2.0 Roadmap Feedback: General Comments#2924

For a long time, my favorite way to play board games online has been VASSAL. It is a bit janky and fiddly but it has several key advantages:

• It easily and clearly shows me the entire game board from the top down
• Additional boards and cards are easily displayed as panels which can be tucked away or summoned at the tap of a button.
• Adding pieces to a scene is a simple drag-and-drop process unburdened by physics–likewise attaching pieces together or changing their vertical stacking is very simple.
• Local storage of visual assets greatly simplifies the process of keeping modules up-to-date and using older modules.

I like Tabletop Simulator, and for games where I have no other options, it works well. Unfortunately the focus on 3D physics comes at a substantial cost in terms of visual clarity and interactive simplicity. Ultimately I just want to play board games with my friends and while I’d prefer to do so in person, seating arrangements and the laws of physics are parts of gaming I least like in real life. On a computer, we could all be looking at the board right-side-up, not worrying about the cat knocking over dozens of pieces, and shoving secondary boards and displays into a HUD or menu instead of needing to crane our necks (or virtual cameras) over a vast table.

Most board games are ultimately 2D. TTS being capable of handling those that aren’t is a fascinating opportunity, but more on that in a moment. Projecting a game-board as a 2D is a significant advantage of a computer screen over a physical table, but realizing this advantage in TTS can be tricky. Getting the physically simulated lighting and camera positioning comfortable for this purpose is not straightforward. Lighting often feels vaguer and darker than ideal even with all effects and tints turned off. Viewing additional boards requires setting and scripting additional carefully placed cameras or dragging the view manually to another position. Dealing with stacks of things other than deck-like cards and tiles can be surprisingly complicated.

In general, the 3D approach has merit and clearly a lot of people like it, but I think it’s how easy creating new games on TTS is and lack of awareness that wins audience over VASSAL more so than the 3D format working better. To that end, Tabletop Simulator far too often feels like more of a fight than using whiteboard software like Excalidraw or Miro–which I’ve done for quite a few games not available on VASSAL precisely because it took me so little time to set up compared to developing a Tabletop Simulator module and it was easier for the palayers to interact with the game in an intuitive way. Computers are simply better at interacting with 2D representations and since those in turn come with many advantages over the 3D presentation of a real life board game, it’s very frustrating to feel like I have the worst of both worlds–the cumbersome physical fiddling and neck-craning of a real world board game, but only a single, awkward hand available to navigate it.

Where the 3D approach could shine best–in tabletop miniatures games–TTS is missing a number of key tools. For a start, the web-based asset storage paradigm is particularly cumbersome when many different models and pieces of terrain get involved as opposed to a board game that may have 100s of pieces, but doesn’t have nearly so many unique bits of geometry and imagery that must be precisely maintained despite consistent web-hosting being a difficult battle for solo community developers to fight. Tools for waypoint/curved-path measurement, flexible snap-to-piece movement templates, and both volume and model percentage Line of Sight indication are not currently possible without complex scripting from community modders which is not always very portable to new projects.

What I want most from a Tabletop Simulator 2.0 isn’t for it to suddenly turn into VASSAL or Excalidraw or Foundry VTT–I already have those and I don’t expect the entire premise of TTS to shift at this point. But I do want interacting with board games as the 2D objects most of them really are to be much smoother and more reliable than it currently is, and I would love to see interacting with truly 3D games become less of an exercise in creative scripting. Right now, TTS is mostly a great program because it exists and the modding scene is strong–I want to be able to say that it also takes advantage of the unique benefits of a digital board game environment.

You just have to learn how to use it. When you do, it becomes second nature and you play as if you were on a real table.

That is quite demonstrably not the case for me, as I explained at length. XD

I’ve used Tabletop simulator a fair amount–mostly becuase it’s the only way to play some games remotely even if I’d prefer other software. I’ve played official modules, community made modules, and I’ve made my own modules for personal use. I also play a lot of different video games and have to use 3D design software for work–I’m pretty comfortable both learning new software, and navigating various different kinds of 3D envrionments.

Learning how to use it has increased my frustration with certain aspects of it rather than diminishing them. Board Game Arena is the main cmpetitor that picks up after VASSAL’s 2D approach outside of dedicated standalone video game adaptations. Everything else in the space seems to have gone for a similar approach as TTS, just with, as yet fewer features, smaller communities, and in some cases even more system-intenseive and complex 3D graphics.

