7 ms·

Open-source tabletop board game simulator

286 points by notpushkin 4y ago

HideousKojima 4y ago
Looks like a good alternative to Tabletop Simulator. Just needs LUA scripting or something comparable and it could completely replace it
- traverseda 4y ago
  All the tabletop-simulator LUA calls are pretty well documented, so I don't think it would be too much of a stretch for someone to literally implement tabletop-simulator compatibility (aside from it being a bunch of work). Tabletop sim is developed very slowly (it seems to be mostly abandoned) and honestly has a lot of pain points, so this seems like an obvious place where an open source project can "embrace, extend, extinguish". I think currently tabletop-club is missing the ability to download generic assets from the web though. The instant they do they can take advantage of all the existing tabletop-simulator online assets, which would be very exciting even if most of them are questionable from a copyright perspective.
auveair 4y ago
An open source board game simulator is nice and this project looks quite far along, but I wonder if it makes sense to make it physics based, by far this is the worst aspect of Tabletop simulator (the paid game) and it makes it really hard to play if you have any kind of impairment (visual, motor, etc). Which is kinda sad, because turn by turn board games are the best for those kind of players, but there are no open source 2D board game software that I know of. I'm not disabled, but it was just as painful for me to play on TTS anyway so I don't really understand the appeal.
- jhbadger 4y ago
  If you are interested in non physics-based game simulators, the open source VASSAL predates tabletop simulator by many years and has support for many games. https://vassalengine.org/ https://vassalengine.org/
  - auveair 4y ago
    Wow, I had never heard of it, thank you so much for the link!
  - mNovak 4y ago
    This is really interesting, never saw that before. I've long been thinking of starting a hobby project for a general purpose board gaming rules engine. Guess it's already there!
    - ryanschneider 4y ago
      If you are more interested in the rules/logic side of things there’s also https://boardgame.io/ https://boardgame.io/
    - 2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
      As a person who has used VASSAL, there is a lot of possible improvements that could be made.
  - renewiltord 4y ago
    TTS is pretty solid IMHO. I rather like it. But this is interesting to me. Thank you. Have you used it to playtest a novel game?
    - jhbadger 4y ago
      I've made a couple of Vassal modules over the years, but of existing games, but yes, I could see it being useful for playtesting.
  - mdtrooper 4y ago
    is there a android version? Because some years ago I played it with jobmates and it was great.
- bspammer 4y ago
  The nice thing about having a physics sandbox is that you can implement better interfaces on top of it using scripts, while still having the full flexibility to go outside the rules if your group feels like it. It's possible to implement a more accessible interface for pretty much any game you like. For example in TTS there's a Catan one that's particularly good. It randomizes and sets up the board for you at the start of the game with a single click. It will do stuff like automatically distributing resources to players based on the dice roll, which drastically reduces the amount of fiddling around with cards. I actually prefer playing Catan in TTS to the official PC port!
  - Aeolun 4y ago
    But taking the resource cards is the best part of the game (especially on a good roll). Why would you want to remove that?!
- the_af 4y ago
  > I wonder if it makes sense to make it physics based, by far this is the worst aspect of Tabletop simulator Definitely. Tabletop Simulator is (or at least, was about a year ago) so bad at this it was deemed unusable for my gaming group. Everyone kept knocking things over, which hilariously happened way more often than with an actual boardgame with physical pieces! It felt like playing drunk, but without the alcoholic fun.
  - traverseda 4y ago
    How do you even knock stuff over? Like the default lift height when you click on something raises it well above the other pieces or where it could really interfere with anything...
    - the_af 4y ago
      I don't remember the details because this more than one year ago or maybe even two, closer to when the pandemic started. I do remember things getting knocked over, moving all over the place, shifting in unexpected ways, etc. In my opinion, if something like TTS doesn't work "out of the box" (no tweaking, no fiddling with settings) it's not a different enough experience from a clunky computer game, precisely the kind of thing I'm trying to get away from when playing board games...
      - kaashif 4y ago
        I don't think I've ever knocked anything over in TTS, nor do I know how that would really happen. I've never changed any settings. I always recommend TTS as exactly what you say it's not - no tweaking, no fiddling. Interesting that our experiences with our respective groups differ so much! I wonder what the difference is - maybe the types of board games you played?
        the_af 4y ago
        I experienced these problems with Zombicide. It left such a bad taste I never bothered to try any other module. Maybe it's just Zombicide?
- shagie 4y ago
