3DThursday Guest Curator Zheng3 and Seej by Zheng3 #3DxGames #3DThursday #3DPrinting
Last week, I reached out to the talented Zheng3, creator of the popular 3D printed tabletop warfare game Seej. I had enjoyed his 3Dx2013 Year in Review post from back in December, and I wanted to get more of his thoughts about projects created at the intersection of 3D printing and games for me to share for #3DThursday!
It’s nice to get away from Zheng3.com for a bit, where the air reeks of yak milk and dwarf sweat, and half-baked concepts bubble unattended in their loaf pans.
Clearly, 3D printing is changing the way we spend our leisure time. Hobbyist-level printing hasn’t quite filtered down to every Muggle yet, but we’re definitely closer to a bot in every garage than we were in 2010.
Someday, in The Future, monstrous, dwelling-sized printers will be relatively common and the LARPing revolution will be fueled by on-demand printed fortifications and cheap mead. Today, desktop-scale dominates the hobby 3d printing market, and so tabletop and boardgames seem to be the main beneficiaries of the technology.
So! With my daily allotment of ado having been duly furthered, enjoy Lao Zheng’s picks for interesting projects at the intersection of games and 3d printing.
Before we get started with selections for the day, I wanted to take a moment to highlight Seej for those who haven’t seen it before:
Seej is a game with four core rules:
1. Topple your opponent’s flags to win.
2. Players must agree on the models used in the battle.
3. Keep it friendly.
4. Show no mercy.
Seej is an Open Source tabletop wargame designed to advance the state of 3D printing through competition and player-directed evolution. Players print their own armaments and fortifications for use in battle. If you can print it, it’s legal to use in the game.
The rules to Seej are open source and infinitely expandable. Seej is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.
At a minimum, you’ll need to download and print the Seej 2013 starter set. It contains flags, catapults, and two kinds of bloxen. (You can still download the original starter set for archaeological purposes.)
Print two sets, find an opponent, and have fun storming the castle!
There’s a wide assortment of additional Seej engines, bloxen, and accessories in The Forge….
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Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