At the same time, people I want to play board games with don’t necessarily share these experiences. Tabletop Simulator is, in my experience, less accessible than even VASSAL when introducing new players to the ecosystem. It’s certainly less accessible than a simple whiteboard like Excalidraw or Playingcard.io for those few games where I can easily set up a playable version in those systems.

Tabletop Simulator is most intuitive to people who are more comfortable with 3D video games or 3D modeling software, but it is most useful to people who want to play board games remotely. There’s a disconect there that I think TTS could handle a lot better withoout radically changing its approach.

really, because i’ve bin around the block, playtested a bunch of games, taught a ton of people, and so far tabletop seems to be the easiest/most intuitive of the platforms.

obviously im a fan of the 3D elements because human perception is 3D, picking up something, and putting it down seems like the first thought anyone has, the only issues i’ve seen are people not doing the tutorial and not knowing shortcut keys.

But generally for gamedevs they prefer being able to make pieces like they would in real life (dice not being flat, tokens not being flat, anything but cards or sometime even those) it can be hard to make a 2D game fit 3D games, but its easy to do the reverse, the only issue i’ve found that sounds like what you’re explaining is that the grid or lining things up straight arent always the easiest (which theres tools to make your table a grid, or you learn to do it with time)

so not to say my oppinion is better, i’d love to hear what your arguement was because i guess i didnt fully get it? panning with a single buttom and your mouse is basically every single game, and you can just look at the table from the top down view (theres even a camera mode specifically for that) if that was the issue?

As a tabletop game developer who has used Tabletop Simulator, I can say that tabletop games are typically not “3D” in a fundamental way. A cardboard chit is 3 dimensional, but the design of the 3D object consists largely of picking a thickness–the rest of the design is two dimensional layout and art.

This holds also for cards, boards, mats, and the majority of other board game components. Most of the fundamentally three dimensional elements of board games can be rapidly prototyped–either digitally or otherwise–as generic colored objects. Games with custom dice rarely rely on the dice as physical objects; when I design custom dice, I’m usually interested in the symbols or numbers I distribute on them and the number of sides and it doesn’t really make a difference in prototyping whether I use a digital die, or a physical die with 2D stickers pasted on it. Similarly, when trying to play a non-prototype game online with friends, it doesn’t really matter if our dice are physicaly simulated or not, as that’s not the purpose of dice. I enjoy handling physical dice in-person, but 3D dice I can’t feel and shake in my hands don’t really do much for me and certainly aren’t fundamental to satisfying digital board game design even if some people like them a lot. Cubes and other 3D resources also tend not to need complex 3D design–a meeple can just as easily be a cube in a pinch or even a cube with a texture/mesh “sticker” attached to it.

In all, while there are certainly exceptions, most of the fundamentally 3D design in board games is for aesthetic purposes either to please the designer or to suit the game towards a particular target audience and finalizing those aspects of the design tends to come long after the mechanical playtesting is mostly finished. The reality is that most board games are fundametnally 2D play experiences, and are designed mostly with tools for 2D art and layout because most of the art assets are printed on paper and cardboard in 2D.

I’ve already said that I’ve had an easier time for certain games using other software and websites and I’ve named the tools I’ve used. I explained that I’ve had issues with inconsistent camera behaviors, uncomfortable lighting, interface issues with common interactions such as stacking, and several other specific things. I’ve also explained issues with more fundamentally 3D games–the lack of robust templating, measuring and line-of-sight tooling being the most obvious example.

None of these are “arguments.” These are experiences and opinions. I’m not trying to convince other people who currently enjoy TTS to switch to other products or to enjoy it less. If you are seeking such argument and convincing, I don’t know what to tell you.

so first of all i want to say sorry if you misunderstood me, generally people who talk use the word “arguement” as telling someone a subjective fact, and yes, an “experience or opinion” is a subjective fact, conversations arent build on smalltalk though, their build on questions, arguements (no not the 4 year old daughter yelling at her mom kind) and thought ^w^

i also think you misunderstood my 3D arguement? using a random number generator could also be a dice, and what i said about dice wouldnt change the chance on them? but stuff like chess and a lot of cool board games are 3D, no offence to what you like ofc im just stating i’ve seen about 30-40% of all boardgames uses 3D pieces (also i realize that even the minecraft enderdragon is a 2D image, but imagine playing minecraft with that flying around)

my arguement was that people inertly prefer 3D over 2D because it makes more sense, you can pick up pieces and they look like they should, and ofc stuff like wargames or smth alike are almost impossible to make well in the 2D space

Not sure what you meant with your issues as i or anyone i’ve talked to havent had any camera issues? the lighting is fully customizable (you can even make objects like a candle emit light in a dark space if you want it moody) not sure what “robust templating” would refer to? and are you disapointed the game has build in line of sight and measurements?