  I don't use TTS because it is physics based... which makes it awkward. That said... having it be "physics based" means that you don't need as much game rules implemented in computer logic compared to human logic. Consider the code for writing tic tac toe without a physics model. You've got valid position checks, win condition checks and so on. It's not bad (its tic tac toe), but its something that needs to be written by someone. In a physics based tic tac toe, you've got X and O and a # board. If someone plays a wrong move you say "dude, you can't do that." When you win, you say "tic tac toe, three in a row, I win." This allows a physics based model to implement a lot of game logic in meat space rather than in game code which in turn means that it can be made available more rapidly and doesn't need a programmer to convert game rules into business logic into code. --- I'd also suggest checking out https://www.yucata.de/en https://www.yucata.de/en (and other similar online systems). No, its not open source - its server hosted... but its really well done.
  - joemi 4y ago
    I'm pretty sure you could do a 2D one without all the checks you mentioned. All you need really is the ability to move things and change the z-index.
    - 0cf8612b2e1e 4y ago
      As a matter of fact, I am struggling to think of any boardgames which have a 3d component. I am sure they exist, but a robust 2d representation feels easier and would still be applicable to 99% of existing games.
      - wbl 4y ago
        Stacking mechanics happen a lot.
        0cf8612b2e1e 4y ago
        I was hoping to slide by with 2d + zordering, but by any other name, that is 3d.
- acomjean 4y ago
  I went to the Boston festival of independent games virtually the last couple years. You meet with independent game designers who show you/demo their games. It’s fun. For virtual demo game prototypes the table top simulator was used a fair amount. https://www.bostonfig.com/fest-homepage/ https://www.bostonfig.com/fest-homepage/
- ED_Radish 4y ago
  Its interesting you say this, since personally the physics are the reason I prefer TTS lol. Everything sorta moving like it would in a table makes playing so much easier once you get over the hump of manipulating the controls. But then again my use case is mainly RPGs rather than board games.
traverseda 4y ago
I made the logo for that! I play tabletop simulator (a steam game) with friends at least once a week. Especially during covid it was a great solution (with some rough edges and a somewhat prohibitive cost if you're trying to get 6+ people involved). I found that it worked surprisingly well with my tech-illiterate family. We could help people out when they got confused by grabbing their pieces, or pointing at the board, and if someone made a mistake the game doesn't lock you into it you can just move the pieces however you need to. That last part is something that's sorely missing in digital editions of board games. I think the world really needs an open source tabletop-simulator, and while tabletop-club isn't quite there yet I'm really hopeful it will eventually surpass the "tabletop-simulator" game on steam. If you know your way around Godot or game-engines I highly encourage you to contribute to this project! I think it's legitimately important, as even my tech-illiterate family can grasp the concepts quickly. Much quicker than they grasp normal desktop metaphors. It's also has a lot of potential as a tool to experiment with skeuomorphic interfaces and concepts like the ones in dynamicland. Also personally I think that this has some interesting VR applications, as "desk scale" VR/cooperative-environments have a lot of potential for bridging the divide between full scale VR and regular computers.
- the_af 4y ago
  Interesting! I am tech literate and TTS frustrated me and my group of friends so much we abandoned it. We tried playing Zombicide, and we kept grabbing the wrong minis, or knocking stuff over, and the UNDO feature occasionally destroyed the state of the game. We spent more time battling the UI than playing the game. This was more than a year ago, so maybe these rough edges have been solved now, but they were bad enough to drive me nuts and so I ditched it.
  - traverseda 4y ago
    I've played similar looking games (Zombies!!) and while it wasn't terribly ergonomic it was definitely playable. It's important to use a good grid, and to lock things like tiles in places if you're going to be putting stuff on top of it. I doubt the UI has improved very much honestly. Maybe the pieces you were dealing with were just too small, or you were zoomed out too far? While things can occasionally be a bit finicky to grab we've honestly never had those kinds of major problems with it, although we mostly stick to simpler games like catan and dungeons-and-dragons.
gigel82 4y ago
Not a single screenshot on GitHub or on their website...
- traverseda 4y ago
  https://imgur.com/a/a9Ssvrx https://imgur.com/a/a9Ssvrx It's still some pretty early software though, consider this more of an alpha I think.
- segh 4y ago
  There are some on itch.io https://drwhut.itch.io/tabletop-club https://drwhut.itch.io/tabletop-club
ankaAr 4y ago
Love it, I want to stop working today to test it! I love board games and I'm member of Megajuegos Argentina (megagames) We host games for more than 35/50 people and we needed something after the pandemic and to gather people from inner country. I will be in touch!!
transfire 4y ago
Would be extra interesting if it could incorporate a rules engine, something like a Prolog to implementation rules for different games.
mfabbri77 4y ago
Nice project, but I prefer to interact with boardgames using simple 2d interfaces and (most important) rules-enforcing.
- traverseda 4y ago
