EpicTable Hits the Jackpot

September 22, 2009

Woohoo! EpicTable is unexpectedly awash in pieces of eight!

Along the way to finishing the “Arrange” (i.e., z-order) context menu for the tabletop, I introduced a short-lived but extravagant bug. One of the things you can do with objects on the tabletop is duplicate them. Last night, you could duplicate them…a lot. Imagine my surprise to see pieces of eight spilling out across the tabletop. By the time I stopped it, I had more than 9,000 coins on the tabletop! They were multiplying like tribbles.

Now, if I could just figure out how to do this on my physical tabletop….

Here’s a shot of the current context menu for Arrange with a sufficiently tamed Duplicate function. To the folks from the forum who have weighed in on this, let me know what you think. I’ve not forever ruled out something more elaborate, but my thinking is that this is sufficient for version 1.

Credits and Sources: Background texture and Pieces of eight from iStockphoto.

Posted by John Lammers | Filed Under EpicTable Development, Screenshots  

Stackable Surface Objects

September 16, 2009

Added proper stacking (i.e., “z-order” tracking and rendering) to EpicTable surfaces. This means that if you put one object down on top of another, it’ll look that way and not “slide under” the other object. Not a huge deal, just something that needed to be knocked off the list.
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Posted by John Lammers | Filed Under EpicTable Development, Screenshots  

Automatic Color for Virtual Tabletop Selections

September 12, 2009

That’s a really long title to say, “Hey, look at this! You can see the selection highlighting on light surfaces and dark surfaces without having to mess with the selection highlight color yourself.” This falls into the bucket of little things I’ve polished up while integrating the virtual tabletop surface into the rest of EpicTable.

Nothing earth-shattering, but some of the tabletop textures made it tough to tell what was selected. It’s even smart enough to look at the color directly under it, rather than the color of the whole surface, in case you happen to have light and dark areas on the surface. That’s not as likely with a tabletop, but with a map it’s more common. Since maps are now just specializations of tabletop surfaces, they get this same goodness for free.

Credits and Sources: Fanmail images by Brennen Reece. Leather and canvas textures from iStockphoto.

Posted by John Lammers | Filed Under EpicTable Development  

Virtual Tabletops and In-Character/Out-of-Character Speech

February 1, 2008

chat bubbles This post presents some ideas for separating player speech from character speech when playing roleplaying games on a virtual tabletop.

Around your kitchen table, it’s probably obvious when you’re talking vs. when your character is talking. Especially if you’re that guy who always plays a gnome or a halfling and has to stay in character all the time. (You know who you are. Stop it.) When your group moves to a virtual tabletop, though, you need a new way to keep track of who’s saying what. Read more

Posted by John Lammers | Filed Under EpicTable Blog  

Finding Maps: Virtual Tabletop Tips, Part 2

January 8, 2008

If you’re using a virtual tabletop (or “VT”), you have the option of playing on maps that are much nicer-looking than a wet-erase mat. “Yeah, but I’m not an artist…” you say. The good news is, you don’t have to be. There are a lot of resources out there for the VT map-maker. I’ll introduce you to some of them in this post.
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Posted by John Lammers | Filed Under EpicTable Blog  

Maps! – Virtual Tabletop Tips, Part 1

January 3, 2008

wet-erase battlemat and digital mapI wanted to call this “Virtual Maps are Better than Physical Maps…Unless You Use Dwarven Forge…And Have Unlimited Funds…And Unlimited Room…And a Really Indulgent Spouse”, but that seemed a little long winded for a title. So, “Maps!”, if only because I’d exhausted my own patience by then.
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Posted by John Lammers | Filed Under EpicTable Blog