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Tabletop Simulator

tabletopsimulator.com

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Re: Tabletop Simulator

#51

Post by flamecoals »

MikeTheGreat wrote: post #5

I really want to love TTS, and I think that if I had experts to play with (to show me the ropes) then it would be a great game platform for boardgames. I've found it very challenging to get started (to be fair, I was trying to start with HeroQuest - it's not complicated rules-wise, but there's a lot of pieces to move around). I think each game maker can make their own choices about how the UI should work so it's not…

I am probably a bit late for this thread, but check out our non-profit FOSS project: https://FreeBoardGames.org It is built with boardgame.io and react/next, and we have a growing community! We have a special focus on making sure our games work on mobile too

Re: Tabletop Simulator

#52

Post by chaostheory »

mettamage wrote: post #13

Can anyone chime in how they experience Tabletop Simulator with a VR headset? I've played the normal Tabletop Simulator and am wondering if it gets a bit easier with picking up models and so on when using a VR headset.

It's a much better experience in VR. Even though there's still a learning curve, it's less annoying vs the game being stuck inside a box. The problem is that VR doesn't have a big player base yet

A 3D representation of a board game doesn't make sense to me if it's constrained to a boxed screen.

Re: Tabletop Simulator

#53

Post by secabeen »

WilTimSon wrote: post #26
Justsignedup wrote: post #24

We tried playing DnD using it. - the number of objects drastically affects input lag. So easy with card placeholders and mods to get into a horrible performance zone where even throwing a dice is lagy. - It isn't super comfortable - Not as good as roll20.com even with roll20's limited features, the effort required is 20x lower. - So easy to get into weird physics interactions. How many times did we try to move a piec…

I found Roll20 to be quite good, all things considered. Few online spaces will readily replace the actual tabletop experience but it was fun and convenient for a few games. Perhaps now that we've all experienced isolation from the world, someone will rise to the task to make a better version.

Roll20 is great, but I'm really enjoying the community of mods and developers around FoundryVTT.

Re: Tabletop Simulator

#54

Post by esrauch »

nimih wrote: post #19
MikeTheGreat wrote: post #5

I really want to love TTS, and I think that if I had experts to play with (to show me the ropes) then it would be a great game platform for boardgames. I've found it very challenging to get started (to be fair, I was trying to start with HeroQuest - it's not complicated rules-wise, but there's a lot of pieces to move around). I think each game maker can make their own choices about how the UI should work so it's not…

The big win of TTS in my experience is that it ends up being a lot easier to play board games with folks who are otherwise not big board game players and are not especially comfortable with computers: For people who play a lot of board games (and especially folks who do a lot of PBEM games, either via an engine like board game arena/vassal, a bespoke website like 18xx.games, or actual spreadsheets and email), the 3D…

I feel like "not especially comfortable with computers" must come with a pretty big weak definition. I've tried TTS a few times and as someone who otherwise is very comfortable with both computers AND board games I found the interface impossibly unusable since you have to memorize all sorts of arbitrary keys for flipping and pulling cards and so on.

I certainly found it much harder than either any physical or digital implementation that I had tried (but I assume there's some learning curve hump to get over where that wouldn't be true anymore).

Re: Tabletop Simulator

#55

Post by cableshaft »

kovek wrote: post #40
cableshaft wrote: post #27

For people in the board game industry, Tabletop Simulator has become invaluable during the pandemic. A ton of designers have figured out how to use TTS enough to get their prototypes working in here and then have online virtual playtest nights using it. Also publishers can also use it to playtest games, or to see a virtual pitch. TTS is actually very powerful once you dig into it. I was annoyed by it at first, but on…

Is there any way to improve TTS’s performance? My laptop’s fan goes off when running it. I wish they could provide an option do so a simpler rendering. Otherwise it requires some good hardware to run it nicely.

Not that I'm aware of, at least. I pretty much have to run it on a separate laptop from Discord in order to not have slowdown issues on my laptop.

Re: Tabletop Simulator

#56

Post by canada_dry »

aidenn0 wrote: post #30
MikeTheGreat wrote: post #5

I really want to love TTS, and I think that if I had experts to play with (to show me the ropes) then it would be a great game platform for boardgames. I've found it very challenging to get started (to be fair, I was trying to start with HeroQuest - it's not complicated rules-wise, but there's a lot of pieces to move around). I think each game maker can make their own choices about how the UI should work so it's not…

Vassal is open-source and good for doing 2d games: http://www.vassalengine.org/

+1 that linux is supported.

Re: Tabletop Simulator

#57

Post by orpheansodality »

StavrosK wrote: post #47
exolymph wrote: post #4

My husband adores Tabletop Simulator for D&D, especially because you can import every model under the sun. He has little Dorito bags and tiny Shrek figures. Seriously, wide selection.

On the flip side, we tried it, and it was a huge hassle for our DM to create levels every time, to the point where we couldn't meet as often because of how fiddly creating the levels was. On the players' side, it the UI was dog-slow and clunky as well, so we went back to Roll20.net, though that's not great either.

Check out Foundry VTT[0] -- I've been using it since release and so far it has been a much better experience than Roll20. Plus it has a pay-once-and-own-the-product-forever model, and you can easily self-host your own server.

[0] https://foundryvtt.com/

Re: Tabletop Simulator

#58

Post by chrxr »

TTS is great for 40k, although moving a large amount of pieces can be a pain. There are a huge amount of model scans available, and the community has put an immense amount of effort into building battlefields. I have mixed feelings about the morality of getting this stuff for free. I say mixed because the price of actual GW models is criminal. However, I don't think this takes much profit from GW. It certainly hasn't prevented me from wanting to paint models and play in person. But with that currently being impossible, TTS and Warhammer Total War are my only outlets.

Re: Tabletop Simulator

#59

Post by paledot »

nullsoldier wrote: post #42
MikeTheGreat wrote: post #5

I really want to love TTS, and I think that if I had experts to play with (to show me the ropes) then it would be a great game platform for boardgames. I've found it very challenging to get started (to be fair, I was trying to start with HeroQuest - it's not complicated rules-wise, but there's a lot of pieces to move around). I think each game maker can make their own choices about how the UI should work so it's not…

Howdy, I'm the developer of Playtable, http://playtable.app/ and I'm really intersted in tackling the usability aspect you are talking about. TTS is one of the worst systems for usability. It's clunky, runs very slow, and because the interface is not standard UI, it's just programmer game engine UI it comes off as very very hard to use. Currently, the best product out there is Tabletopia in terms of usability, https:…

Looks promising! I'm looking forward to giving it a try. My problem with Roll20 and Astral isn't that they don't have enough features, it's that they have lots of features and really want me to use them, when all I want to do is drag tokens around on a grid my players can see while we use pen and paper for the rest.

Re: Tabletop Simulator

#60

Post by ajsnigrutin »

aidenn0 wrote: post #30
MikeTheGreat wrote: post #5

I really want to love TTS, and I think that if I had experts to play with (to show me the ropes) then it would be a great game platform for boardgames. I've found it very challenging to get started (to be fair, I was trying to start with HeroQuest - it's not complicated rules-wise, but there's a lot of pieces to move around). I think each game maker can make their own choices about how the UI should work so it's not…

Vassal is open-source and good for doing 2d games: http://www.vassalengine.org/

It's a bit ugly, it's a bit slow, but holy fuck, with a few tiny edits of the carcassone module + working from home, we wasted so many hours and built a map, probably larger than an average room...

All in all, it was fun!

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