  Rules-enforcing is, in my experience, pretty awful. One person mis-clicks and it creates a bad experience. Being able to grab someone's pieces and show them how something works is very valuable. I really don't understand people who want rules-enforcing in their board game engine. Rules-assist sure, tell me where I can put those pieces according to the rules, deal out cards automatically, all that stuff. Why do you want rules enforcement?
  - mfabbri77 4y ago
    Mis-clicks can be handled with an "undo" function. I like to have the "undo" option available until my turn ends. But imho the system should allow only available and permitted moves at each turn.
  - jsmith45 4y ago
    In my experience, most stand-alone software board games is rule enforcing. Not many versions of chess software will let you make illegal moves. Most card game software enforces the rules. Software that corresponds to a single specific board game frequently enforce its rules. In plenty of cases this can make for a smother experience. Preventing players from accidentally moving out-of-turn, ensuring that easily forgotten triggered actions actually trigger, ensuring people don't accidentally play a card face up when it should be face down due to clunky or unfamiliar simulator controls, and automatically updating any form of counters (hit points, victory points, round marker, etc) generally just help the game flow smoothly. This is not without some potential downsides. Being able to temporarily not enforce the rules can be very useful in teaching, or to allow fixing some dumb mistake by consensus. I don't see a problem with allowing rule enforcement to be disabled, and actions taken that would normally not be allowed. But there is no need for allowing illegal actions to be the normal mode. Those situations are uncommon enough that toggling some setting to allow them to take place is not unreasonable. The main case where it would be fairly inconvenient is if one wants house rules, in which case having to mode switch every time the house rules diverge from normal ones. But in that case the better option might just be to edit the game definition anyway. I will admit that for many stand alone software versions of games, one of the major reasons allowing for rule violation actions is uncommon is because it would be difficult to enable it. The game just wont have UI for such actions, and coding one up can potentially be a ton of work. At best you might get some form of limited state editing that is a slightly polished version of the developers debugging tools. But when running in TTS or similar, these concerns are much less of an issue.
archi42 4y ago
Oh, nice to see things like these as open source. Now, if I had the time (& game engine skills) to implement a multitouch table mode, with the hands residing on a per-user device (phone/tablet)...
spankalee 4y ago
I would love to see this built for the web so that if I wanted to invite friends I could just send them a URL and they wouldn't have to install anything.
- traverseda 4y ago
  I recal that being among the authors goals. Godot does support compiling for the web, and they're being careful to use networking that can work from inside a browser.
- Zealotux 4y ago
  I'm making that! https://bonfiretabletop.com https://bonfiretabletop.com
  - Aeolun 4y ago
    Is this like roll20 but better?
    - Zealotux 4y ago
      Not quite there yet features-wise, but that's the goal!
0xfeba 4y ago
Also see: https://boardgame.io/ https://boardgame.io/
jimmySixDOF 4y ago
Tilt5 is just about the most exciting thing in in the entire gaming industry to me and that holds doubly true for anything tabletop. They took the Auggie Award for "Best Game / Toy" at AWE (Augmented World Expo) this year and everyone was raving about the experience. The founder is a great person with a great story and I can't wait for them to get out of the Kickstarter phase and see t5 bords everywhere. [1] https://www.tiltfive.com/ https://www.tiltfive.com/
- joemi 4y ago
  Care to comment a little more about what it is and why it relates to this post? The link you provided is super ad-talk filled and very low-content, turned me off immediately. And your comment sounds suspiciously like an ad, though I hope that's accidental.
  - teh_klev 4y ago
    This is the work of Jeri Ellsworth who's a fairly well known experimenter, tinkerer and inventor in hacker circles: https://www.youtube.com/@jeriellsworth/videos https://www.youtube.com/@jeriellsworth/videos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZ9a78USRIk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZ9a78USRIk (skip to 2:30)
tommoor 4y ago
Kind of crazy I can't find a single screenshot on the GitHub or docs pages…
- Crono 4y ago
  Klick on the itch.io link within the readme on the GitHub Repository.
sys42590 4y ago
Some of the audience here might be interested in https://www.yucata.de/en https://www.yucata.de/en
cobber2005 4y ago
https://playingcards.io/ https://playingcards.io/ is a good tabletop simulator for card games. Can make custom decks and use their pre-made widgets.
brunoqc 4y ago
Any video to see how it looks like? EDIT: there's some screenshots on https://drwhut.itch.io/tabletop-club https://drwhut.itch.io/tabletop-club
Jamesmoorez 4y ago
datacruncher01 4y ago
It's got the same issue as tabletop simulator in that it's using the physics engine to sim everything. This would work well except you're using a mouse to interact with the game pieces and this feels clunky and you end up hitting other game pieces. This needs a way to set it so game pieces can set the collision group they belong to. That way for chess you can just move the chess piece without knocking over everything. Good news is it's open source and Godot based so it shouldn't be hard to add this to the codebase.

