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        Arimaa >> General Discussion >> Making a personal Arimaa set
        
(Message started by: zhanrnl on Feb 6^th, 2010, 4:49pm)

Title: Making a personal Arimaa set
Post by zhanrnl on Feb 6^th, 2010, 4:49pm

Hello all,

After being excited for a while by the Z-Man set, I was disappointed by the small size of the pieces and how similar they all look. I'm considering modelling my own pieces in a 3D modelling program to be sent off to a 3D printing service; does anyone know if this is allowed under the Arimaa license? I'd just be using these pieces for personal use and wouldn't be selling them or anything, but I probably would have to pay for the printing.

If this is not allowed, does anyone have any suggestions about how I could make my own Arimaa set?

Title: Re: Making a personal Arimaa set
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 6^th, 2010, 5:02pm

You can see how other people have made their own Arimaa sets and posted pictures:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/137195/arimaa
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/614887/arimaa

Scroll through them all; there have been many nifty attempts. Omar hasn't complained about them, to my knowledge, so I expect you are home free to make your own set.

Title: Re: Making a personal Arimaa set
Post by zhanrnl on Feb 6^th, 2010, 5:31pm

Thanks for the links! I'll post pictures or models back here if anyone's interested.

Title: Re: Making a personal Arimaa set
Post by camelback on Feb 6^th, 2010, 9:59pm

Here is IdahoEv's board and some related discussion

http://arimaa.idahoev.com/boards.html
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/forum/cgi/YaBB.cgi?board=talk;action=display;num=1228166526

Title: Re: Making a personal Arimaa set
Post by Hippo on Feb 7^th, 2010, 3:31am

I like the different size balls.

Title: Re: Making a personal Arimaa set
Post by zhanrnl on Feb 7^th, 2010, 9:14am

I think I saw the thread about black silhouette pieces already, and I've decided I'd like to make 3D pieces instead of tokens.

on 02/07/10 at 03:31:14, Hippo wrote:

I like the different size balls.

What are you referring to?

Title: Re: Making a personal Arimaa set
Post by Eltripas on Feb 7^th, 2010, 5:11pm

on 02/07/10 at 03:31:14, Hippo wrote:

I like the different size balls.

on 02/07/10 at 09:14:49, zhanrnl wrote:

What are you referring to?

LOL

I think he is talking about the "board" in the BGG page with different size balls (maybe marbels?).

Title: Re: Making a personal Arimaa set
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 7^th, 2010, 7:23pm

The different size marbles are perfect for an abstract guy like me. Whenever I learn a new game I try to strip away the theme immediately to get down to the essentials. But there is a problem with going all the way abstract: what do you call the third-largest marble? If you use numbers, is a #1 the biggest and a #6 the smallest, or the reverse? And anyway the piece number can get confused with the move number and square number. Too many numbers. So I guess what I'm saying is that I like the animal theme after all. :)

Title: Re: Making a personal Arimaa set
Post by zhanrnl on Feb 7^th, 2010, 7:53pm

Ah, I didn't see the one with the marbles.

on 02/07/10 at 19:23:23, Fritzlein wrote:

So I guess what I'm saying is that I like the animal theme after all. :)

Also, varyingly sized spheres has already been done by Terrace.

Title: Re: Making a personal Arimaa set
Post by omar on Feb 10^th, 2010, 2:31pm

on 02/06/10 at 16:49:09, zhanrnl wrote:

Hi Zhan,

Sorry to hear that the Z-Man set was not up to your expectations. The size of the set was limited by the standard box sizes used in the games industry. We wanted the board to be one solid piece and not folding or roll-up so the board size had to be something that would fit in a standard size box. The size of the pieces was determined by the size of the board. Hopefully in the near future we'll be making larger sets, but I can't say anything more about that right now.

I also made some prototype sets to make sure the pieces were stable and easily distinguishable. I had many kids who were not familiar with Arimaa try it. The kids had no problem identifying the pieces. I figured if kids could tell them apart adults should be able to also. However, my cousin who is a mom of two kids recently told me that she thought the pieces looked similar, but her kids had no problem. So I don't know what it is; maybe kids just pay more attention to details :-)

There is an Arimaa Public License which explicitly says that it is OK to make your own personal Arimaa sets and many people have done so.

http://arimaa.com/arimaa/license/

However, hiring a 3D printing service to make the set for you would not be considered personally making the set. Although I am willing to give an authorization to do so on a per request basis. So if you really want to do that send me a message.

Title: Re: Making a personal Arimaa set
Post by zhanrnl on Feb 10^th, 2010, 8:06pm

Thanks for the detailed reply Omar! I've looked into 3D printing a set, but even with very small pieces the price would be well over $100 for 32 individual pieces, so I don't really think that's an option for me. So, I don't think I'll be needing a personal authorization from you :)

Title: Re: Making a personal Arimaa set
Post by Victorwss on Mar 5^th, 2010, 6:04pm

A simple 3D arimaa set (though not related to animals) would be:

Rabbits - tetrahedrons
Cats - cubes
Dogs - octahedrons
Horses - dodecahedrons
Camels - icosahedrons
Elephants - spheres

And of course increasing in size. This would be interessant beacuse the larger pieces with more sides is superior to the smaller pieces with less sides (the spheres would be considered as infinite sides polyhedrons).

