TagDaze

Hehe. I've got a thread going on on the Boardgamegeek forums though. > Here ya go. < I haven't had much time to work on it, and I'm a bit stuck on the art. I found an artist for the Treachery cards, but he disappeared. :(

What DID Lynch get right? Nothing much, that's for sure. Love: The visual style. The costumes and backgrounds were excellent. It looked very nice and feudal, just the way Dune should. Patrick Stewart. You had to see that one coming. The unintentional hilarity. Hate: The ridiculous portrayal of the Baron. The misrepresentation about the Paul's role. The main character, for gods sake. The usual weirding modules, raining, blah blah blah. But those practically go without saying. The incoherent dreaming sequences. The complete lack of explanation why people were actually doing something. The utter confusion all across the board.

I like the sci-fi feel it has, but it looks too much like a lava planet in my opinion. The rocks also aren't defined enough, and those are obviously a very important part of the game.

Thanks, SandChigger. That clears up a whole lot. Yeah, as you can see in this thread I've decided not to include the infinity symbol as I'm an FH purist. KJA, BH and their fanboys can kiss my grits.

I like how some Lynch fans say it's good on its own and others say it's only good if you know the novels because else it's confusing. I think this means that uninitiated people were confused yet somehow intrigued, got into Dune, and finally understood what the hell the movie was about. Since they've been measuring the book by the movie all this time, the horrid inconsistencies that make the Lynch movie such an abomination are already forgiven by them before it even becomes an annoyance. Personally, I enjoy the miniseries a lot more. It pulled a few tricks on making Paul look different than he really is (Why did Paul know about the spitting custom, and Duncan did not? Why did he give that speech about tax-deductible expenses instead of Gurney?), but that's really minor compared to what they pulled back in '84 with the character for Baron Harkonnen and the ever-so-notorious "weirding modules".

Designing the Spice cards: The spice cards were quite a hassle, but that's because of the print. I'll talk more about that later on in this post. The design was actually very, very easy, mostly because it was so minimal. "But Dan," you might ask. "Why so simple? Why spend hours upon hours on designing the board and putting so little effort in the spice card?" For two reasons, my geeky friend. I will outline the first one right now and talk about the second one later. First of all, though I like eye candy as much as the next Fantasy Flight Games artist, the spice card is not in play for long. Think about it. How long do you look at the spice card? You draw, place spice, discard. All in all you would only look at a card for what, half a minute? To make this time even shorter I didn't just do a bit of text; instead I took the map of Dune and "lifted" the territory in question. Habbanya Ridge, in this case. I've colored the territories according to type, so you can easily see what is sand, what is rock, and what is a stronghold. This allows for easy navigating, since you would, in this example, look for the territory next to that one very lonely and isolated stronghold, no matter what side of the board you are on. Some would want to make it easier on themselves by turning the card, and they could tell when it would line up with the board since Carthag and Arrakeen are the two dark spots that are close together, both on the card and on the board. The goal was to make the card clear, easy, and especially quick to use. There's another side to the card though, one you would be looking at most of the time. The back. I could have just ripped a picture of Mars or whatever from Google Image Search, but where's the fun in that, right? Instead, I started working in Photoshop to create a little scene of Dune from space. I used that as the main image, and threw a semi-opaque black layer over it. Then, inspired by some Dune covers, I cut out a rectangle so you could see the original image. This had the effect you see above. Mostly darkened, except that one rectangle. Last job was just sticking the word "SPICE" in there, and voila, the back was done. It looked sufficiently modern and stylish, I gathered. And this is where my second reason for the simple cards came in: the difficulties in printing. I bought a brand new shiny Canon printer. It's awesome, it eats your printer for lunch and my ePeen has grown by at least 7 inches just because I possess it. I also bought photopaper, because if I print cards, they need to have those gorgeous deep colors. I printed. Two problems: 1. Photopaper attracts dust and fingerprints even faster than my candy brings all the boys to the yard. 2. Photopaper isn't very strong and just doesn't feel right. So I started looking for alternatives. Glossy cardboard? Nah. Still has the dust/fingerprint problem. Laminating? No, I don't want those ugly transparent edges around them. For long I have pondered what to do, until I ran into something so simple I totally missed it. SELF-ADHESIVE PLASTIC. Joy filled me every in nook and cranny, even in the places I didn't know I had 'em. I bought a paper cutter and started printing. I screwed up quite a lot of paper, because the paper would slip away and the blade in the paper cutter would go right through some other cards, but I managed to do it in the end. Since I consistently failed to put the plastic tidy over three rows of cards, I started by cutting up the print into a single row and a double row of cards. I then took the self-adhesive plastic and peeled a small edge of the paper cover off the plastic, exposing its glued part. I stuck the plastic on the desk, and put the cards next to it. Then, bit by bit, I would pull the plastic off of its cover and carefully stick it on the cards, making sure there were no bubbles. We can't have bumps and creases on cards. Carefully I peeled the plastic off of the table taking the cards up with it, obviously. That plastic sticks to everything, so I needed to watch myself every move, or it would stick to the back of the cards. If I would try and peel it off, it would take the top layer of the card with it, along with the ink, thus ruining the card. So I cut off the excess plastic, and did the exact same thing, except now on the other side. Then I cut all cards individually. Now plastic is quite slippery, so I messed up some cards. So I had to print, cover it in plastic and cut it up AGAIN. But in the end I got some nice cards. When I applied the plastic, the room was quite hot. This is because I got a protip from someone: When it's warm, plastic expands slightly. When it's cold, it contracts. So to get that extra tight look and feel I needed it to be warm, and then cool it. Rapidly. Now I have an awesome machine that cools down things you put in it. It is called the refrigerator. The cards came out with a perfect feeling to the fingers, a nice gloss... everything I wanted, really. And it's easy to clean too! Next time: A testprint and shopping for prefab materials. To be continued...

