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## Catan
I played a lot of catan over quarantine, and have always loved the game and its design! After a year of zoom playing on a really nice website, going back to the physical board game was both super great and annoying. On one hand, it was really nice to have the tactile board pieces, robber to place, cards to pickup, etc. On the other hand, the pieces always moved around and got shuffled, roads always fell to the side, searching for resource numbers was harder, etc. I wanted to combine both aspects of the board game and the online game - the ease and convenience of the latter, and the tradition and ~vibes of the former.
The general idea was an electronic base that randomizes resource numbers and resource placements. Encasing the electronics is a plywood structure that also has grooves to keep the hexagonal resource pieces in place. I wanted to resin-cast all of the hexagonal game pieces, and create 3d art within each resin piece. The art would mimic the resource - a stack of bricks for the brick resource, a mini-forest for the wood resource, etc.
<figure><img src="../images/full/00/00_resin_art.png" width="500"/>
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The plywood structure addresses the issue of the moving pieces, holding everything in place. The electronics (brain and accompanying lights) will (more truly) randomize the resource placements and resource numbers. I'd also want the electronics to light up the appropriate resources when a specific number is rolled on the die (either after someone manually inputs what number got rolled, or through a computer-vision esque setup where the computer is able to count how many dots were rolled.)
<figure><img src="../images/full/00/00_side_view.jpg" width="500"/>
</figure>
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