Townsmith X 2nd Dynasty - SciFi Set for the Townbuilder
almost 6 years ago – Fri, May 08, 2020 at 09:28:40 AM

Hey everyone,

you have been nagging me, you have been asking, demanding, begging (and all other kinds of verbs) us for SciFi.

The infinite runner up, the "always-bridesmaid", the unloved second child...

SCIFI JOINS THE TOWNBUILDER!

We have partnered up with 2nd Dynasty to bring you SciFi terrain! We will work together with Ben to integrate some of his older sets into the Townbuilder. This is the direction we would love to see the Townbuilder going, a platform for all kinds of creators and terrain being brought together in this modular builder. But without further ado, observe the new set: SciFi Corridors!

AddOn Set I: SciFi Corridors

With some visuals at hand, let's talk about what we have here. This set will feature doors and windows, and different wall options, both full height, and half height. The doors are all modular and usable.

This set will not feature some of the features we unlocked with the stretch goals, like LEDs, slitted windows or curved and angled models.

Now let's talk about pricing. This set WILL NOT BE FREE AND INCLUDED IN THE CAMPAIGN. This might have been the case if SciFi ever made it into first place (2nd place forever R.I.P), instead, this will be an addOn which will be available (like additional airports) in the pledge manager after the campaign closes.

This set will cost you 15€. If you want this set, you can adjust your pledge level now, or later in the pledge manager!

2nd Dynasty also has some amazing 3D printable spaceships that you can check out in their MyMiniFactory shop.

Scatter Pack: SciFi

We will also add a scatter pack that will contain general SciFi items. This will also be available in the pledge manager but we are still working on how many scatter pieces make sense and therefore we don't have a set price for this yet. This will of course be integrated with our Scatter Layer feature!

Disclaimer: These renders are obviously still stuck to their OpenLOCK base, we will transform them to normal scatter.

Disclaimer II: We are not sure which ones will make it in here. Some of the items shown might not appear in the scatter pack, while others will make it that are not shown.

If this collab is well-received (which I am almost certain it will be you 20% SciFi voters let me know), we will look into bringing more SciFi in collab with 2nd Dynasty to you!

While I am writing this I feel the need for a term for users of the Townbuilder or just members of the community. If you have suggestions leave them below!

Ah, and btw, this is STILL NOT the collab I was teasing about earlier, but that one, with the more mainstream Kickstarter will take a while to work out since we have some really cool ideas there that need a bit of work to get realized.

Until then,

Cheers

Christopher, and the Townsmith team.

Final 72 hours - Stretchgoals up to 250k have been revealed (kind of)
almost 6 years ago – Thu, May 07, 2020 at 12:53:45 PM

Hey everyone,

here we are. After 42 crazy days there are only 72 hours left.

I could ramble on about how much all our lives changed thanks to you and how much I love doing this, but honestly... you are here for cool stretch goals.

So yeah we have updated the stretch goal road map once more and as you can see we added a fifth stretch goal set. We didn't want to do it, but if we overshoot to a quarter fucking million euros, we might as well hire a third artist or commission this from a studio or something, we will see.

We did not show all stretch goals as we really like the tease what might linger in there, but people that have followed the earlier stretch goals probably already know that there is a method to our madness and they can guess what the smaller stretch goals in between will be.

Anyway, I wanted to share another bit of information that came up during our talks with 2nd Dynasty. He just casually said this and I was like: Mind blown!

We are the biggest purely digital tabletop Kickstarter, ever.

I was like: "Nah, that can't be. Printable Scenery is a thing, Heroforge, Haggelthorn hollow..." and I bet lots of you guys can think of twice as many as I can. But then I started fact-checking and I could not find a single Kickstarter that was purely digital, so just sold STL files, and had more backers or more funds raised than what we will probably have at the end of the campaign.

Feel free to correct me here, I am only around for like 3 years on Kickstarter and Tom has only been backing Kickstarters for about 2 years now, so we might not know about some, or just missed some while looking.

But I couldn't find a bigger pure STL Kickstarter so until proven otherwise I will stick with that :D

And this just blows my mind. I mean I was aware that the Townbuilder was getting huge. And I was aware that we even got better results than some Kickstarters Tom and I have backed. But this single quote just completely destroyed my brain. We really have some immense potential here to shape the tabletop 3D printing industry, maybe even in a similar fashion as Heroforge did. And I feel incredibly blessed to be not only a part of this but actually lead this small revolution we have going on here.

Cheers, and hold tight while we bring this Kickstarter to the finish line!

Christopher and the Townsmith Team

Stretchgoals up to 200k revealed!
almost 6 years ago – Mon, May 04, 2020 at 02:17:55 AM

Hey everyone,

I just updated the stretch goal roadmap. It now shows the upcoming stretch goals all the way to 200k.

I think this time around I described the stretch goals with a lot of... detail. So just check out the road map if you want to see more info on that :D

We are now entering the final phase of the Kickstarter campaign and everything seems to go faster. We have decided to not pursue the other collabs until after this craziness is over and instead fully focus on finishing up the campaign. 

There are only 4 days left and you all now that the last 2 days are going to be wild once again.

Let's see how far we can push it during the last 48 hours! See you at the starting line of this final sprint.

Cheers,

Christopher and the Townsmith Team

Townsmith is looking for another artist!
almost 6 years ago – Sun, May 03, 2020 at 11:19:23 PM

Hey everyone,

I know I said this many times already but here we go again for all the new backers: Thank you so much for your incredibly support and all the nice comments and questions. We feel very blessed to pilot this project and develop it further with you!

