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Ryan Sturm
United States
Lancaster
New York
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I am hard at work on my first serious attempt at board game design. I have a working set of rules and want to start developing the main board and player boards for my prototype. I don't want to spend a lot of time learning the software, and would prefer not to shell out a bunch of cash for it either. (If there is one program that is head and shoulders above others and worth the money, I will if needs be) I am comfortable with Print shop and was thinking about using that but I dont know if its going to do everything I need it to do. As its a prototype I don't need it to do anything too fancy, (for example a hex map of varying colors) as I will probably have to put it through several revisions and change it up quite a bit, but eventually when I get closer to a finished product I may want to dress it up a bit. I was thinking if I could create something of the quality of the homemade Age of Steam maps that would be great. (What software do people use to create those maps)
Can any of you give me some advice on programs to use for my situation, do any of you have experience with this sort of thing or various programs. Could you direct me to any threads that may have already addressed these questions?
Any help would really be appreciated, Thanks!
Ryan
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Dan Cassar
United States
Bala Cynwyd
Pennsylvania
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Re: Reccomendation for Software for Game Board Prototype
I highly recommend using Inkscape. It's powerful, flexible and free vector art program.
There will be a learning curve (I think that will be impossible to avoid entirely) but it will be well worth it.
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Ryan Sturm
United States
Lancaster
New York
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Re: Reccomendation for Software for Game Board Prototype
At the risk of sounding ignorant, what does "vector" art program mean?
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Derek H
South Africa
Pretoria
Gauteng
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Re: Reccomendation for Software for Game Board Prototype
RyanSturm wrote: What software do people use to create those maps
probably something expensive like Adobe Photoshop ( http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/index.html) - I echo the advice to start off with something simpler that is free - like Inkscape. If you really get into the graphic design side of things... then purchase something more complex.
RyanSturm wrote: Can any of you give me some advice on programs to use for my situation, do any of you have experience with this sort of thing or various programs. Could you direct me to any threads that may have already addressed these questions?
A quick search on BGG will pull up a number of threads...
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Christopher Taylor
United States
Lake Forest
California
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RyanSturm wrote: At the risk of sounding ignorant, what does "vector" art program mean?
Instead of using individual dots (pixels) to create the image, it uses mathematical descriptions of a particular shape (like a line or circle).
The key difference is that vector graphics scale much more easily and look nice regardless of how you scale them. Pixel images don't scale very well to arbitrary sizes.
The wikipedia page has a sample graphic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_graphics
I always suggest OpenOffice Draw. I think it's easier to use than Inkscape (which I haven't used in a while to be honest) for creating prototypes.
http://www.openoffice.org
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Jim Wakemen
United States
New Jersey
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A vector graphics program is one that stores the images as points of connecting lines and curves that form shapes. The colors are also stored as belonging to the shape. As vectors they can be resized quickly and easily without getting "pixelated" as the computer spread out the points and can redraw the lines.
This is different than the "raster" graphics which are stored as dots that have a specific color. Resizing a raster image takes more work on the part of the computer and the math can not be as accurate, so the results can lose quality.
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Andrew Snyder
United States
Springfield
Pennsylvania
Shouldn't you be playing a game with me instead of wasting time on the Internet?
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RyanSturm wrote: At the risk of sounding ignorant, what does "vector" art program mean?
vector art is based on math, not pixels. Theoretically a vector drawing would scale from a playing card to a billboard with no loss of legibility.
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John Sheppard
United States
Bellevue
WA
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As a short aside to this thread, I'd like to point out that if you are making cards, either for a card game or as part of the board game, nanDECK, found here...
http://www.nand.it/nandeck/
...has been a very useful, easy to learn (use the tutorials), FREE tool that works quite well. The few issues I had with the application I was able to contact the author and they fixed the bugs I found overnight. This utility is much better for creating a deck of cards than trying to do individual cards or sheets of cards in Photoshop or a similar application.
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Paul DeStefano
United States
Long Island
New York
It's a Zendrum. www.zendrum.com
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RyanSturm wrote: At the risk of sounding ignorant, what does "vector" art program mean?
If you didn't ask, that would be ignorance.
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Orlando Ramirez
United States
Manor
Texas
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I use both Photoshop (raster) and Illustrator (vector) daily at work and while yes Vector art scales better, its not always the better way to go. It really depends on the art style your going for. Vector art is great for some styles, and raster better for other styles, and even a combination of both for yet other styles. If your worried about print quality with raster, just work at a higher resolution, say 300dpi. So before you decide on which program to use, figure out which art style you'd like to achieve, and base whichever free program on that.
Inkscape for Vector and GIMP for Raster both free.
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I tried downloading 'Inkscape' but i have an iBookG4 and it isn't compatible.
Is there an alternative out there or a different MAC compatible version somewhere and if so can anyone suggest where?
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Steven Heinrich
United States
Arlington
Texas
Bow chicka bowow! Avatar lust...
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The link below is for the MAC section of Cnet ( http://www.cnet.com/)
MAC section:
http://www.download.com/Mac/?tag=navtab
Take the time to explore the website and see which one fits your needs. Over the title of each program listed, when you move your cursor over it and pause, a small information box will show up and let you know if it is shareware or a trial or how much the software costs.
You really didn't state in detail what you were trying to create. You might look over to the upper left corner and select the "multimedia design" set of downloads.
When you bring up the listing of software, look at the bar just above the listing and see where it states "total downloads", click on it and it will put the software in order of which has been the most popular. This will keep you, since you are new to this, from getting something that has a bunch of bugs or is a bad program.