I love three-dimensionality in board games, and as such, in TTS. A lot. The thickness of a single playing card. The thickness of the cards when stacked in a deck. The thickness of tokens, the three-dimensionality of cubes and meeples and pieces. I totally dislike all 2D platforms for not having any of that. I highly hope for the VR part of this to improve a lot, to get a VR set and reproduce that feeling of the real deal even better.

My problem is not that it renders objects in 3D. My issues relate to the feeling that the 3D environment takes precedence over smooth and consistent interaction with flat game objects.

Let’s use a more concrete feature example. A nice feature of many board game adaptations for PC is having multiple windows, tabs or menus to house additional information without cluttering the main view–player boards, hands of cards, special board regions, etc. This can not only make navigating the games on a computer more ergonomic, it can make information more clear and accessible than it is in the physical version of the game. In Tabletop Simulator, the closest you can easily get to this sort of organization is to spread boards and play areas across the table and manually set a bunch of saved cameras to zoom in on those regions of the table.

It would be nice to be able to have fixed, flat image-based windows or menus to present information like resource counters, score tracks, and similar. Failing that, a nice compromise between the “simulator” aspect and this more digital feature would be to add picture-in-picture windows, allowing players and designers to highlight important board regions with a dedicated view that can be moved, docked, and minimized. Unlike a simple camera preset, this allows direct comparison of multiple pieces of information, for example simultaneously looking at my player board, a communal scoring board, and a contested region of the main board.

This is the sort of thing I mean when I talk about 2D vs. 3D. I do not expect Tabletop Simulator to suddenly stop being a 3D program. What I would like as TTS matures is a richer array of features that center interacting with game mechanics and information over interacting with simulated physical objects.

That perspective in mind, here are some things I would like from TTS. []’s indicate example games/programs with similar features.

Interface improvements such as:

• Additional boards and cards are easily displayed as panels which can be tucked away or summoned at the tap of a button. (PiP or menus) [VASSAL]
• Optional edge-scrolling for top-down camera views
• Improved Documents
  • PDFs and documents integrated into the main inferface more smoothly instead of in the “tablet” simulated table object.
  • Ideally support for a richer format for notes, for example supporting HTML, Markdown or simply a wider array of BB Codes. [FoundryVTT, Excalidraw, Miro]
• Improved stacks for cards/tokens.
  • Games like Combat Commander require stacking and grouping related but non-identical tokens and quickly viewing/reordering the stacks. The classic Up/Down/Top/Bottom layer adjustment would work fine for rapid re-ordering. [VASSAL]
  • A more streamlined interface for re-organizing or viewing all cards/tokens in a stack or bag. [PlayingCards.io hand management is a nice example for quickly grouping and re-ordering, even though this interface isn’t avaialble for stacks/decks]
• Statuses/Tags/States for components [FoundryVTT, VASSAL]
  • Many games use tokens to indicate a state where in a digital environment a tag/flag/tooltip would be more useful. Support for tagging components would be especially helpful in miniatures games and wargames like Combat Commander.
  • Ideally with option for always-visible and visible-on-hover.

Miniatures and role playing game improvements such as:

• Movement template support for miniatures games, with unit bases snapping to templates. [Community content for VASSAL/TTS such as X-Wing modules]
• More complex measurement tools for miniatures games
  • Custom template-based and custom-ruler based measurements [FoundryVTT]
  • Easily create custom non-physically-interacting template overlays for checking area of effect both with and without grids [FoundryVTT]
    • Ideally option to highlight overlapped components
• Support for volumetric line of sight calcualtions. [Community content for FoundryVTT - Levels modules by Ripper93]
  • Ideally involves the ability to assign a height and volume to a model / model base independently of the figure’s pose
  • Ideally calculates visible surface area of the volume with respect to a moveable point-of-origin and/or a specific model/component.
  • Automatic calculations based on a custom threshold for visible surface area would be nice, but not necessary.
  • Figure-based line of sight based on the surface area or percent of a model’s rendered surface instead of an independent or standardized volume is used in some games, but would be more complicated to implement and less versatile.

