• Dungeon Quest -- I was just never quite satisfied with how this turned out, especially the default scenario, which is over way too fast. The Ironman is actually much closer to how I think the board should probably play, but it's still not quite right and I don't know exactly what to do about it. Also, this was another board where the mechanical details got so complex that I had to constantly struggle to remember what worked and what didn't, which made it a huge pain to make any changes. This was really an example of problem C.
• Arena -- Yes, this one appears on both lists. While I'm proud of how it turned out, this was a pain in the neck to make, and had all sorts of technical problems when I was fiddling with scenarios, XMLs, importing/exporting, win conditions, etc. Mostly it was a giant headache, and there was a long stretch where I didn't think I'd ever bring it to completion. I also still think there are some bugs with it that I haven't found yet, and mechanics or rules that could be streamlined and more intuitive. But just the thought of revisiting the technical details of the board starts to bring on a migraine... This was an example of problem B.
• The Lorax -- I really liked the graphics and the theme and the basic idea for this board, but could never quite get the factories working how I wanted them to. They don't trigger in the proper order to make the trufula trees decay, which really screwed up the vision I had for the game. Also, I never could get the balance right, either, and just have been too frustrated with it to revisit. Another example of problem B, with some C.
• Amphibious Assault -- this one never went live. It's another asymmetric duel where I couldn't get the balance right. But more than that, I couldn't agree with myself on what the basic game play should look like. I liked the graphics I had for it, but like weathertop said it was that I could never quite come up with the right scenario for the graphics. I tried simulgear and versus-dice, team game and 1v1, and a bunch of other stuff, but there were always problems with theme or balance that scuttled each attempt. Definitely a problem C.

Awesome post Kjeld...and great to see you back on. Thought we lost you after the recent outage.

Kjeld, any updates to your post since I think you've got a few more maps live since then?

Weather, I'd be happy to collaborate with you or assist on the factory front. Just let me know.

Not too much. I'll add that I really stepped up my scripting game to make Northern Pern, which has some unique and complex continent structures (advanced version) that nonetheless work pretty seamlessly in game. I've got plans for an eventual sequel featuring similar mechanics for the entire Pern world map, but there's some graphics and scripting issues that will take time to sort out and I haven't worked up the motivation yet.

I'm really excited about my World of Middle Earth board, which is currently in development. I think it really takes the theme and the game play to a new level with 9 different factions that each play uniquely in terms of their bonus structure and starting location. It will inevitably have a learning curve, but I'm still pumped to get this one live.

The only negative thing I could say about that Pern map is it is too small - so I look forward to a bigger version!

I’m about to start designing a map based on the videogame ‘Myth: The Fallen Lords’. Any Myth fans out there?

Designing the gameplay for Gear Wars was my favorite because me and a group of 4 other players kept playing and tweaking. The design of the map was a co-op also.

Rent is Dues Again was just fun because it's my actual apartment, that I still live in and it looks basically the same.

Gauntlet was my favorite overall experience. It's got interesting gameplay and I think it looks awesome. Also, the memories I had while making it were fun.

Special spot in my heart goes to Risky Kong, just because I love it and think it is one of those "have you figured it out yet" games that make me smile.

>Rent is Dues Again was just fun because it's my actual apartment, that I still live in and it looks basically the same.

That's awesome.  I've often thought of doing my neighborhood, or school or something like that, but never followed through.  I recently got the blueprints of my childhood home (which is one-of-a-kind, because my Dad designed it), and I've been thinking of turning that into a map.

Here is the site I used to design it: https://floorplanner.com/

Now, I did mine like 12 years ago, so the site seems to be more of a pay thing now than it was back then.

I also had to walk to the internet, uphill, in the snow...both ways!!