286 points by notpushkin 4y ago

Looks like a good alternative to Tabletop Simulator. Just needs LUA scripting or something comparable and it could completely replace it

traverseda 4y ago
All the tabletop-simulator LUA calls are pretty well documented, so I don't think it would be too much of a stretch for someone to literally implement tabletop-simulator compatibility (aside from it being a bunch of work). Tabletop sim is developed very slowly (it seems to be mostly abandoned) and honestly has a lot of pain points, so this seems like an obvious place where an open source project can "embrace, extend, extinguish". I think currently tabletop-club is missing the ability to download generic assets from the web though. The instant they do they can take advantage of all the existing tabletop-simulator online assets, which would be very exciting even if most of them are questionable from a copyright perspective.

auveair 4y ago

An open source board game simulator is nice and this project looks quite far along, but I wonder if it makes sense to make it physics based, by far this is the worst aspect of Tabletop simulator (the paid game) and it makes it really hard to play if you have any kind of impairment (visual, motor, etc). Which is kinda sad, because turn by turn board games are the best for those kind of players, but there are no open source 2D board game software that I know of. I'm not disabled, but it was just as painful for me to play on TTS anyway so I don't really understand the appeal.

jhbadger 4y ago
If you are interested in non physics-based game simulators, the open source VASSAL predates tabletop simulator by many years and has support for many games. https://vassalengine.org/ https://vassalengine.org/
- auveair 4y ago
  Wow, I had never heard of it, thank you so much for the link!
- mNovak 4y ago
  This is really interesting, never saw that before. I've long been thinking of starting a hobby project for a general purpose board gaming rules engine. Guess it's already there!
  - ryanschneider 4y ago
    If you are more interested in the rules/logic side of things there’s also https://boardgame.io/ https://boardgame.io/
  - 2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
    As a person who has used VASSAL, there is a lot of possible improvements that could be made.
- renewiltord 4y ago
  TTS is pretty solid IMHO. I rather like it. But this is interesting to me. Thank you. Have you used it to playtest a novel game?
  - jhbadger 4y ago
    I've made a couple of Vassal modules over the years, but of existing games, but yes, I could see it being useful for playtesting.
- mdtrooper 4y ago
  is there a android version? Because some years ago I played it with jobmates and it was great.
bspammer 4y ago
The nice thing about having a physics sandbox is that you can implement better interfaces on top of it using scripts, while still having the full flexibility to go outside the rules if your group feels like it. It's possible to implement a more accessible interface for pretty much any game you like. For example in TTS there's a Catan one that's particularly good. It randomizes and sets up the board for you at the start of the game with a single click. It will do stuff like automatically distributing resources to players based on the dice roll, which drastically reduces the amount of fiddling around with cards. I actually prefer playing Catan in TTS to the official PC port!
- Aeolun 4y ago
  But taking the resource cards is the best part of the game (especially on a good roll). Why would you want to remove that?!
the_af 4y ago
