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Tabletop Simulator

tabletopsimulator.com

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Re: Tabletop Simulator

#61

Post by MPSimmons »

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:…

This kind of thing makes me yearn for a solution that does this in VR. I am not a dragonborn, nor am I a wizard or any other fantastic being from D&D, but I would LOVE to sit around a virtual table, in a torch lit dungeon, going through adventures with a dungeonmaster guiding my fellow players through a quest.

Can you imagine something like Risk, but with military generals?

Do you think you would ever have the resources to do something like that/

Re: Tabletop Simulator

#62

Post by nimih »

esrauch wrote: post #54
nimih wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Maybe that's not the right description. My tabletop group has a couple communally-owned steam accounts with only copies of TTS, so that folks' partners, friends, and family members who don't have a Steam account of their own (and don't play computer games at all, but are interested in joining in on a less-complex board game) can join in. Other than dealing with Steam's 2FA, the process of teaching and playing games with these sorts of guests goes pretty smoothly in the group's experience.

Admittedly, we tend to play games with a more euro-game-y slant, so typically the only interactions you need are to click-and-drag to move pieces, and perhaps `F' to flip a card or token over; if pieces need to be rotated to align correctly, it's pretty easy for more experienced players to worry about that if someone is having trouble with the controls. If the games you like to play require more complicated types of interaction, I could definitely see that being a stumbling block, since the interface seems to get exponentially clunkier as the number of distinct bits you need to deal with increases. Playing Bus is a joy, for instance, but I imagine Arkham Horror is absolutely miserable.

edit: To be clear, this is all anecdotal, and TTS has a bunch of warts I don't want to gloss over, but I've been utilizing it heavily since the start of Covid quarantine, and overall I think it's been a pretty positive experience. On whole, although I like platforms like Board Game Arena and software like Vassal, TTS has proven to be better (for my group of friends!) in terms of accommodating a wider variety of people and wider variety of games.

Re: Tabletop Simulator

#63

Post by sli »

MPSimmons wrote: post #61
nullsoldier wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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:…

This kind of thing makes me yearn for a solution that does this in VR. I am not a dragonborn, nor am I a wizard or any other fantastic being from D&D, but I would LOVE to sit around a virtual table, in a torch lit dungeon, going through adventures with a dungeonmaster guiding my fellow players through a quest. Can you imagine something like Risk, but with military generals? Do you think you would ever have the resour…

> This kind of thing makes me yearn for a solution that does this in VR.

I would absolutely love a VR take on this. A year or so ago, I figured I could manage running games in TTS as a VR player while everyone else just played. Turns out that TTS in VR is far and away less usable than TTS normally is. Just feels like they checked a box to enable VR support in Unity and left it at that. Fuzzy interface that made everything hard to read, clunky VR controls, and basically zero assists. One wrong move and you accidentally clear the whole table. It made TTS's regular controls seem nice, that's how bad it was.

Re: Tabletop Simulator

#65

Post by kruczek »

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 think the most important thing to keep in mind when playing TTS is the need to learn three things simultaneously:

- how to use TTS,

- what are the rules of the game you want to play,

- how those rules are applied in the specific TTS game/mod you use.

The first thing need to be learnt only once, and honestly there's not much to learn. All one needs is:

- WASD/click mouse - scroll

- F - flip

- R - shuffle

- left click - pick/drop

These cover 99% of all use cases.

But then learning rules of a pariticular game and learning how those are applied - these need to be learnt each time when starting a new mod. One way to mitigate this is playing with people who already have experience with a particular mod.

When starting with a new mod by yourself, first it's important to determine how much scripted it is. Some mods are raw physic playgrounds with components from the game, while others are scripted to automate and simplify gameplay. I think those raw mods are easier to get started, because you basically only need to know rules of the game itself and do everything manually same way you'd do when playing actual board game. On the other hand, once you get to know the range of scripts in a scripted mod, it's much easier to play the mod - it's often more like a computer game, where things happen automatically.

Because these mods are all independent, so it's often difficult or impossible to find any documentation about scripts used by the mod. Often figuring that out is basically trail-and-error, which is unfortunate. There are some which provide written instructions though.

I've played Twilight Imperium, Gloomhaven and Gaia Project and I found all of them very enjoyoable (once I learned how to play them). PM me and maybe we can setup a game :)

Re: Tabletop Simulator

#66

Post by StavrosK »

orpheansodality wrote: post #57
StavrosK wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

That looks great, thanks! Our GM wanted us to use a VTT that was in development a few months ago (saw it on a reddit announcement), not sure if it's this one. I think his was 3D, but this looks great, thanks again.

Re: Tabletop Simulator

#67

Post by intenscia »

We are publishing an alternative to TTS called Tabletop Playground. It’s made in UE4, so better fidelity and performance more finely tuned, with less floaty physics. Also aims to offer a more powerful in-game editor for novices and pros alike.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/838410/Tabletop_Playgroun...

Re: Tabletop Simulator

#68

Post by plstct »

sli wrote: post #63
MPSimmons wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of thing makes me yearn for a solution that does this in VR. I am not a dragonborn, nor am I a wizard or any other fantastic being from D&D, but I would LOVE to sit around a virtual table, in a torch lit dungeon, going through adventures with a dungeonmaster guiding my fellow players through a quest. Can you imagine something like Risk, but with military generals? Do you think you would ever have the resour…

> This kind of thing makes me yearn for a solution that does this in VR. I would absolutely love a VR take on this. A year or so ago, I figured I could manage running games in TTS as a VR player while everyone else just played. Turns out that TTS in VR is far and away less usable than TTS normally is. Just feels like they checked a box to enable VR support in Unity and left it at that. Fuzzy interface that made every…

You might enjoy Tabletop Playground: https://tabletop-playground.com (I'm the developer).

It started out as a VR project and while most people use it on a screen now, VR usability has always been part of the design.

Re: Tabletop Simulator

#69

Post by Talanes »

remram wrote: post #39
Talanes wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this one of those games that's constantly on sale? I picked it up for five bucks on Steam just a few weeks ago.

It seems to go on sale pretty often, but never as low as $5 in the US: https://steamdb.info/app/286160/

The price was more of a general estimate, I just knew I wouldn't have spent $10 on it.

Re: Tabletop Simulator

#70

Post by blue1 »

gverrilla wrote: post #38

there are great scripted games free available at workshop. Played with my group in the last months: Photosynthesis, Zombicide, Catan, Sheriff, Azul and Splendor. There's def a learning curve and some people suffer a bit, but overall now that everybody can use TAB to indicate something on the board, take single card vs all cards on deck, hand mechanics, blindfold, etc, it's all very smooth. My brother is not having th…

First thing to do when you buy a mac: buy a two-button mouse.

For when you only have the trackpad, enable two-digit touch as secondary button.

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