Can't you tweak the civilian side to become the third side? Jonwil is pretty busy with APB and some other projects obviously, but Saberhawk might have some time on his hands, if you think you are man enough for him.

[crosspost from BGG.com's Dune '79 forums] Been lurking, been watching, been reading, been browsing. I came to the conclusion I could do a Dune board myself. From scratch. And I mean everything, the art, the materials, I'm gonna make this production mine. So being an absolute Dune geek to the point of practically being a Dune wikipedia (mentioning the Sardaukar will get you three paragraphs of text and that's the short explanation), I had the Dune game imported from the US. I immediately fell in love with the game mechanics and, as I was a fan of the novels to begin with, I wanted to marry it. Unfortunately, it wasn't all that purdy. Thus my project, dubbed Dune21, was born. Now I have to admit that this thing has been in production for a while. The board has been remade a buttload of times, because I either wasn't satisfied, or I found out I made the board on Photoshop's default 70 dpi setting. Silly me. Designing the board: I've been looking around on the geek. There's some awesome stuff on here, don't get me wrong, but they're not mine. I love things that are mine. I decided not to go abstract or make it look like the Honored Matres just got really ticked off (I'm looking at you, Donal), but just do an overview of the planet with a bit of a minimal HUD. I also found that many boards didn't include some changes I found very important in a remake. To show you what I mean I'll post up the board here. I've shrinked it a lot, since it's made to be huge once it's printed. (Read: 95x73 cm or 37x28.5 inches.) Click on the image for larger view. Some things I have changed: - OH Gap renamed to Old Gap. (Duh.) - Renamed the Habbanya Ridge Flat and Habbanya Ridge Sietch to the more canon names Habbanya Ridge and Cave of Birds. - Increased the size of Basin and Sihaya Ridge. There was never enough space. Great hate. - Added tanks for each side. I admit I stole this idea from Fidel's pretty awesome (and rightfully popular) board. I figured, let's get banners on the tanks. Now I'm not a good artist, so I went to DeviantArt and I found this guy who goes by the name of Verreaux. Based on his Atreides Hawk banner I invited him to join me in my conquest for Dune awesomeness. He said yes. (Thanks man, I really appreciate it. I love the designs you did, and I want to carry your manbabies.) Lo and behold, the man delivered. The logos he made are now adorning the banners. I'm proud of this man. Once I release the full package, you can see the art in its full size, but for now this will be the only glimpse you will get from it. :-) I added markers for the strongholds. Green for the orni-strongholds, blue for the others. The effect in the markers was a complete accident, but I liked the marble/glass look, so I figured, what the hey, let's keep it. Next up was designing the spice cards and finding proper material. To be continued... --- Feedback obviously appreciated.

Truth. By the way, I still need an artist who can make me portraits from Dune characters. Doesn't need to be super realistic, as long as it's in one style. Any ideas? DevianTART peeps seem to either suck, don't have time or need to be paid.

Actually, the accusation of cowardice starting the kanly was mentioned in the first novel. That has already been established. Alright peeps, as soon as my artist shows up with the crest for the Fremen, the board is complete. I will then take pictures and put them up in this thread.

I can see that happening. "Windows Starbuck has encountered an error in the Ixian Spacefold Drive. To protect the Operating System, the program has been shut down." A moment later the heighliner would reappear and be incinerated in the center of Alpha Herculis.

Your Dune Encyclopedia PDF is searchable? Oh wow. My designer/artist and I have been discussing this. We decided to go our own direction, but not stray too far from established ideas, as well as use what FH's books tell us. We got this: Note that we came up with the three points before the folding discussion here. Pure coincidence I tells ya! Orange is the side's color in the game, so that's mandatory. To provide good visibility and to represent the spice, we made the logo itself blue. Could you see the Guild, being basically a company, using this, or do you have a different idea of what the Guild logo should look like?

A cartouche... interesting find. Should at least give a hint as to what the symbol should look like. Thanks. I really need thoughts, people. Anything is appreciated.

Hey, While doing research for my Dune 1979 boardgame remake I ran across the Dune Game Mistakes page. It said: "The Guild symbol is a modified infinity symbol, not three circles in a line." Does anyone have a source that says the Guild symbol is, in fact, a modified infinity symbol?

The saga of Dune will remain. As for the Lynch movie, it is saved by its cult status. The film itself was a horrid rape of the original novel and people would be outraged if it would come out now. Dune 2 was the first RTS, and it has retained its status as such. However, just like Dune 2000, it's just not replayable enough to stay popular. I can see Emperor still turning some heads from time to time, but that's it. The novels will live on. The rest will not. Edit: Also, caps lock is cruise control for cool.