Network Play Coming to 3D Virtual Tabletop via Kickstarter

3D Virtual Tabletop is now set to become a real virtual tabletop, letting you share the map with others in real-time, whether they’re over the other side of the table, or over the other side of the world.  That’s what I’ve been spending spent most of my time on since the last update, but there are a few things I need to spend money on to make it happen, so I’ll be launching a Kickstarter campaign next week to help finish off the final stage.  You’ll be pleased to know that the networking is cross-platform, so it doesn’t matter if you’re on an iPad, iPhone or Android, you can play with the rest of the group regardless of what device they have.  My Pathfinder group has mostly iPads or iPhones, but we have one guy with an Android phone, so I can’t get away without including him too.

More details to come over the next week.

Preview of the Next Update for iPhone, iPad & Android

The next update for 3D Virtual Tabletop for iPhone, iPad & Android is coming soon, so I thought I’d give you a little taste of what’s to come.  It feels like everyone has been asking me when they are going to be able to put miniatures of different sizes on the map, and the answer is in this next version!  Check out the screenshot.  You can have bigger minis too, the dragons that are included with the app are now available in gargantuan size, which is 4x4 squares, they look great on the map, much more frightening.  I can’t wait to put one of those big guys down in front of my group. This is good timing because the Pathfinder party that I am running has just got to 5th level so they’re going to be facing some tougher opponents, some of which are at least going to be large.

Another very popular suggestion that I’ve had is for putting down flat tokens.  A lot of you like the top-down view, I know my group is a big fan of it for figuring out distance and area of effect.  You can also use the flat tokens for things like throwing out a coin with a light spell on it, which isn’t appropriate for a stand-up pawn.  Something I hadn’t expected, but which is really cool, is a message from a guy wanting to do starship battles, simulating a tactical display.  It’s also necessary in this scenario to have the minis stay pointing in a particular direction, and not to face the camera.  That’s what they now do, you can place them facing the way you want, and they will keep that heading.  This goes for stand-up minis as well, you can see in the top screenshot that the elf that is facing away from the camera, towards to the ogre, is shown in greyscale, this lets you know that you’re looking at the back of the figure, but still gives you the detail to know who it is.

Hopefully this update will be out in a week or so, I’ll let you know when it hits.

The map in these screenshots is from DramaScape.

Android Update for 3D Virtual Tabletop Released

You’ll be pleased to know that the Android update for 3D Virtual Tabletop is finally here, it’s available right now in Google Play, and has been submitted to the Amazon Appstore.  I’ve implemented the top 3 requests so I hope you’ll be happy with it.  You can now add your own miniatures and maps from pictures stored locally on the device.  You can also zoom in and out, and change the camera angle.  The tabletop is also now brightly lit, so there is no need for light from the miniatures.

Adding new miniatures is easy, just tap the “+” on the Miniatures screen and you can select the image to use from the Gallery, or your favourite file browser.  Miniatures can be made from pictures of any size, they are shrunk down to a more appropriate height for the virtual tabletop.  I’ve found this especially handy when a druid my game summons animals (Or a nature’s ally in the Dungeons & Dragons vernacular).  I can do a quick search on the internet for the creature and download a good image, then access that image from within the app to create a scene that exactly matches what just happened in game.  This is also great because you can play games of any genre and get exactly the right portrait for your character in there.

Loading maps is now much simpler, and getting maps that work with the virtual tabletop is much easier.  Maps no longer have to be a fixed size, anything less than 2048 x 2048 pixels will do.  The images for maps are imported at the same size pixel-for-pixel.  All you have to do is resize the image so that the squares are 25 pixels wide, and the miniatures snapping to the grid will work perfectly.  An easy way to do this is to have a 2000 x 2000 px image that has 40 squares along each side, or a 1000 x 1000 px image containing 20 x 20 squares, either will work.

The most popular request I’ve had is for a top-down view and now you can do it!  Simply move two fingers up and down the screen and you can change the view from an oblique angle, which was used in the previous versions, to a top-down view, and even to an over-the-shoulder view almost parallel to the ground.  This lets you get the perspective that you want, for counting squares, or for getting into the head of your character to see what they see.  Along with this new gesture, you can also pinch to zoom when rotating the map around. As a DM I’ve found this brilliant to get my bearings in a dungeon by zooming right out to see the whole map, then focusing in close on the room where the action is happening.  It all works very smoothly and feels like a natural way to interact with the tabletop.

You’ll be seeing these improvements come to the iPhone & iPad, as well as the demo on this website. To make these improvements possible, I’ve had to revert to full global lighting, without fine-grained control on each miniature, but overall it’s now feasible to use the Android version to run a game around the same table.  I’m also planning to have another Android update out soon to fulfil some other popular requests.  Number 4 on the most popular request list is about to bite the dust and I’m sure you’ll be thrilled with it, bringing another dimension to the game.  I also have some very exciting news to announce soon that will really take this thing to the next level, stay tuned!

3D Virtual Tabletop Demo on Android Updated

The 3D Virtual Tabletop app on Android has just been updated with the latest improvements that are in the online demo:

• More realistic miniatures that really look like a card on a plastic holder
• Now includes more than 100 miniatures that you can add to the map
• A light source can be added or removed from each mini
• Load your own maps to explore

It was great to see these features come to Android.  Improved lighting is the next thing that I’m going to put in the Android version, that’s still one aspect that is not quite as good as the online demo.  I’ve still got some more miniatures to add to the collection too, I’m hoping to end up with more than 150 packed in there.  That should cover most creatures that characters will encounter in a standard fantasy role playing game, with a wide variation of monsters to have a good substitute if the exact one is not available in the included menagerie.

Loading of maps is fairly basic at this stage, you need to have one set up to the right size and scale before you load it in.  Hopefully it won’t be too long before you can scale and shift maps within 3D Virtual Tabletop, which will make it a lot easier and quicker to use.  I’m looking forward to enabling maps of higher densities too, like 50px per square or 100px per square, as they make it look amazing and will really bring your rpg to life.

Updating 3D Virtual Tabletop for Android has been a difficult process that has taken longer than it should have because I don’t have an Android device to try it on.  I’m currently looking at the available Android tablets to see if I can pick one up at a reasonable price.  That would really help and bring updates faster to Android.  If the table top is not quite working right on your phone or tablet, let me know, but with the wide range of devices out there, there is only so much I can do.