> I wonder if it makes sense to make it physics based, by far this is the worst aspect of Tabletop simulator Definitely. Tabletop Simulator is (or at least, was about a year ago) so bad at this it was deemed unusable for my gaming group. Everyone kept knocking things over, which hilariously happened way more often than with an actual boardgame with physical pieces! It felt like playing drunk, but without the alcoholic fun.
- traverseda 4y ago
  How do you even knock stuff over? Like the default lift height when you click on something raises it well above the other pieces or where it could really interfere with anything...
  - the_af 4y ago
    I don't remember the details because this more than one year ago or maybe even two, closer to when the pandemic started. I do remember things getting knocked over, moving all over the place, shifting in unexpected ways, etc. In my opinion, if something like TTS doesn't work "out of the box" (no tweaking, no fiddling with settings) it's not a different enough experience from a clunky computer game, precisely the kind of thing I'm trying to get away from when playing board games...
    - kaashif 4y ago
      I don't think I've ever knocked anything over in TTS, nor do I know how that would really happen. I've never changed any settings. I always recommend TTS as exactly what you say it's not - no tweaking, no fiddling. Interesting that our experiences with our respective groups differ so much! I wonder what the difference is - maybe the types of board games you played?
      - the_af 4y ago
        I experienced these problems with Zombicide. It left such a bad taste I never bothered to try any other module. Maybe it's just Zombicide?
shagie 4y ago
I don't use TTS because it is physics based... which makes it awkward. That said... having it be "physics based" means that you don't need as much game rules implemented in computer logic compared to human logic. Consider the code for writing tic tac toe without a physics model. You've got valid position checks, win condition checks and so on. It's not bad (its tic tac toe), but its something that needs to be written by someone. In a physics based tic tac toe, you've got X and O and a # board. If someone plays a wrong move you say "dude, you can't do that." When you win, you say "tic tac toe, three in a row, I win." This allows a physics based model to implement a lot of game logic in meat space rather than in game code which in turn means that it can be made available more rapidly and doesn't need a programmer to convert game rules into business logic into code. --- I'd also suggest checking out https://www.yucata.de/en https://www.yucata.de/en (and other similar online systems). No, its not open source - its server hosted... but its really well done.
- joemi 4y ago
  I'm pretty sure you could do a 2D one without all the checks you mentioned. All you need really is the ability to move things and change the z-index.
  - 0cf8612b2e1e 4y ago
    As a matter of fact, I am struggling to think of any boardgames which have a 3d component. I am sure they exist, but a robust 2d representation feels easier and would still be applicable to 99% of existing games.
    - wbl 4y ago
      Stacking mechanics happen a lot.
      - 0cf8612b2e1e 4y ago
        I was hoping to slide by with 2d + zordering, but by any other name, that is 3d.
acomjean 4y ago
I went to the Boston festival of independent games virtually the last couple years. You meet with independent game designers who show you/demo their games. It’s fun. For virtual demo game prototypes the table top simulator was used a fair amount. https://www.bostonfig.com/fest-homepage/ https://www.bostonfig.com/fest-homepage/
ED_Radish 4y ago
Its interesting you say this, since personally the physics are the reason I prefer TTS lol. Everything sorta moving like it would in a table makes playing so much easier once you get over the hump of manipulating the controls. But then again my use case is mainly RPGs rather than board games.

