Markus HoferWorking on some designs for custom poker chips to use in board games (looking at you, 1830 Railroads and Robber Barons).
Found a place that can print custom designs onto high-quality ceramic chips. Just toying around with design ideas at this point, but I definitely don't want any casino-like names and logos on them and I don't want dollar-signs.
What do you think?
For context: In 18XX games, it's important to see who has how much money (players as well as railroad companies). The included paper money just sits in a stack and tells you nothing, but if you use stacks of poker chips instead it's suddenly quick and easy to keep an overview of all the financials.
Even more context (maybe more than you care about 😉)
There's several types of poker chips:
1. Plastic - light und no fun in any way.
2. Plastic + metal slug - much better weight.
3. Clay Composite ("China clay") - plastic/resin with bits of clay mixed in. Feel good, less slippery.
4. Clay - (+ chalk + sand + ??? for strength). Top tier.
All these are injection molded with stickers on top.
5. Ceramic - (actually plastic + ceramic) good weight, good feel, can be printed on!
BoneHouseWasps🔶🇬🇧🇪🇺@col000r I went through this process a few years ago as I wanted a custom set for home games.
I went for Nexgen pro classic chips. 9gm, clay composite, no metal insert. You can order them without labels in a good variety of colours. Then I did custom labels.
This offered the best ratio of feel, weight, customisation and cost for me and are pretty comparable to casino chips, imo.
Custom printed ceramics are the dream. We don't play for high enough stakes to make it possible for me though.
@BonehouseWasps ah yes, big easy to read numbers! Ceramic is attractive because it can be printed all around, but it's certainly not cheap. The company I've talked to also does ceramics with laminated inlays, so essentially ceramic chips that look like classic clay chips. I've order a range of samples, will have to see how they all feel...
Niall O'Callaghan@col000r the Iron Clays from Roxley Games are a nice set for games without being too casino-ey, though I have yet to play any 18xx.
Put some more work into my custom poker chip designs! They're easier to distinguish by color and look more uniform. Not sure about the black on the 20s and the 1 might be too different. Or maybe all the other ones are now too similar? What do you think?
Custom poker chip design progress:
The 1 is better, but too different.
5 is worse
500 is much better.
I think I need to unify further. Stay tuned...
Custom poker chip design journey continues: Went off on a tangent and made everything simpler and more uniform...
Added a bit of a swirly zebra-pattern to the colored ring. Gives it a bit of personality. ...in a Zebra-on-drugs kind of way? I don't know...
Custom Poker Chip design for coders. 8-bit range with a bit more of a SciFi feel and a splash of paint.
Denominations quadruple: 1, 4, 16, 64, 256.
What do you think?
One more design. Back to the roots with a bit of a planetary surface thing going on
Tweaked a few things. Quite happy with how they look in stacks...
Also got a bunch of samples now and am happy to reveal the results of the which-stack-slides-of-the-macbook-last-as-I-keep-increasing-the-angle test.
Cheap plastic loses big, followed by clay with metal slug, followed by cheap ceramic before casino-quality ceramic without and with inlay. Congrats.
This is important because you want to be able to grab and move stacks without them falling apart all over the place.
With that being said - even the cheapest ones here have good weight and a nice enough (if somewhat plastic-y) sound. Just grip them a little harder and don't bump into them too much and they'd do.
I don't have any actual real clay chips to test, but I assume their chalky surfaces would probably be even better than the high quality ceramic that almost slides off as the entire stack...
Grayson@col000r sticker based or some other way of doing the denominations?
@grayson so far I'm thinking about having custom ceramic poker chips printed...
@col000r Neato. Through who? (sorry if it was posted and I missed it)
@grayson not sure yet. I'm currently waiting for some samples to be delivered from https://www.jackspoker.com.au/ and I talked to a few suppliers on Alibaba.
aeva@col000r the more I look at it the more it feels weird that it's only every other power of 2. maybe this set just wants a single chip type that has a 1 on the heads side and 0 on the tails side
@aeva otherwise it's too many different kinds to keep track of. I was reading an article about which denominations to use for 18XX games and the guy talked about having roughly x4 between each denomination, which totally doesn't work out for anyone with even a mild case of OCD: 1, 5, 20/25, 100, 500. So I made one where it's actually x4. Fixed!
Now we just have to adjust the rules of every boardgame ever...
Now we just have to adjust the rules of every boardgame ever...
Peter Drake HAS MOVED@peterdrake @aeva That's really interesting. What was the context? Amounts you use the most in everyday life? Because ternary isn't too far off from binary and you would you get pretty long numbers quickly: 64 would already be 2101, decimal 2000 would be 2202002.
@col000r oh! I thought they were in base 2 because computer numbers, but actually it's base 4? maybe it would be clearer to label them in base 4 then: 1, 10, 20, 30, 100... ok maybe not
@aeva oh, I misunderstood. You mean only a single type and you have to construct your current amount of money from 1s and 0s in binary? That would certainly make for interesting games... I call your 00101011 and raise you 01011100!
@col000r noice!
@col000r These are looking nice. Kind of a cyberpunk feel to them.
Would love to see my home game players use them. Some code for a living so I suspect would have no problem with "raise you 448". I personally would struggle but it would be very fun!