Two free programs:
Bryce 5.5 is one you might look at:
http://www.download.com/Bryce/3000-2187_4-10696718.html?tag=...
Google Sketch up:
http://www.download.com/Google-SketchUp/3000-2187_4-10137881...
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Ryan Sturm
United States
Lancaster
New York
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Allright so I have downloaded inkscape and I have started playing around with it. Is there a way to print things you create in a larger size. For example can a print a gameboard in a 2 by 2 paper size, If so how do I do that.
Thanks,
Ryan
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Daniel
United States
North Carolina
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Another Free option to look into is "The Gimp" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIMP). It is a GNU public license program similar to (but not as powerful as) Adobe paintshop / photoshop.
It has a lot of features and if you have never used a photoshop type product there are some un-intuitive aspects, but the learning curve is not THAT bad, and the price is right.
Again, it is a raster vs vector based program, but unless you are designing a massive board and/or you have a very specific crisp polished style in mind, it gets the job done.
good luck!
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Derek H
South Africa
Pretoria
Gauteng
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RyanSturm wrote: All right so I have downloaded inkscape and I have started playing around with it. Is there a way to print things you create in a larger size. For example can I print a gameboard in a 2 by 2 paper size, If so how do I do that.
A quick search on the Inkscape mailing list archive shows it does not support multi-page output... see:
http://www.nabble.com/Printing-Large-Documents-td2025523.htm...
But the one response suggested creating a large bitmap image file (e.g. a PNG file) and then using this utility:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/posterazor/
to chop it up. Please let us know how that goes if you try it.
(BTW, if you have not used FOSS programs such as Inkscape before, then you need to know that their mailing lists - e.g. http://www.inkscape.org/mailing_lists.php - are the first place to look for answers & also the first place to ask if you can't find what you needed to know... nicely, of course!)
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Steven Heinrich
United States
Arlington
Texas
Bow chicka bowow! Avatar lust...
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Very cool, thanks for asking this question. I learned about some new programs I hadn't known about.
I love how everyone is so helpful around here!
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Kevin Everingham
United States
Sheridan
Michigan
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I have created games using Microsoft Excel or Publisher. If you take a look at the game: MY BAND listed here on boardgamegeek, it has a board that is printed on 4 sheets of paper and was entirely designed on an Excel Spreadsheet!!!
It does a great job. MSPublisher also has some great options.
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Derek H
South Africa
Pretoria
Gauteng
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everingham wrote: I have created games using Microsoft Excel or Publisher. If you take a look at the game: MY BAND listed here on boardgamegeek, it has a board that is printed on 4 sheets of paper and was entirely designed on an Excel Spreadsheet!!!
It does a great job. MSPublisher also has some great options.
And, at the risk of pointing out the obvious, the freely available (and cross-platform) http://openoffice.org will do pretty much everything the M$ suite can.
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J C Lawrence
United States
Campbell
California
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gamesbook wrote: (BTW, if you have not used FOSS programs such as Inkscape before, then you need to know that their mailing lists - e.g. http://www.inkscape.org/mailing_lists.php - are the first place to look for answers & also the first place to ask if you can't find what you needed to know... nicely, of course!)
Many OSS projects have active IRC channels. Inkscape certainly does and I've received timely and useful help there:
irc://irc.freenode.org/#inkscape
IRC can be an excellent support/education tool for a game designer, not least because the new BGDF Chat is backed by IRC. You can use the provided web-client for #bgdf_chat or use your choice of standalone IRC clients:
irc://irc.mibbit.com/#bgdf_chat
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Thanks for the suggestions. I'm trying to produce a hex/counter game and am looking into how to produce a reasonably detailed map of about 30 x 40 inches without having to physically draw it. If it has to be produced in sections on a computer rather than one large file that would be fine.
I'll check out the sites mentioned - and if anyone has any other recommendations for Mac, all received gratefully.
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Jonathan Degann
United States
Westlake Village
California
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I've been using Paint Shop Pro, which I think is intended to be a less expensive competitor to Photoshop.
It does many things well, but its learning curve is something else.
Has anyone out there used both PSP and PS? How do they compare?
Also does the Inkscape program, which is "vector" based, also allow rasters? PSP lets you work in either vector or raster "layers". You need rasters if you intend on pasting graphics.
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J C Lawrence
United States
Campbell
California
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Jonathan Degann wrote: Also does the Inkscape program, which is "vector" based, also allow rasters? PSP lets you work in either vector or raster "layers". You need rasters if you intend on pasting graphics.
Inkscape has the concept of a bounding box which is filled with bitmap data.
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Dan Cassar
United States
Bala Cynwyd
Pennsylvania
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Inkscape absolutely allows you to import raster graphics (JPGs, GIFs, BMPs, etc.)
The other great advantage is that Inkscape renders to SVG, which is an open standard that can be read by web browsers, converted to Flash, etc.
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Dan Cassar
United States
Bala Cynwyd
Pennsylvania
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You could also consider Paint.NET for a great, free image editor.
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John Harley
Canada
Toronto
Ontario
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I use MS Visio 2003 for all of my boardgame and computer game layout work.
It is super easy to drag boxes around and resize them easily. Add text, cloning game elements is super easy.
You can make new shapes fairly easily and save them to your pallette to reuse across projects.
Two notes:
Its not a graphic centric product -- its best for making the functional layouts of the board and player mats and such.
It tends to drive you towards an orthogonal grid. So if you want a circular playfield it can be tricky to make shapes that fit.
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Posted Tue Jul 29, 2008 5:17 pm