traverseda 4y ago

I made the logo for that! I play tabletop simulator (a steam game) with friends at least once a week. Especially during covid it was a great solution (with some rough edges and a somewhat prohibitive cost if you're trying to get 6+ people involved). I found that it worked surprisingly well with my tech-illiterate family. We could help people out when they got confused by grabbing their pieces, or pointing at the board, and if someone made a mistake the game doesn't lock you into it you can just move the pieces however you need to. That last part is something that's sorely missing in digital editions of board games. I think the world really needs an open source tabletop-simulator, and while tabletop-club isn't quite there yet I'm really hopeful it will eventually surpass the "tabletop-simulator" game on steam. If you know your way around Godot or game-engines I highly encourage you to contribute to this project! I think it's legitimately important, as even my tech-illiterate family can grasp the concepts quickly. Much quicker than they grasp normal desktop metaphors. It's also has a lot of potential as a tool to experiment with skeuomorphic interfaces and concepts like the ones in dynamicland. Also personally I think that this has some interesting VR applications, as "desk scale" VR/cooperative-environments have a lot of potential for bridging the divide between full scale VR and regular computers.

the_af 4y ago
Interesting! I am tech literate and TTS frustrated me and my group of friends so much we abandoned it. We tried playing Zombicide, and we kept grabbing the wrong minis, or knocking stuff over, and the UNDO feature occasionally destroyed the state of the game. We spent more time battling the UI than playing the game. This was more than a year ago, so maybe these rough edges have been solved now, but they were bad enough to drive me nuts and so I ditched it.
- traverseda 4y ago
  I've played similar looking games (Zombies!!) and while it wasn't terribly ergonomic it was definitely playable. It's important to use a good grid, and to lock things like tiles in places if you're going to be putting stuff on top of it. I doubt the UI has improved very much honestly. Maybe the pieces you were dealing with were just too small, or you were zoomed out too far? While things can occasionally be a bit finicky to grab we've honestly never had those kinds of major problems with it, although we mostly stick to simpler games like catan and dungeons-and-dragons.

gigel82 4y ago

Not a single screenshot on GitHub or on their website...

traverseda 4y ago
https://imgur.com/a/a9Ssvrx https://imgur.com/a/a9Ssvrx It's still some pretty early software though, consider this more of an alpha I think.
segh 4y ago
There are some on itch.io https://drwhut.itch.io/tabletop-club https://drwhut.itch.io/tabletop-club

ankaAr 4y ago

Love it, I want to stop working today to test it! I love board games and I'm member of Megajuegos Argentina (megagames) We host games for more than 35/50 people and we needed something after the pandemic and to gather people from inner country. I will be in touch!!

transfire 4y ago

Would be extra interesting if it could incorporate a rules engine, something like a Prolog to implementation rules for different games.

mfabbri77 4y ago

Nice project, but I prefer to interact with boardgames using simple 2d interfaces and (most important) rules-enforcing.

