Preparing for Dunjon of Death III-A :: The Tiles

VISIT Part II

Overview

This is going to be a humongous effort. I'm building out 24 tiles. This will not include the doors, which I constructed last time. And it will not include the various items of dungeon obstacles and overlays such as rockfalls, stair wells, fire-pits, barracks, and other sundries.

The General Plan

Here's what I have planned.

1. Building a tool. This is 3-inches wide by about 8 inches long.
2. Mark the tiles for correct sizing of corridors.
3. Start with the simpler tiles which have no rooms.
4. Mark the locations where the room entrances should exist.
5. Place corridor floors with corkwood from a cheap roll with adhesive backing.
6. Place white-foam corners.
7. Place pink-foam walls.
8. Continue for all tiles, slowly adding the more complex tiles which have numerous rooms, corners, and wall sections

Marking Tiles

Here's me working through my 20 tiles.

My 3-inch by 8-inch tool. Note that I have drawn a center-line.

I find the center of my tiles. I do this because my tiles are not exactly 12-inches on each dimension; they are about 12.5 inches. This technique should work for all sizes of square-shaped tiles.

I use a T-square ruler to ensure that my edges are marked with a center line.

Center lines have been added to each edge.

With my handy tool, I match the center lines together at the tile edges and I draw lines at the outside of the tool. This will result in mark-up which is 3-inches wide.

This is the result of the mark up with the tool. This basic X pattern is the foundation for all tiles.

All of my tiles are now marked. I've also added my tile identifiers so that I can remember which tile design I'll be crafting for it. This matches my asset manifest here.

Roll of adhesive corkboard for shelf lining makes things quicker. A bit crumbly. This covered 17 of my 19 tiles.

Adding felt skid bumpers to the bottoms of each tile to give it some life and to protect any dining room tables (like mine) which I may encounter.

The bumpers are placed near each tile's corners.

This is the standard lift now; left is no bumper and the right is with a bumper. 

Making Tiles

Now comes the hard part. This is labor-intensive work because I need to measure and cut. Though I attempted to make everything standard in size, there will be variations in how I assembled the parts. I may also (very likely) want to introduce variations as I build.

I start with the E1 tile because it is the simplest which includes a room; that nub at the right in the picture. The white foam I am using for corners.

You can see where I marked up the board with identifiers. These identifiers I also used on the pink foam that I intend to cut. The #1, #2, and #3 are the full-thickness pink foam. The A, B, C are my half-thickness pink foam.

Everything is now cut. I didn't glue the walls and corners down yet, but I wanted to see how things look. The B wall at the right of the room is too thin and so I'll adjust it later.

Here's what the walls and the door connector look like with the main corridor wall removed. Looks pretty good. I intend to make some of the longer walls, such as this one, removable; I'll use magnets at their bases to hold them into place.

Here's that wall back into place at the right. The image is from the entry connector into the E1 tile. There's plenty of room in the corridor for two 30MM bases. At 3-inches (7.5MM) the corridors give me ample room to add terrain such as rockfalls and fountains, etc.

I fixed the B wall in the room by adding another half-width pink foam wall. You may notice that the C wall is plain; I hot-glued the C and A walls backwards and so my texture details are on the wrong side! Oops.

Magnetizing

So here's what I am currently doing with the magnetization of the longer corridor wall; I'm using some small magnets and 1-inch washers. The magnets and washers need to be small because its cheaper and its low-profile. 

There's going to be 3 to 4 used on each tile. So 24 tiles x 4 = about 100 magnets are required.

Magnets and washers.

This is the plan. 3 magnets and 3 washers.

I label the base of the wall with the tile identifier (E1) so that I can match them up later. I cut our sinks for the washers so that the wall will have a lower profile when it sits upon the magnets.

Here's the washers in hot-glued into position.

The inside look of the wall sitting upon the magnets. Looks flush well enough. The corner has a very small but acceptable gap.

This is the external side of the corridor and wall. The area in white will be decorated later with boulders and other bits to make it look more thematic and to disguise these joins.

Compositions

I've completed the assembly of 8 tiles at this point. That's 5 regular tiles, a Start tile (where the explorers begin), and two different Exit tiles (destinations). I have 24 total tiles; so I'm a third completed.

Things are looking nice so far! Each tile has one wall attached via magnets. That single room on the X1 tile beneath the topmost tile (E0) should have had some flooring added using corkboard. I'll add something later. 

To be continued ...

I've got a lot of gluing and cutting and gluing and painting to do. My living room will be a mess! I will provide an update once I get enough samples completed.