Fudge Dice in the Chat Window

October 29, 2008

A quick addendum to my last post, about dice rolls in the chat window: I’ve got Fudge dice working.

In case you’re not familiar with Fudge dice, they’re six-sided dice with two “+”, two “-”, and two blank sides. Rolling four Fudge dice gives you a range from -4 to +4. Fudge is a “rules-light” game system originating in the 1990s. A number of game systems draw upon Fudge in one way or another. For instance, Spirit of the Century, a popular pulp RPG, traces its lineage back to Fudge via FATE.

Posted by John Lammers | Filed Under EpicTable Development, Screenshots

Dice Rolls in the Chat Window

October 27, 2008

Recently, I discussed EpicTable’s Dice Cup Designer. Since that post, I’ve integrated a lot of technology from the Dice Cup Designer into the chat window. Dice rolls have been working in the chat window for a long time, but the chat window used to use a canned set of dice I’d shot with a digital camera. Functional, but not very pretty. It also used to lack support for some of the more interesting dice rolls that the Dice Cup Designer can create. Now, the chat window uses Brennen’s oh-so-much-prettier dice, it preserves the color scheme of the dice, and it visualizes features of the dice cup, such as summing the dice and dropping dice. Read more

Posted by John Lammers | Filed Under EpicTable Development, Screenshots

EpicTable Dice Cup Designer

October 13, 2008

One of my goals for EpicTable is to support many different roleplaying games. In a previous post, I discussed my efforts to implement dice rolls found in a wide variety of RPGs. In this post, I examine dice rolls from a slightly different angle—that of composing complicated dice rolls—and I’ll give you a preview of EpicTable’s “Dice Cup Designer“.
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Posted by John Lammers | Filed Under EpicTable Development, Screenshots

Roleplay-Centric Chat

August 31, 2008

In this post, I’m going to introduce you to EpicTable’s “Roleplay-Centric Chat” features. I call EpicTable’s text chat “roleplay centric” because it has features like an integrated dice roller, support for multiple personas, and many other features that tailor it to the roleplaying experience.
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Posted by John Lammers | Filed Under Screenshots

Tavern in Virtual Tabletop TrueVision

May 26, 2008

In this post, I’m going to introduce you to EpicTable’s TrueVision. TrueVision allows you to show your players only what their characters would see. It takes into account lighting, line-of-sight, and visual acuity (e.g., low-light vision, darkvision) or equipment (e.g., nightvision goggles). Read more

Posted by John Lammers | Filed Under EpicTable Development, Screenshots

Main Screen (Map Centric)

May 23, 2008

This screenshot shows the main EpicTable screen. For map-based games, this is what you’ll often be looking at. The player characters, as well as an ettin they’re about to encounter, occupy the character bar near the top of the screen. The GM can drag these around into initiative order, or turn order, or whatever’s appropriate for your game. He can also drag them onto the map.

Center screen, you see the player tokens on the map. Naturally, these can be dragged around as well. The entire map is illuminated because we’re looking through the GM’s point of view. In a later screenshot, I’ll show you TrueVision in action— where each player only sees what his character would see.

Notice that you have your chat window at the right. (That’s dockable in case you don’t want it on the right.) Notice also the user-defined dice cups at the top. Often, you’ll roll dice right from your character sheet, but you have the option to use these ad-hoc dice cups.

Finally, it’s worth noting that because this is the GM’s view, there are some things available that wouldn’t be there for players; for instance, the ability to add images to the handout gallery and the buttons allowing him to create more maps. We’ll get deeper into some of these features in later posts.

Credits:
Map made using Dundjinni with textures and objects from the user art forum; notably, Cistacola’s cavern textures, Greytale’s arches (which became bridge rails), and Dragonwolf’s tile (north of the bridge). The tokens are courtesy of Fiery Dragon Productions. You can find links to all these on my Links page.

Posted by John Lammers | Filed Under Screenshots

EpicTable QuickStart

May 21, 2008

EpicTable’s QuickStart page is the first thing that greets you when you launch EpicTable. As you can see in this screenshot, you’re shown a list of the games in which you’re participating. Icons to the left of each game name indicate whether you’re the GM or a player . Read more