How are you recndering these mockups - are you using a template or have you built them in Blender or similar?
@BonehouseWasps right? I feel inspired to make some sort of hacker game about file-sizes now... But I guess it would also be easy enough to put "normal" denominations on them.
I'm using Modo. Basically just a bunch of discs with some textures...
@col000r
I've not not used Modo. Nor any 3D software for years. They look great, though.
I've not not used Modo. Nor any 3D software for years. They look great, though.
@BonehouseWasps Thanks! I've been using Modo for about 20 years. Really like the polygon modeling workflow. But I'm more and more tempted to give Blender and all its shiny tools a shot...
[screaming moth]@col000r okay hear me out: roman numbering system. An I chip stacked under a V chip makes 4, stacked on top of a V chip it makes a 6
@col000r I like it :D
ChrisByProxy@col000r Love the strong contrast. Functionally, I could use these at the gaming table and my low-vision and colour blind friends can see the values from across the table, yet they haven’t lost their cosmetic appeal.
cetan@col000r I like the added pattern because it makes it feel more personalized.
Frankie Flowers has moved@col000r NICE! Now we're talking 😉
@col000r oh dang, the white center disc really helps make them feel more coherent. Yellow is still a little odd for being white/mustard/yellow instead of white/yellow/white or white/mustard/white, but it looks a lot more coherent to the rest of the set now. I'd either stick to the white/color scheme (the mustard color matches the blue and purple chips much better than the yellow would) or switch them all to white/muted/accent.
@col000r I can't emphasize enough though how much of an improvement this is though. The clarity of the design both makes them more readable but also makes them more elegant. I'd probably avoid introducing flourishes, or at least limit such things to the outer rings and keep it subtle.
@aeva yeah, that's what I'm experimenting with now. Hard to add something without taking away from the clarity. As much as I liked the initial intricate stuff...
Iain Cheyne@col000r I think @jcl will have opinions. https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/482695/poker-chip-recommendations
Poker chip recommendations | BGG
I'm looking to build two more poker-chip sets for 18xx games, one nice 300 chip-set, and an economical 1,000 chip-set. My primary criteria are in descending order: - At least 5 colours (white, red, green, black, blue or other distinct fifth colour) - Inter-chip friction important (
@col000r they look neat. if you dropped the saturation a touch on the 20 it might fit in a little more?
@aeva @col000r honestly the 20 is my favorite of the bunch. Great progress overall. I would drop the 10, as it's the only chip without quadrupling the former's chip value and I also feel the contrast of white font and lilac background is not great. Not a fan of the pattern on the chips but that's just personal and others might like it. Maybe stick to one pattern for all chips to make them less "noisy" and more cohesive? In case you don't know it, imho https://www.tckroleplaying.com/bg/18xx/chips is a great read.
@frankie_flowers @aeva yeah, maybe the rest needs more contrast instead of less contrast for the 20!
@aeva interesting idea! will go tweak some sliders...
Dr Jess Birch@col000r The 500 might be worth hue-shifting. Looks like you're not using anything remotely green currently. Feels a bit too close to "ten but black rather than white highlights" right now due to the small hue distance from pastel blue to purple.
@shivoa good point! I'm not quite happy with the 500 anyway, will give it another do-over!
@col000r I'm going to ask a dumb question: is the image here your design work or is that just a sample image from where you are ordering them from?
@cetan that's my design. WIP
@col000r they look really good. From a personal standpoint my only comment would be that the 500 and the 100 look a little too close to one another on edge. If I was looking across the table at a stack of chips it wouldn't be that clear visually if it was 500 or 100. But that could be easily solved with a different color.
Dunks@col000r That looks really nice! Super clear. Really like the design. May I ask where you are ordering from as this has suddenly given me ideas for an upcoming group weekend away 😄
@dunknicoll Sure, I've ordered a bunch of samples from https://www.jackspoker.com.au/, I've got samples from LongPack here already (the boardgame manufacturer). And I might just get the samples pack from https://pokershop.com.au/ as well just to have a good range of things to look at. I also had a browse on Alibaba, but for that to make sense, I'd have to order a whole lot more than I personally need...
@col000r Thanks!
@col000r wow, I really like the render, looks super professional. Regarding the chips themselves, even though I appreciate the aesthetics, I came to value poppy colors for ease of differentiation. I also second big readable numbers. IMHO "the bank" are great 18xx chips and feel compared to Iron clays even better. If only there were 20s instead of 25s.
@frankie_flowers hay, thanks a lot! Yeah, working on putting more focus on the colors!
I've looked at the Apache Bank ones, but shipping to NZ would just about double the price...
I've looked at the Apache Bank ones, but shipping to NZ would just about double the price...
@col000r yeah, that's a bummer. Luckily there's an importer in Austria, so I could get them with reasonable shipping in Germany, but the price itself for something I rarely get to use live is just too high for me, especially since I got a 300 set for like 10€ on eBay. I like your dedication! 😁
@frankie_flowers yeah, it looks like this can be an expensive rabbit hole to fall into... Unfortunately our local ebay-alternative doesn't come up with much at the moment. But will keep my eyes open 👀