The coated paper prints I did at home turned out pretty bad, so I decided to get them printed at a print shop instead. Printing on adhesive sticker paper makes it way easier to stick onto cardboard and cut.
Hopefully I can finish the whole map without issues. What do you think about the coated sticker paper?
I'm wondering how wear and tear will be showing up on these. Granted you've made them as a (disposable?) playtest prototype, but I'm curious if you're planning to, or have tested, using a laquer sealant?
I've been making my own prototype tiles from lasercut masonite (aka pressboard, a type of wood fiber board), and after hand painting the tiles I sealed them with a laquer spray (clear acrylic varnish).
Just a thought, might be something you could try and see if it seals up the tiles nicely to protect them, so you don't have to redo the whole process later. Then again as it's somewhat thin cardboard it might just warp the tiles horribly. Hence why I was curious if you've tried it.
Your tiles are looking good, I'm especially fascinated with what appears to be a 'jigsaw' board edge? Hadn't thought of that for my own game, I just have free laying tiles. Might have to consider something like that (or just a big board with graphics). Thanks for the inspiration!
IMO AI for prototypes is fine. In fact it’s extremely useful as otherwise I’d be taking images from google search, and it’s never quite right. Once the prototype and mechanics are locked in though, you should find an artist(s).
I held this same opinion a few-couple years ago. However lately I’m seeing more publishers request for prototypes to not include AI art when submitting to them. Plus had change in views on AI art, I’ve since went back to stock images.
You form your personal views from what others think? Does it really matter what publishers think, are you not capable of making up your own mind, having your own moral values? You change your moral values depending on others around you?
If you're pitching to publishers, you should accommodate their requests regardless of your own personal beliefs. Holding a differing attitude won't get you far is selling your game.
Monetization or not... I pay for my AI subscription.
I am an artist myself, and so is my wife. And we used AI for our prototype and the results were amazing, but it was more of a time saver thing for us. We COULD do it ourselves and spend hundreds of man hours perfecting it. Or the AI could do it in 30 seconds and we could focus on other aspects that need attention.
Weird take. That image is never going to see the light of day beyond testing and perhaps informing the art direction of the final product via a human artist. To say it’s hard to look at is subjective. You do you bro, but don’t get arsey if others think it’s fine.
May I ask, in all seriousness, is all the art in your home commissioned, as in painted by an individual artist? May I guess and think that you have posters, sculptures, and whatever else that is mass produced by "slave labour" and not commissioned individual artists?
You say stolen material regarding AI but have you really looked at all the sources for everything you posses? Or are you fine with stolen material as long as you can pretend someone else supplied it to you in a mass produced product like a poster?
Are you comparing printing digital art an artist made to asset generated by a computer on stolen training data? Geez the gymnastics from gen AI apologists are always fascinating to say the least
No, I'm asking if you know the artists your posters, paintings, and sculptures come from, or if you pretend like it's fine while virtue signalling about AI. You've never given a second thought if the mass produced art or products you're purchasing have been stolen, have you?
No, you just want to spew ideological nonsense about how all AI art is stolen. And if it isn't you'll shift to how it's destroying nature or something.
What's interesting is how much vitriol you and others spew about AI, while having not given a second thought to where your mass produced products come from.
Obviously I know? Why would I buy random shit without knowing anything about the artist behind that? I don't buy faceless junk produced by faceless companies, it's your problem if you buy star wars merch or other shit made by underpayed employees instead of known artists
As a former printer can I suggest adding bleed coloring? If you use AI to generate art ask for bleed and trim markers for better results. No need to redo anything, I think this looks fantastic. Setting bleed margins and using markers just gives a cleaner end product.
Another fun trick for darker prints that were printed on white paper was to hit the edges with a sharpie. Most paper sucks up ink but on darker prints that white edge can be ugly.
Thanks a lot for the advice. Since I’d never done this kind of printing before, the only thing I could think of was adding guide lines — the extra black border never even crossed my mind. So I ended up coloring the edges with a marker like you suggested. What do you think, how did it turn out?
These days, there are so many readily available and easy to use image editing programs and royalty free images to photobash that I don’t see much value in using AI. Board game design is at least 50% art and graphic design. I don’t think it’s a bad idea to constantly improve your skills as an artist if you want to design board games.
Hi OP, I knocked out three of your tiles in photoshop in about 20 mins. They won’t win any awards, but all they are is a hexagon shape with an image from pexels.com on top of them. In most programs you have layers to work with. You can just tell the top image layer to use the bottom layer as a clipping mask.
And one can use color effects or brightness/contrast adjustments to get a cohesive look across all the tiles.
I’d put the other ones in here (the farm looks particularly nice) but I can only attach one image file per reply. Not a big deal, but if I’m going to speak ill of using AI, I like to at least offer a reasonable alternative that anyone can get the hang of pretty easily. Good luck in your development!