General ease of use and design

• Local storage of visual assets to greatly simplify the process of keeping modules up-to-date and using older modules. [VASSAL, FoundryVTT]

Snap points also have some awkwardness to them–it’s a bit tricky with the current interface to set snap points in the middle of a surface or on an edge, and getting components to snap edge-to-edge instead of center-to-edge can be very fiddly. Being able to control how snap points work a bit better could be very useful.

You are correct, it has been awhile since I messed with snap points and I misremembered–you can set tags for them which solves part of the problem. The way edges interact is a bit more problematic.

i’ve no idea what you mean with the edge’s or how that affects snap points?

For FOV, the issue is that Fog of War is for hiding things. In Infinity, and most other miniatures games, I have full knowledge of where my opponent’s units are. With Fog of War, the units fade in and out of visibility to indicate line of sight.

What I’m looking for is more the opposite–a positive indication of when units are in line of sight, without obscuring anything on the table. Further, while I don’t know exactly how the calculation works under the hood, it would be nice to set a model’s LOS collision box separately from the model’s visible components rather than simply using the whole model–a cylinder of a specific height and raidus from its center would cover a lot of games like Infinity.

Similarly, I don’t know what the current visible threshold is–what percent of a model or what absolute angular or linear area of a model must be visible to count as “seen” for Fog of War / Line of Sight purposes. It would be nice to be able to set this. You can build out a custom collider, but it would be nice to be able to set a couple other simple shapes other than Box from within TTS.

Open up the Piece Pack or a deck of cards–it’s harder with cards so try the Piece Pack.

Zoom in and grab two of the flatter numbered tiles.

Lock them down and set snap point in the center of their edges. That is, on the narrow side perpendicular to the table, not just at the edge of the top surface.

Place another snap point anywhere on the table.

Now, try to get the two edges to snap together, so the pieces are side-by-side with the two snap points touching (or close to touching). Try to get the snap points on the edges edges to snap to the snap point on the table.

The snap points try to attract the center of the bottom of object. On certain larger objects like the blocks in the Sandbox, it’s possible to get side-to-side snapping. On thinner objects it’s difficult to acheive the behavior.

For a game like Carcasonne or Galaxy Trucker, this is fine–we don’t need to connect the tiles to one another, we can simply lay a grid over the entire table and snap tiles to that, or in the case of galaxy trucker place snap-points on a player board. For a game like X-Wing or Turbo Drift where we want to snap the edge of a card against the edge of an arbitrarily placed piece or card that is not aligned to a grid, we have a problem. Snap points want to allign the objects center-to-snap, so the pieces try to overlap one-another instead of snapping into proper alignment.

Having more control over this behavior would be nice.

The tiles on the right are side-by-side, manually placed. Achieving this with snapping is difficult as shown on the left. Being able to snap pieces side-by-side would make certain things a lot quicker than locking pieces to avoid bumping and carefully manually placing them.

While I’m in the program, this provides another nice visual example of something I noted higher up. Placing a snap-point on the table makes it easy to stack unrelated objects. However, unlike a deck or a container, there isn’t an easy way to re-order a stack quickly, which is a common need in board games with stacked components. Having a way to quickly stack objects and re-order them would be useful.

Doing this currently requires manually unstacking pieces, and then snapping them back to the snap point in the desired order which can be quite a bit slower than even doing this manually in-person. Having layer controls for objects in a stack–either stacked by snap points or by some new stacking system–would make this the work of a couple keystrokes. Having a deck/container style “search” menu for more complex reordering of large stacks would also work, but would be a bit more tedious for quickly fixing a stack of tiles. Having both would be very nice.

so i cant really add anymore to this conversation, if you want to discord im @Grynte

Besides that i only got 2 points

1. i specifically mentioned you dont need fog of war, just turn Visualizer FoV on your piece
2. try picking up any object (tecnically cards are better) hold them all in your hand, and click a number on your keyboard