PbP Virtual Table Top (VTT)

rugiii · Jan 20, 2007

I had been out of the D&D scene for awhile, when about a year ago, I tried to start up a small game with two of my cousins (we used to play every summer over a decade ago...but as they say, "all good things...") and it worked for a couple months...then one moved away and then the other moved away...and the game stopped.

Couple months ago I became intrigued with the idea of the PbP style of play, but the one thing that sort of bothered me was the fact that, as far as I can tell, their is little way to replicate the table top. And ever since 3E D&D, the map has become a fundamental part of the game.

Now I'm a hobbiest when it comes to web design and working with Flash (using SwishMax), so I thought I'd try to create a Virtual Table Top flash application that would allow the same asynchronous game play that PbP does.

For the past 3 months or so I've been fooling around putting different versions of a VTT together, and I think I've got something that is...relatively useful and flexible (you don't have to "recompile" the swish-code every time you want to add a pc, monster, or map...you just add the files into the appropriate directories by way of FTP or your web site administration console)

It isn't perfect by any means...there are still a number of bugs in the flash-code that mess up object creation every once in awhile (usually deleting the object and recreating it does the trick), and for anyone with a slow connection I can't imagine it would work...but it's something.

I guess my question is: Is anyone out there in the Gaming World even interested in something like this? Is there even a need?

If enough people are interested I'll whip up a prototype VTT and put up a link to it.

Raloc · Jan 20, 2007

I wouldn't mind taking a look at it. I'm writing something of this nature with javascript and server side languages at the moment (a replacement for ORPG, really, which is what our group currently and has used for a long time (I recall using WebRPG back in the day when it was free too), but there are some things I don't like), and it's going along pretty well.

rugiii · Jan 20, 2007

Well, I cooked up a test VTT. I don't have any instructions written for its use, and I found a few more bugs while setting the test up...but what can you do?

Simple Instructions:

First off, you're going to see nothing but white. On the lower right there will be a panel that says "center on pc". Open it and then hit a pc's name...it'll center the map on that pc.

- Objects with blue icons are general or PC objects and can be moved by normal PCs
- Objects with red icons can only be moved by the DM
- Note that there are 2 icons. One is a bullseye looking thing and clicking on it brings up a menu. The other is a directional pad and clicking dragging moves the object.

The DM password is: dm
The PC password is: pc

You only need to hit the password button if you want to bring up the special DM panels or want to modify the map slices (visibility and placement). Otherwise having the password typed in the box is good enough.

To modify the map slices, enter the DM password and hit the button. A little green icon will appear in the left corner of every map slice. Hold down on it and drag to move it. If you just click on a map slice it will either fade (in which case once saved, will be invisible to the PCs) or it will become solid (and visible after saving).

The left panels list the types of objects you can create. There are some bug here. If objects get messed up the best thing to do is delete them and try again.

Anyway, once you're done you hit the save button and then you have to close the browser and bring the page back up to get a refreshed version. I've been working on how to force a reload from the server instead of having it load from cache, but I haven't had any luck.

Just remember what I said...I'm a hobbiest...so this isn't a professional job or anything.

Let me know what you think...

http://add.k-sol.net/vtt_demo/

2WS-Steve · Jan 20, 2007

Something like this for PbP would be extraordinarily nice.

I scoured the internet for various things that could be used as a persistent tabletop a few months back when we started a PbP game, and, while some software looked like it had potential, nothing really worked.

There are some Ajax solutions, online sketchpads and such, that also looked like that had a hope.

My ideal would be something just like Kloogewerks or Fantasy Grounds map functions but saving it on a server -- seems like that might have to wait for later generation web 2.0 apps though.

Raloc · Jan 20, 2007

Steve, that's basically what I'm working on (javascript and ss = AJAX) at the moment. It's going to have most of the popular features, including a bunch of stuff that will hopefully save me time in my own DMing as well as making games run faster. I'm not ready to release yet though. I have some pretty cool stuff in the works for it, however, so when it goes live I'll make sure to post.

Hussar · Jan 20, 2007

For a virtual tabletop, check out www.openrpg.com or OpenRPG +. It's free, opensource and works well.

2WS-Steve · Jan 20, 2007

Hussar said:
For a virtual tabletop, check out www.openrpg.com or OpenRPG +. It's free, opensource and works well.

Huss, what we're looking for is a persistent online map that players and GMs could log into whenever they had the time, check the position of folks, then move their guys around.

It wouldn't be used for playing simultaneously over the net, but to support Play by Message Board or PBEM games, where you never know when someone will be online.

The ideal picture would be something where the player could just bop over to a webpage, drag their character icons to different locations on the map, then wait for the GM to move the monsters and post an update to the message board.

I've actually tried leaving something like OpenRPG runnnig on my computer all the time for this -- but that was a pain.

2WS-Steve · Jan 20, 2007

Raloc said:
Steve, that's basically what I'm working on (javascript and ss = AJAX) at the moment. It's going to have most of the popular features, including a bunch of stuff that will hopefully save me time in my own DMing as well as making games run faster. I'm not ready to release yet though. I have some pretty cool stuff in the works for it, however, so when it goes live I'll make sure to post.

That'd be perfect! I look forward to seeing it and bet that you'd quickly get a whole bunch of people trying to use it.

Hussar · Jan 20, 2007

2WS-Steve said:
Huss, what we're looking for is a persistent online map that players and GMs could log into whenever they had the time, check the position of folks, then move their guys around.

It wouldn't be used for playing simultaneously over the net, but to support Play by Message Board or PBEM games, where you never know when someone will be online.

The ideal picture would be something where the player could just bop over to a webpage, drag their character icons to different locations on the map, then wait for the GM to move the monsters and post an update to the message board.

I've actually tried leaving something like OpenRPG runnnig on my computer all the time for this -- but that was a pain.

Whoops, my bad. nevermind. :heh: