Getting Official

Today I registered TriFractals.com with GoDady and setup a basic web presence on SquareSpace. I guess that’s the beginning of making things official.

Over the weekend we built a new set using Angelique’s favorite color scheme, and we made it a bit smaller, only 2” per side. The goal was to see if 2” would be too small, or maybe hopefully actually be big enough and not too much of a compromise. The hope is that if 2” per cathetus works well, then we could make a set that is twice as large (by area) with by setting the hypotenuse to 2”, followed by a third set, once again twice as large, this time with the cathetus set to 4”.

More history, last weekend, Angelique and I experimented with various piece sizes and determined that it really would be nice to have some larger pieces. We determined that larger 4” pieces were really pleasing to play with, and made the game feel much more luxurious. We determined that we didn’t like 5” pieces, they were too large, they seemed to make it harder to visualize the whole piece when joining it with other pieces. Of course, Alexander piped in at one point and stated what should have been the obvious, that if we were going to create different sizes, that the large and smaller sizes should have integral ratios so that they would interact well. Why didn’t I think of that, a travel size, and a home size designed to play together?

So now, how would we make large pieces that are close to 4”, and smaller pieces that fit well in that piece and are small enough to travel? We struggled with this a bit since 2.8” pieces really don’t fit well in a pocket. For the travel size, we want it to be so small that you would not hesitate to bring it with you to play when you go to dinner. Making it smaller, of course, meant making the larger sizes pieces smaller also, not so great. One ratio that would have been nice would have been 9.3mm as that would fit really well to put a third of each the large and small sets on an 8.5” x 11” sheet. Alas, getting smaller than 4” just isn’t that pleasing. We tried other ratios, and eventually realized the even more obvious, if you are going to have different set sizes, then you should have 3 sizes!!!

OK, back to this weekend. I started out assuming that 2” would be too small for the travel size, but decided that playing with paper pieces doesn’t really give a good feel for things, so I cannibalized an old set and made some nice 2” ones with the nice new pretty colors. Later we played some real games while out for Pizza with the new set, it travels very well. With it, Alexander refined the rules to “Take It”, and I was pleasantly surprised how well the 2” set played despite being so small. I think for now, it’s a go. I might still experiment with just slightly bigger sizes at some point, but it’s time to make all 3 sets.

Alexander had some great ideas to make a wrapping case for the travel set that also turns into a playing board when unwrapped, and we each spent a few hours experimenting with various designs. I eventually realized that having inner tabs when building a box sucks, and that could be avoided using some sort of paper/tape to create joints. Angelique pointed out that vinyl would do a good job, some of the other game boxes seem to do that. Turns out they make printable vinly sticker paper, that will likely be ideal for creating joints on a box. The vinyl would, of course, also work really well for the TriFractals themselves! After significant use the paper on the original magnetic set has degraded. Paper also gets dirty easily, and is not water proof.

This means there are still some serious (but well deserved) design changes afoot, and this pushes launching the game out a bit more, but this should really make for a very nice game set. The obvious minimal improvements for the next sets are to have 3 sizes, each with the same colors, but different color permutations. One of the sets will likely need the “duplicate color” permutation to stay balanced. This set should use vinyl instead of paper, and ideally this set would also be laser cut. But the latter is not a requirement, as I don’t want it to block creating a prototype of 4 tiles of each of the new sizes. Glossy or Matte vinyl, what do you think?