Tactical Command
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Tabletop - A 3d Tabletop Wargame Simulator
http://www.tacticalwargames.net/taccmd/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=25308		 Page 1 of 23
Author:  zombocom [ Thu Jun 06, 2013 1:28 pm ]
Post subject:  Tabletop - A 3d Tabletop Wargame Simulator
A few people have been asking about this lately, so I thought I'd give an update.

Tabletop is my online 3d tool for playing tabletop wargames, initially specifically epic. Of course due to legal reasons there's no way it could be publicly released as a tool for playing epic, that's just for development purposes.

Eventually the intention is to have modular game systems that can be plugged it, both generic and non-generic where rights can be obtained.

For now though, it's a bit of fun for playing epic online.

Here's a video showing off the latest version:



Other than the copyright issues, there are some significant issues with it that stop be being able to make a public release yet, but I'm going to need some playtesters in the mean time...
Author:  Berkut666 [ Thu Jun 06, 2013 1:42 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Tabletop - A 3d Tabletop Wargame Simulator
Nice. so does it work out all the hits etc for you??
Author:  GlynG [ Thu Jun 06, 2013 2:13 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Tabletop - A 3d Tabletop Wargame Simulator
No, you'd work that out with the opponent. It just provided a method of rolling dice and communicating.

I'm keen to playtest, as said elsewhere, lets arrange a time sometime.
Author:  Berkut666 [ Thu Jun 06, 2013 2:17 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Tabletop - A 3d Tabletop Wargame Simulator
Ah ok so its a way of two people playing each other remotely?
Author:  Apologist [ Thu Jun 06, 2013 2:55 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Tabletop - A 3d Tabletop Wargame Simulator
I think a few of my friends would be interested in this – what sort of computer requirements does it need?
Author:  Berkut666 [ Thu Jun 06, 2013 2:57 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Tabletop - A 3d Tabletop Wargame Simulator
Living where I do I may not have a choice....
Author:  mordoten [ Thu Jun 06, 2013 6:44 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Tabletop - A 3d Tabletop Wargame Simulator
Me and my friend are surely up for this!!!
Author:  Alf O'Mega [ Thu Jun 06, 2013 7:07 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Tabletop - A 3d Tabletop Wargame Simulator
Yep, this looks great. How far along is it for online use? Stability? In game chat? Can you save games? Can it restore dropped connections?

If it's as solid as the demo looks you're on to a winner. Is it windows only or could it be compiled to run on osx too?

Looks really promising.
Author:  Levian [ Thu Jun 06, 2013 9:58 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Tabletop - A 3d Tabletop Wargame Simulator
Very impressive!!
Author:  zombocom [ Thu Jun 06, 2013 10:40 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Tabletop - A 3d Tabletop Wargame Simulator
Berkut666 wrote:
Nice. so does it work out all the hits etc for you??


As Glyn mentioned, no. It just provides an environment in which players can play games, much like a real tabletop does. It provides terrain, models, measuring abilities, dice rolling etc, and the players talk to each other and play a game.

Apologist wrote:
I think a few of my friends would be interested in this – what sort of computer requirements does it need?


Pretty reasonable. It runs on Windows, OSX and Linux, (though I've not actually tested the mac and linux versions yet...). Any PC which could run games that are roughly 10 years old should be able to handle it no problem.

Put it this way, on my PC I get frame rates in the 1000's, and my rig is hardly top of the line.

Alf O'Mega wrote:
Yep, this looks great. How far along is it for online use? Stability? In game chat? Can you save games? Can it restore dropped connections?


It's based on an existing game engine, so many features already exist, though I'm limited in what I can add.

Online play is of course supported, though I'm yet to make a nice tidy front-end for it (one of the big issues stopping a public release yet). It should be very stable, since it's based on a well tested engine that's been used for several other games, and it's an engine I have a lot of experience coding on. I've never had a crash yet.

However, I've not managed to actually play a game with it yet, hence the call for playtesters.

In-game chat is supported in a really basic sense, in the ability to send text messages to each other. Really it need to be played with Skype or similar running in the background. I know this is a big annoyance and I'd love it to be something built in, but the engine just doesn't support it.

With regards to dropped connections, the game works on a server/client basis, where one player hosts the game and the other(s) connect to him. If any of the clients drop out, they can just reconnect to the server and nothing will be lost, but if the host crashes out everyone will be dropped and the game state lost. The engine does also support dedicated servers, so that could be used if more persistent tabletops were needed (say for long campaign games).

Saving game states is not currently supported, but I can see a good way of doing it.

Alf O'Mega wrote:
If it's as solid as the demo looks you're on to a winner. Is it windows only or could it be compiled to run on osx too?


As I mention above, there are binaries for Linux and Mac, though I've personalliy never tested them and there could be issues (llinux is picky about filename capitalisation for example, which windows isn't). Playtesting will show all of this up of course.
Author:  zombocom [ Thu Jun 06, 2013 10:41 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Tabletop - A 3d Tabletop Wargame Simulator
I should also mention that in a week or so I'm going to be disappearing traveling for a couple of months, so don't expect much in the way of progress in the short term...
Author:  Markconz [ Thu Jun 06, 2013 11:00 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Tabletop - A 3d Tabletop Wargame Simulator
Looks good. Might be asking a bit much, but it would be nice to have the moves "lock out" at maximum move distance when moving them. E.g. 15cm for the infantry, 30cm for the APC's, so you don't have to get fiddly over the last fractions of cm.
Author:  Simulated Knave [ Thu Jun 06, 2013 11:46 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Tabletop - A 3d Tabletop Wargame Simulator
I'd be quite interested in playtesting. :)
Author:  zombocom [ Fri Jun 07, 2013 10:10 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Tabletop - A 3d Tabletop Wargame Simulator
Markconz wrote:
Looks good. Might be asking a bit much, but it would be nice to have the moves "lock out" at maximum move distance when moving them. E.g. 15cm for the infantry, 30cm for the APC's, so you don't have to get fiddly over the last fractions of cm.


That is doable, but very epic specific, and requires hardcoding distances. It goes against the principle I'm after of just providing a playing environment. Also it'd be really annoying if you were moving units to the off-table area, for example.

I did experiment with the distance text in the center of the screen going red when over movement distance, but I didn't like it.
Author:  Evil and Chaos [ Fri Jun 07, 2013 10:14 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Tabletop - A 3d Tabletop Wargame Simulator
You should put out a copy for testing before you go away Zombiecom. I might be able to walk a few people through how to set up online games etc. There will have been a lot of testing done by the time you get back. Perhaps even a few extra armies created (that's just sprites & external text files, so doesn't require coding, right?).
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