RoboRally | Image | BoardGameGeek

Matt Robertson

(Bixby)

Canada
Regina
Saskatchewan

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That is awesome. Do you have any explanation or materials showing how you constructed the board?

Posted Mon Nov 23, 2009 5:56 pm
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Tim Fiscus

(HuckmanT)

Germany
Landstuhl
Armed Forces Europe (AE)

Merlin's Beard! That's friggin awesome... Well done, mate, well done!

I just found out my envy meter does go to 11!

Posted Mon Nov 23, 2009 9:40 pm
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Myron Fairweather

(myronf)

United Kingdom

Bixby wrote:

That is awesome.

HuckmanT wrote:

Merlin's Beard! That's friggin awesome... Well done, mate, well done!

Thank you both.

Bixby wrote:

Do you have any explanation or materials showing how you constructed the board?

It all starts with a 375mm square of 5mm foamboard (that's 12 x 25mm squares, with 5mm gaps between them and a 10mm border on each side). I drew the grid in pencil, marked all the walls and pits, then cut them out - that's a 25mm square for a pit or a 5mm x 25mm slot for a wall.

(I was greatly aided in cutting slots by purchasing a chisel knife blade - the Swann Morton ACM no.17 blade is approximately 6mm wide, but the extra width meant all the cuts joined up)

On the underside of the board, I glued some feet to raise the board by 5mm (being careful not to obscure any holes or slots). This has two purposes :

1) the walls wobble less - I built some test boards and found that if the board is flat on the table, then the 5mm deep slot isn't quite enough to "hold" the wall. However, if the wall goes through the board by another 5mm, it's more secure.

2) the pits are deeper - I "frame" each hole with strips of foamboard and then glue a square of card on the bottom. This makes a pit that's 25mm square and 10mm deep, deep enough to actually drop a robot in! Once you've painted the inside black and glued hazard strip round the outside, then it's obvious to even a first-time player that this is something to avoid!

The walls are 25mm squares of 5mm foamboard, painted grey on each side, with a hazard strip glued round some of the outside. Each strip is only 55mm long, meaning it reaches 15mm down each side. This doesn't prevent the bottom 10mm fitting into the slot while completely covering the exposed edge of the foamboard.

The special pieces are simply two walls with spacing pieces between then (10mm should work but I made them 11mm to be sure it would all fit), covered in an extra large hazard strip. All these strips, plus the ones round the pits, were printed on glossy 6" x 4" photo "cards" as I had a lot that I wasn't going to use for anything else. It's more difficult to cut than normal paper, but it's much easier to handle such smaller pieces.

The rest is scanned, re-arranged, printed, cut and glued paper. That's the bit that could be improved - if I ever rebuild these boards, I'll simply lay it all out on the computer first and print it as four, quarter-size squares.

Posted Mon Nov 23, 2009 10:26 pm
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David Henry

(fatetwister64)

United States
Anaheim
California

Oh man. That would save about 90% of the blunders of "Oh that's a wall"

Great looking!

Posted Tue Nov 24, 2009 7:39 am
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Victor Watrous

(DasViktor)

United States
Fort Wayne
Indiana

Don't make me do it, Jim. Tell me what Tony Clifton's avatar is or Case Blue gets it!

Most excellent! Your boards are great!

I have been wanting to make a custom board for my Robo Rally game. I bought some foam core board today for an insert project on a different game. This will be my first time using the it, but after seeing your boards I can see this stuff becoming my craft building material of choice.

By the way, where did you get the hazard strips at?

Thanks for the inspiration. thumbsup

Posted Wed Nov 25, 2009 10:14 pm
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It's just a ride

(Shauneroo)

England
Bury St Edmunds
Suffolk

Make moving conveyor belts, then I'll be impressed.

Seriously though, that's superb work.

Posted Thu Nov 26, 2009 11:44 am
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Michael De Coster

(fluffdasheep)

Belgium
Brasschaat

fatetwister64 wrote:

Oh man. That would save about 90% of the blunders of "Oh that's a wall"

Now I'm really wondering about the remaining 10%.

That board is amazing, I am insanely jealous.

Posted Thu Nov 26, 2009 5:29 pm
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Myron Fairweather

(myronf)

United Kingdom

Once again, thank you all for the comments, thumbs and gold - I made the front page !

(well, my front page - maybe you've got your home page configured differently)

And now some letters from our readers :

DasViktor wrote:

I bought some foam core board today ... I can see this stuff becoming my craft building material of choice.

By the way, where did you get the hazard strips at?

If you're building stuff with corners (like this, as opposed to "organic" curved stuff), then I'd always recommend foamboard - I now buy it ten (A1) sheets at a time !

I was originally going to use the hazard strips from Stones Edges' "Orbital" (http://www.stones-edges.com/scifi/orbital) but the scale's slightly different and the "dirtiness" of the image didn't quite fit with the rest of the board.

So, I drew my own in a graphics package - just a 5mm strip (20mm for the connecting walls) with alternating black and yellow stripes, printed onto glossy photo "card". I'll try and take some close-up photos of various components this weekend.

Shauneroo wrote:

Make moving conveyor belts, then I'll be impressed.

When I was still deciding whether I wanted to actually build the conveyors, and had dismissed casting the pieces using a Hirst Arts mould, I considered Technic Lego track pieces. Then I found out how much they are ! But the sheer genius of having a board where you can crank a handle to move the conveyors and gears still appeals to me - maybe some day ...

fluffdasheep wrote:

fatetwister64 wrote:

Oh man. That would save about 90% of the blunders of "Oh that's a wall"

Now I'm really wondering about the remaining 10%.

The only blunders we have now are when someone misses putting a wall in. If someone plans a move that takes them through what should be a wall, then we let them have it, then put the wall in behind them.

Posted Thu Nov 26, 2009 7:07 pm
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Arne Hoffmann

(HRune)

Germany
Munich
Germany

I am speachless!

Posted Thu Nov 26, 2009 7:39 pm
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Myron Fairweather

(myronf)

United Kingdom

To help potential builders, I've taken some close-up photos of the walls and an example pit (the one from the "Cross" board, because it's slightly complicated and large enough to see the detail).

Rather than clutter up this gallery, I've posted them to my gallery :

where you'll also find photos of the other six boards. Don't panic - I haven't just built six boards in a week ! They were all either finished or very close and I've just got round to taking photos.

[edit - correction of tense ("built", not "build") and because I hadn't noticed the "Insert Geek Image" button before]

Edited Sat Nov 28, 2009 11:48 pm
Posted Sat Nov 28, 2009 2:48 pm
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Victor Watrous

(DasViktor)

United States
Fort Wayne
Indiana

Don't make me do it, Jim. Tell me what Tony Clifton's avatar is or Case Blue gets it!

Is there any particular paper you printed on?

I once made a 2'x3' board for The Awful Green Things From Outer Space and had it printed and laminated at Staples. It was very expensive.

Posted Sat Nov 28, 2009 7:01 pm
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Myron Fairweather

(myronf)

United Kingdom

DasViktor wrote:

Is there any particular paper you printed on?

Most of it was printed on Canon "Brilliant White Paper" but that's only because I've had a sample pack for several years, waiting for that "special project".

The last two boards were printed on normal 80gsm photocopier paper - the printing wasn't much different (maybe a little fuzzier because of the ink bleeding) but it wasn't as strong and I tore a few pieces.

So, I think that anything will work, but you get what you pay for. A small outlay for some better paper at the beginning might just make things better/easier (I can't speak to wear and tear as the boards haven't seen enough use yet).

Posted Sat Nov 28, 2009 11:39 pm
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