This is interessing too, because you could get some dices used in RPGs to make the pieces, based in the number of sides.

Title: Re: Making a personal Arimaa set
Post by Fritzlein on Mar 5^th, 2010, 7:12pm

on 03/05/10 at 18:04:23, Victorwss wrote:

Rabbits - tetrahedrons
Cats - cubes
Dogs - octahedrons
Horses - dodecahedrons
Camels - icosahedrons
Elephants - spheres

I like it! This is way better than merely varying size spheres. I also like the Flatland tie-in that the more angular creatures are lower status.

Title: Re: Making a personal Arimaa set
Post by Hippo on Mar 6^th, 2010, 1:19am

I have collected coin arimaa set recently 50 for phants, 20 for camels, 10 for horse 5 for dog 2 for cat 1 for rabbit.
I am in czech crowns, but Euro set could be possible and cheaper.
Starting with cents for rabbits.
Fortunately coin sides are easily distinguishable.

I have not played with it yet, it wouldn't work for chess, but I hope is OK for arimaa when you slide only to neighbouring squares.
... may be capturing would be difficult with coins, but how often do you capture ;)

Title: Re: Making a personal Arimaa set
Post by zhanrnl on Mar 6^th, 2010, 7:54am

Polyhedra for pieces is a pretty cool idea, actually, and very easy to put together/make. You would have to chop off the bottom of the spheres, though.

And a coin set is a neat idea as well. Unfortunately, that wouldn't work so well with US coins since our 5¢, 10¢ and 25¢ coins all look the same :(

Title: Re: Making a personal Arimaa set
Post by clauchau on Mar 8^th, 2010, 7:32am

on 03/05/10 at 18:04:23, Victorwss wrote:

Rabbits - tetrahedrons

As a nice bonus, Rabbits would then get an orientation thanks to their triangular base, which might point towards their respective goal rank, while the other pieces would look less oriented. That fits well with the game rules.

Title: Re: Making a personal Arimaa set
Post by FireBorn on Mar 8^th, 2010, 12:02pm

on 03/05/10 at 18:04:23, Victorwss wrote:

That sounds like a great idea. However, I think they should be on stands, since the horses/camels/elephants would be prone to rolling (and thus would also not give the "feeling" of superior strength). Also, I think the surface areas should be constant, which would make the rounder pieces have more volume.

Title: Re: Making a personal Arimaa set
Post by omar on Mar 11^th, 2010, 7:23am

Another idea for a simple 3D arimaa set.

The pieces would be shaped like mayan pyramids and the number of levels in the pyramid would specify the strength of the piece.

Here's a pyramid with 3 levels:
http://www.caminandosinrumbo.com/guatemala/tikal/piramide1.jpg

The tops are flat rather than coming to a point. The bases are square shaped. But the base of the rabbits could be triangle shaped (I like the idea of giving it a direction), but the top would still be flat.

rabbit - 1 level; triangle base; flat top
cat - 2 levels; square base; flat top
dog - 3 levels; square base; flat top
horse - 4 levels; square base; flat top
camel - 5 levels; square base; flat top
elephant - 6 levels; square base; flat top

This also makes the stronger pieces taller than the weaker ones.

Title: Re: Making a personal Arimaa set
Post by zhanrnl on Mar 11^th, 2010, 7:34am

That's a nice idea, and it seems it would be rather simple to build out of wood, since each layer of the pyramid could be a separate piece of plywood.

Has anyone every suggested/made a Chinese chess xiangqi-style Arimaa set? Xiangqi pieces are all the same-sized wooden disk, but each piece has a different chinese character carved into the top: http://www.geoffreyjames.com/bigstockphoto_Chess_611391.jpg

It'd be pretty easy to make xiangqi pieces with the chinese characters for each animal.

Title: Re: Making a personal Arimaa set
Post by SpeedRazor on Mar 11^th, 2010, 12:16pm

on 03/05/10 at 18:04:23, Victorwss wrote:

Rabbits - tetrahedrons
Cats - cubes
Dogs - octahedrons
Horses - dodecahedrons
Camels - icosahedrons
Elephants - spheres

Maybe an Elephant - rhombic triacontahedron would be more consistent than a sphere:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhombic_triacontahedron. Although it's not an Platonic solid - (it's an Archimedean solid) - you wouldn't have to truncate the bottom to make it stand, unlike the sphere.

For even more consistency, maybe the Horse could be an rhombic dodecahedron? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhombic_dodecahedron

Title: Re: Making a personal Arimaa set
Post by Eltripas on Mar 11^th, 2010, 5:51pm

on 03/11/10 at 07:23:12, omar wrote:

I loved this idea, except for the flat top rabbits, I would like the rabbits without flat top, since the are the ones who goal I would like to see them sharp, other than that it is an amazing idea.

I liked this so much that I think I'm going to do one when I got the time.

Title: Re: Making a personal Arimaa set
Post by omar on Mar 12^th, 2010, 10:24pm

on 03/11/10 at 17:51:30, Eltripas wrote:

Wow, glad to hear you liked that. The flat top was to sort of make it match with the other pieces. Also it would be a bit safer.