That being said, we never expected this to blow up the way it did. The 1000€ goal was genuine and needed for us to pay rent and keep the server running. Now we are here.

As many of you know, we hired another artist, Ore and we are happy that we did, but the more this Kickstarter grows, the more work will get piled onto Moni and Ore.

Luckily for us, with this growing amount of models to create... our budget also grows almost proportionally with it. We were very much debating about the next stretch goals, especially the 200k and 250k ones that will be revealed soon. Both of them will be, let's say, modeling heavy. But we decided that we wanted to go for them and therefore... WE NEED ANOTHER ARTIST!

And wouldn't it be awesome if we could get that message out to, let's say 4000 thousand people that are interested in tabletop games? So here we are.

This is what we are looking for:

• Somewhat experienced artist (at minimum 1 job or freelance work experience beforehand, or large hobby portfolio)
• 3D artist, plus points if concept art is doable
• Proficiency with Zbrush is not required but will save time and therefore is a plus
• If not based in Germany, we would want to work with a freelancer (tax and working law stuff)
• If based in Germany, plus points if interested in moving to Saarbrücken
• We are looking for "close to full-time" work for at least 6 months if the relationship works well permanent employment
• Discord and good internet speed is required

And I could list like 20 more things that don't really give you any useful information. But if you are interested or you know someone that might be interested, please tell them to send their info to [email protected]. We would always like to see either a portfolio or links to prior work in there as well as some personal info. Not too interested in a CV, but if they already have one at hand, might as well send them.

I am certain I forgot to include some critical information that everyone will ask, but that is just what it is :D

We are looking forward to hearing from awesome artists from the community and if you can, please spread this message!

Cheers, Christopher and the evergrowing Townsmith Team.

Collaboration with Real Game FX - Fog Monster 2 Giveaway!
almost 6 years ago – Sun, May 03, 2020 at 10:52:32 PM

Hey everyone,

we are very happy to announce our next collab! This time around though, we are not talking about another 3D Kickstarter with which we are adding compatibility but rather something... more physical, more realistic!

We have partnered up with the folks over at Real Game FX to make the Townbuilder compatible with their latest project: the Fog Monster 2!

COMPATIBLE TILES

We will create compatible tiles so you can use the FM2 with our buildings! We will start out with some tiles for the Caves and Sewers set since they are a natural fit for fog and if there is enough interest in this, we might expand to also feature some actual working steam pipes and chimneys in the Steampunk set, let me know if you want to see that happen below!

And yeah these tiles will be added for free of course.

These are pretty basic concepts, as we had to hurry with getting this collab out there because of their deadline with the factory. Once we can get our hands on a prototype in a few months from now, we will engineer these tiles and test them thoroughly to make sure that they are as good as their original tiles! And we have a lot more ideas than just the creeping fog on the water and a sewer pipe that spills fog over the battlefield, but they will need some more development time.

If you haven't heard about the FM2... But why am I talking here, I’ll let them tell you about it:

“We are happy to be working with Townsmith and their brilliant new 3D print town-building system. We think the Fog Monster 2 Tabletop fog machine and the Townbuilder creates an endless combination of new smoking and steaming terrain fx for gamers. Fog Monster 2 is the world's first miniature fog machine designed specifically for tabletop game terrain. It creates great vertical steam and smoke FX as well as a rolling fog that creeps and crawls across your tabletop game terrain.

We look forward to the next level of tabletop game immersion now available to 3d printers.”

Check out their campaign here: Fog Monster 2 Kickstarter Campaign, this stuff is very much next level, especially the creeping ground fog...

GIVEAWAY

Making the systems compatible is already pretty cool, but they were also so kind as to give us a couple of FM2s which we will give away to you guys!
 There are three ways to qualify for the give away:
 Like our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/thetownsmith/

Follow our Instagram page:  https://www.instagram.com/the_townsmith

Join our Discord and write !entergiveaway into the #shout-at-the-town-crier channel: Townsmith Discord Server

 We will announce the winners after their preorder deadline and the shop closes on May 20th.

And now you might say: "But Christopher! That is totally stupid if I want a Fog Monster 2 and order one, but then get one in the give away it would totally suck… It's better if I don’t buy a Fog Monster now and hope that I win the giveaway!"

 and to that, I say: True, but we have a workaround for that :D

 If you are interested in the FM2, you should take this last chance to get the order in. And in the case that you ordered one but then also win the giveaway, you can choose if you want the second machine as well or not, and if you don't want it, we will cover the cost for your initial purchase so you just get the one you bought for free, and we can give away another one!

And even though PreOrders are not yet open, they opened up a special shop just for our backers, where you can get in orders in for the Kickstarter Price and even join in on the first wave of shipment.

However, since they need to place the first wave orders for their factory, this offer only lasts until May 20th.

You can find the FM2-Townbuilder-shop here:

https://rgfxpo.com/townbuilder

I know that this collab is pretty niche and by far not every backer will benefit from this. We still think it is worth the time and effort to make the Townbuilder more compatible in the long run, and for the few people that own a 3D printer, the Townbuilder and ordered a FM2, this is pretty freaking cool :D

We are also working on yet another collab with a more "mainstream" Kickstarter campaign, but that one is just getting started and will take a bit more time until we know what exactly we want to do and are ready to present it. But believe me, I am always as excited about these collabs as you guys are and I will always aim to make the Townbuilder cooler and more useful to the community!

Cheers, 

Christopher, and the Townsmith Team.