traverseda 4y ago
Rules-enforcing is, in my experience, pretty awful. One person mis-clicks and it creates a bad experience. Being able to grab someone's pieces and show them how something works is very valuable. I really don't understand people who want rules-enforcing in their board game engine. Rules-assist sure, tell me where I can put those pieces according to the rules, deal out cards automatically, all that stuff. Why do you want rules enforcement?
- mfabbri77 4y ago
  Mis-clicks can be handled with an "undo" function. I like to have the "undo" option available until my turn ends. But imho the system should allow only available and permitted moves at each turn.
- jsmith45 4y ago
  In my experience, most stand-alone software board games is rule enforcing. Not many versions of chess software will let you make illegal moves. Most card game software enforces the rules. Software that corresponds to a single specific board game frequently enforce its rules. In plenty of cases this can make for a smother experience. Preventing players from accidentally moving out-of-turn, ensuring that easily forgotten triggered actions actually trigger, ensuring people don't accidentally play a card face up when it should be face down due to clunky or unfamiliar simulator controls, and automatically updating any form of counters (hit points, victory points, round marker, etc) generally just help the game flow smoothly. This is not without some potential downsides. Being able to temporarily not enforce the rules can be very useful in teaching, or to allow fixing some dumb mistake by consensus. I don't see a problem with allowing rule enforcement to be disabled, and actions taken that would normally not be allowed. But there is no need for allowing illegal actions to be the normal mode. Those situations are uncommon enough that toggling some setting to allow them to take place is not unreasonable. The main case where it would be fairly inconvenient is if one wants house rules, in which case having to mode switch every time the house rules diverge from normal ones. But in that case the better option might just be to edit the game definition anyway. I will admit that for many stand alone software versions of games, one of the major reasons allowing for rule violation actions is uncommon is because it would be difficult to enable it. The game just wont have UI for such actions, and coding one up can potentially be a ton of work. At best you might get some form of limited state editing that is a slightly polished version of the developers debugging tools. But when running in TTS or similar, these concerns are much less of an issue.

archi42 4y ago

Oh, nice to see things like these as open source. Now, if I had the time (& game engine skills) to implement a multitouch table mode, with the hands residing on a per-user device (phone/tablet)...

spankalee 4y ago

I would love to see this built for the web so that if I wanted to invite friends I could just send them a URL and they wouldn't have to install anything.

traverseda 4y ago
I recal that being among the authors goals. Godot does support compiling for the web, and they're being careful to use networking that can work from inside a browser.
Zealotux 4y ago
I'm making that! https://bonfiretabletop.com https://bonfiretabletop.com
- Aeolun 4y ago
  Is this like roll20 but better?
  - Zealotux 4y ago
    Not quite there yet features-wise, but that's the goal!

0xfeba 4y ago

Also see: https://boardgame.io/ https://boardgame.io/

jimmySixDOF 4y ago

Tilt5 is just about the most exciting thing in in the entire gaming industry to me and that holds doubly true for anything tabletop. They took the Auggie Award for "Best Game / Toy" at AWE (Augmented World Expo) this year and everyone was raving about the experience. The founder is a great person with a great story and I can't wait for them to get out of the Kickstarter phase and see t5 bords everywhere. [1] https://www.tiltfive.com/ https://www.tiltfive.com/

joemi 4y ago
Care to comment a little more about what it is and why it relates to this post? The link you provided is super ad-talk filled and very low-content, turned me off immediately. And your comment sounds suspiciously like an ad, though I hope that's accidental.
- teh_klev 4y ago
  This is the work of Jeri Ellsworth who's a fairly well known experimenter, tinkerer and inventor in hacker circles: https://www.youtube.com/@jeriellsworth/videos https://www.youtube.com/@jeriellsworth/videos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZ9a78USRIk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZ9a78USRIk (skip to 2:30)

tommoor 4y ago

Kind of crazy I can't find a single screenshot on the GitHub or docs pages…

Crono 4y ago
Klick on the itch.io link within the readme on the GitHub Repository.

sys42590 4y ago

Some of the audience here might be interested in https://www.yucata.de/en https://www.yucata.de/en

cobber2005 4y ago

https://playingcards.io/ https://playingcards.io/ is a good tabletop simulator for card games. Can make custom decks and use their pre-made widgets.

brunoqc 4y ago

Any video to see how it looks like? EDIT: there's some screenshots on https://drwhut.itch.io/tabletop-club https://drwhut.itch.io/tabletop-club

Jamesmoorez 4y ago

datacruncher01 4y ago

It's got the same issue as tabletop simulator in that it's using the physics engine to sim everything. This would work well except you're using a mouse to interact with the game pieces and this feels clunky and you end up hitting other game pieces. This needs a way to set it so game pieces can set the collision group they belong to. That way for chess you can just move the chess piece without knocking over everything. Good news is it's open source and Godot based so it shouldn't be hard to add this to the codebase.