This is another board game organizer I made and uploaded to thingiverse. This time it is for the game Dungeons & Dragons: The Fantasy Adventure Board Game (BGG Link). My children really enjoy this game, so we sleeved the cards and I made some organizers so simplify setup and cleanup of the game.
Since it seems this game was mainly distributed in Europe in various languages, I also uploaded the SCAD files so you can translate the card names into other languages (the German version is uploaded as STL files).
The card boxes include space for the cards from the 2 expansions (forest and ice).
The box for all the heroes makes it easy to keep track of which character had which items between campaigns.
This isn’t intended as an insert for the original box. Since I have both expansions, I use a bigger box to hold all the pieces.
I work in the gaming industry, but normally don’t talk about games much because a) I work on the technical side and b) there are so many other blogs, outlets, news and review sites that do this every day that I don’t feel I can add a perspective that is unique (and there is no sense in writing redundant blog posts).
That being said, I really enjoyed one of the games I recently played, so I decided to write about it anyway. The game is called The Ascent and it’s an isometric top-down shooter in a cyberpunk setting.
There is a wide variety of weapons that you can level-up throughout the game (although the resources required to level up weapons are scarce at higher levels, so you can only bring a few of the weapons to max level). A few different weapon damage types are available, that work better or worse against different enemies. And to further customize your character, there are a few abilities and skills available.
The story was engaging, kept me busy with both main missions and side missions. Missions always have a suggested level with is useful because if you head into an area you aren’t ready for you will be killed swiftly 😉 Aside from the story, I also enjoyed the graphical level of detail. No obvious repeating of elements, each area/level had a very distinct feeling to it, even backgrounds or parts of the map where players can’t navigate to were very detailed. Music was also very well picked for the different game areas.
Difficulty scales fairly moderate. The beginning can be tough at times, but as long as you keep leveling up your weapons, and making sure you have the right gear equipped, it’s pretty smooth sailing. Also, remember to match up weapon type with enemy type.
A recent update introduced a “Game+” mode with tougher enemies that allows you to re-play the game with you character from the normal playthrough (i.e. keep your stats/skills/inventory, but the enemies also start out at around level 30). Game+ mode is nice if you really want to max out all the skills or level up a few more weapons.
There were a few cons too, in coop multiplayer mode we had a few crashes and quests getting stuck (requiring us to restart the game). But all in all it was playable and we mad it through the whole game. Multiplayer had a very “added in later” feel to it, not something designed to be a integral feature of the game (e.g. “guests” don’t see any of the useful mini-map markers). Also, there is little to no replay value in the game. I did a second playthrough in Game+ mode, and it felt more like a speedrun focusing on the main mission and picking up side missions in the same area for extra EXP.
All in all I really enjoyed the game, it wasn’t too difficult or grindy, and travel times not too bad as long as you kept an eye on your missions and made liberal use of the taxi and subway system. I got all the achievements in the game, and the one that took the longest was “Die 100 times”.
I wanted to try printing a wood filament and picked up a roll of Easywood Pine from FormFutura. Wood filaments are a mixture of PLA and wood fibers or particles. I tried printing a few test objects, and from a printing perspective it prints very similar to normal PLA.
Due to the fibers in the filament I’d suggest a 0.6mm nozzle (or larger) to reduce the chance of clogging. And I also went with a steel nozzle from micro-swiss since the wood in the filament can be a bit abrasive and wanted a more durable nozzle.
Realistically, we are just printing plastic with wood fibers in it, nothing we print will ever be confused with real wood. That being said, it does have wood like characteristics, the surface and smell do have a slightly wood like quality to them. If I had to compare it to something, I’d say it reminds me most of thick rough cardboard.
As far as print accuracy goes, It faired pretty well. some details were lost (most obvious in the last photo of this post), but that was to be expected both printing with a rough material and printing with a larger nozzle.
Viewed from the back we can see the underside of the bridging on the bottom right. The card was printed on a flat metal surface, the filament adheres very well to the build plate. I also tried out different build surfaces, even a rough one in the hopes it looked more wood-like. But the rougher surfaces all turned out shiny and looking very fake due to the plasticky rough surface.
I printed the same card with ironing enabled on the top layer. The results were not good at all. The ironed parts are very uneven and the wood feeling of the surface is pretty much gone, the surface is non-uniformly rough, but not in a good way. It feels as if too much heat is transferred into the printed object and the plastic becomes very dominant. Having the filament heated up but flowing slowly through the nozzle can also “burn” the wood fibers and/or increase the chance of clogging. There are probably situations where (localized) ironing my have beneficial results, but It’s not something I suggest having on by default.
A final photo with a direct comparison between a 0.4mm nozzle printed PLA+ filament and the 0.6mm nozzle printed wood filament. It’s not a filament I’d use every day, but I’m happy to have it here, and have a few ideas I’d like to try out with this filament.