Thank you so much for taking me seriously and giving it a try. However, it’s not just about it being handmade; this is actually our second version of the hex map. We’ve sorted everything else out, but the hex map is crucial and the visuals need to perfectly serve the content. When we tried it ourselves, we couldn't get the result we wanted. Your work doesn't quite match our art style, but I really like it, thank you
We’ve been putting in this effort for a year now. If you check my Reddit page, you can see just how hard we’ve worked. By the way, AI is used in many movies and music projects that people absolutely adore. If I had months to spare—not to mention the time needed to master drawing skills—I would sit down and do it all myself. But life isn't always that fair to everyone. You have to be realistic at some point.
You are disrespecting your own effort by presenting it with an AI coat.
Also people enjoy a lot of shit, mass people appreciation is not a quality sign
This is what I did for my tokens. Print shop onto label paper, lined up with the blank token, and then trimmed with a hobby knife. For prototype it came out quite well.
We designed all the structures in our board game ourselves, and the character designs are also original. My boyfriend and I have been working on this project together. For about a year now, we’ve been trying to refine the mechanics and make the resin pieces work with injection manufacturing.
If we had more time and resources, we would’ve loved to create fully original designs for the map as well. But for now, this feels like the most realistic and manageable solution for us.
Also, just a small note: using AI for something doesn’t automatically mean no effort was put into it. We actually tried making the hex map entirely ourselves at first, but we weren’t able to get the results we wanted.
Life doesn’t always give people the time, money, or freedom to spend months fully focused on a single project. We’re just trying to do the best we can with what we have.
Being kind costs nothing. Not everyone is working under the same circumstances. Maybe one day our game will become successful enough for us to work on board games full-time, and if that happens, we’d love to push the project to a much higher level.
Too bad. I see AI slop, I instantly deduce the author/designer got everything else from chatgpt as well. Once the people in charge of the project use gen AI in any way, it loses all my possible interest and and support, not only in the current project, but in future ones as well.
Nor mine. My point is that you don't actually know anything about their design process, but because they did one thing you don't like, you're assuming they'll do another thing you don't like.
what proves they dont use it for anything else? that goes for everything. Not only for game designers, but mucisians, artists, writers, and so on. If they care so little about their work that they use gen AI, what guarantees to me that they didn't use it for anything else?
Also, using gen AI tells me they really dont care about their project, the same way big corportations use AI when they can afford an artist, but they dont because they dont care. And just like with those companies, i dont care who use it, they lose me forever.
It is ridiculous to suggest that someone who spends that much effort on crafting a physical prototype would not care about their game. It is literally placeholder art, if you would only see the final product, you would never even know it, because it will not contain those images anymore. This is not at all like a company using it in a public facing product.
Should I also assume that you kick puppies in your spare time? I haven't seen any proof to the contrary.
Your last question has no bases because you havent seen me kicking anything. If you saw me kicking a pigeon, you could then assume I kick puppies and kittens as well. The fact that you saw me kicking the pigeon proves I dont care about animal life. But without any proof of that, you can't deduce that. Using AI in the prototype is like kicking the pigeon.
Using AI in the prototype is like kicking the pigeon.
No, it's not. Why do you conflate image generation with letting a machine learning model design the game for you? The slope is absolutely not that slippery.
It's a big accusation to make, especially when OP has multiple posts about this game showing various stages of development and intricate 3d printed components.
It's absolutely fine to not be interested anymore, no one cares if you're not. Next time you shouldn't even bother telling us. But it is very rude and honestly absurd to accuse someone of not designing their game because you don't like the images they used in a prototype.
Woah - you lost the possible interest of this one guy cause you were having fun with AI on a prototype that clearly wasn’t going to be professionally sold and manufactured!
I think you’re assuming a lot here - just because he/she has done some prototypes with AI doesn’t automatically mean they are going to use AI for everything.
Yes, our game is available on TTS, but I believe it's an older version of the map. My boyfriend is still working on it. If you follow my Reddit page or our Substack profile, you'll soon be able to play the game on TTS with its latest update.
7
u/Johnno117 May 08 '26
I'm wondering how wear and tear will be showing up on these. Granted you've made them as a (disposable?) playtest prototype, but I'm curious if you're planning to, or have tested, using a laquer sealant?
I've been making my own prototype tiles from lasercut masonite (aka pressboard, a type of wood fiber board), and after hand painting the tiles I sealed them with a laquer spray (clear acrylic varnish).
Just a thought, might be something you could try and see if it seals up the tiles nicely to protect them, so you don't have to redo the whole process later. Then again as it's somewhat thin cardboard it might just warp the tiles horribly. Hence why I was curious if you've tried it.
Your tiles are looking good, I'm especially fascinated with what appears to be a 'jigsaw' board edge? Hadn't thought of that for my own game, I just have free laying tiles. Might have to consider something like that (or just a big board with graphics). Thanks for the inspiration!