One thing I learned while printing 3D is that a lot depends on which printer you use, what and how you print, and what filamants you use. This blog entry is a “this is how I do it and what works for me, and why it works for me”, other people may have different opinions based on how/what they print and which filaments they use, and that is totally fine. If filament cards are something new to you or something you are interested in, I’m happy to share my experiences and knowledge here with you. Links to models in the pictures here are at the bottom of the blog post.
What is a filament card
A filament card (or color swatches, or whatever you want to call them) is basically just a small card. It’s design can range from a plain rectangle for color reference, or have features built into it like different layer depths, bridging and wall strengths. It can any shape, but rectangles are often used, but I’d suggest using the same shape/model for all cards.
Why are filament cards useful?
Printing filament cards when you get a new roll of filament is a habit I’d suggest getting into early. They allow you to easily reference or compare colors and printing results to chose the right filament for the job. They are also useful if you get samples from a product. If you were ever trying to decide “which of these blues would look best for what I need to print” or “which of my filaments had the best bridging results”, then this is a system you will enjoy.
Labeling
Some people creates cards for each specific filament, printing the name and settings (e.g. temperature) directly into or onto the card. While I find this neat, I wanted to avoid having to create a new card for each filament (since newer slicer versions may create different gcode and I’d be comparing not only filament A to filament B, but also different slicer results, and the name can be quite long depending on how much information I want to present). The upside to only having one STL/gcode for all cards is that is is easy to manage and compare results. The downside is that a) I need to label the cards in a different manner, and b) adjust the temperature settings for the filament on the printer. For labeling I use a traditional label printer (as seen on the pictures), and document manufacturer and color of the filament (I only add the temperature if it is unusual). On the pictures above I put the label on the front, but on the latest cards I’ve printed I’ve started placing the label to the back since there is more space there (back surface quality is mostly dictated by the printer bed and less interesting), the front does a better job of showing the surface quality of the filament, and in the back the label doesnt interfere with the tray slots.
Card features
Comparing colors and the “feel” of the filament is what I use the cards mostly for, but I also chose a cards with a few extra “features” that come in handy. The cards I use are a little bit higher than what you normally see to give me more room for the label and more material to compare. On the top there are a few small tests (round ball, wall with hole, bridging, cylinder only supported on one end, slanted surface), the card isn’t uniformly square on the outside (some edges are rounded). On the top we have square corners, on the bottom round corners. The bottom part of the card starts off with an unsupported bridge, then slowly increasing card thickness (if you hold the card up against a light, you can see how translucent the card is at which thickness). Along the bottom edge ther is an overhang test, another thickness test with more gradients and a wall thickness test.
There are a variety of simpler and more complex cards out there, pick whatever is useful for you and what you print (or make your own).
FrontBack
Storage
Some people put their cards on zip ties or rings, some just collect them loosely. I like to put they cards in trays and sort by filament type and color. Trays come in all sorts and sizes, but should be high enough to keep the cards from falling out, and low enough to easily remove individual cards.
Where to get
Thingiverse has plenty of options if you search for “filament card”. I personally prefer customizable objects that I can tweak with OpenSCAD to my liking. I’d suggest saving the STL file and generating the gcode files once and using the same files for all filaments, since slicer software updates and changes over time, and you want to compare filaments and not slicer results. I have two files, for 0.4mm, and 0.6mm nozzles (since some filaments require a larger nozzle).
I can highly recommend the following card and card tray (these are the ones used in the pictures above):
It’s the time of year where I usually update “stuff”. Mostly firmware for network switches, routers, wifi controller, access points, and gaming consoles I don’t use too often. Some software updates for services I don’t boot up regularly, refreshing docker files. Basically a bit of digital house cleaning that isn’t urgent and I don’t get around to doing during the year.
Odd other things I got done the last 2 weeks:
Changed spamassassin to store it’s bayes database into MySQL so it’s backed up with the rest of the mail server config. Also switched over to the txrep plugin instead of (auto)whitelist.
Proxmox updates at home and on this server. I’m still quite happy with Proxmox for what I use it for.
Added a workflow to create a static version of this website on a separate VM, and added haproxy config to automatically switch over to the static version if the “live” version isn’t available. I’ve been planning on going 100% static content for a while (and then playing around with CDNs and ), but there is a lot of posts here I’d like to migrate over, and there are a few other small things I have to test first (mostly templating and search).
Reworked how outgoing mail is delivered. Likely because I have very low outgoing mail volume, I occasionally end up on Microsofts blocklist for no reason, but Microsoft provides an API to check the status of your mail servers (script checks if the main IP is blocked. if so, it switches outgoing mail temporarily to my backup server and sends me an alert so I can raise a ticket witrh Microsoft).
Tools for work (practicing optimizing Bash scripts to interact with APIs, cleaner code, less forking, more built-ins, storing/parsing and displaying JSON data)
I know it’s been quite quiet here lately. At work I had changed to a less technical role, and at home kids kept me busy so not a lot of free time for hobbies. Covid surely didn’t help with mandatory homeschooling happening a large chunk of last year.
Let’s see if I can post here more often in 2022. Will probably start to cover more topics like 3D printing and VR.
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