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Comment by davidye | Hacker News Reader

Author here.

Screentop is a tabletop sandbox that supports cards, dice, boards, counters, and hidden player state. In the future I'd like to add scripting support so that more complex game mechanics and rules can be implemented.

Client stack: Typescript, React, Apollo, and a custom react-reconciler renderer that targets canvas

Server stack: Elixir, Phoenix, Absinthe

Happy to answer any questions and would love your feedback! Also I have two asks for HN:

1) Content - if you know any designers or publishers that would be interested in creating digital versions of their games please direct them my way!

2) Individual(s) to team up with - this is a solo side project right now but I'm interested in working with others, technical or non-technical, to see where this goes.

Discord: https://discordapp.com/invite/wva8ebh Email: david@screentop.gg

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It really does need more screenshots and obvious 'in use' videos and photos

Hi David,

I'm a boardgame designer and a member of the NYC Playtest group. I don't personally do virtual prototypes, but of those who do, Tabletop Simulator is the one they all use. I'm curious what you see as the key differentiators between your app and Tabletop Simulator?

The main difference is that Screentop runs in a web browser. To start a group play session, you can just send someone a URL and there's no need for everyone to purchase / install / setup TTS.

This also makes it multiplatform. While (paid) TTS supports Windows, Linux and Mac, running on a web browser lets you play this (presumably) on an Android tablet, Chromebook, or iPad.

This only works on desktop right now but I do want to support other devices in the future.

Loads fine on my iPad and can’t play due to lack of touch, but came here to say my suggestion is allow users to tap the legend items (“Press space to flip”, for example)

Support for mobile is crucial for me and any of the games that I and my groups play in.

I’m not even going to mention your tool to anyone until you’ve made a commitment to full mobile support.

I do plan to! But solo dev with a back log of features so I can't give a concrete ETA.

This looks really awesome. I just commented today actually in the VR article how the tabletop simulator is about the only VR game that looks appealing just to get a group of people together to play a game like this, but I'd prefer something more quick and easy to pickup and play. This looks exactly like something I was thinking of.

A question though, how do you plan on dealing with the inevitable cease and desists as people create unofficial versions of their favourite proprietary games or even games using copyrighted properties?

As far as I know, some game companies...cough cough...wizards of the coast...cough cough...among others get kinda protective of these things.

I would take them down - though my understanding is that a lot of publishers actually want a digital version of their games available as a way to promote physical sales. So I would love to work with publishers to put official games on Screentop.

That would be pretty cool. I'd just mostly hate to see this project get into trouble over something like that. Honestly, I hope however it would work out it ends up being positive. Having some more popular games on there would help with exposure.

So, how is this different from roll20?

I’m in an FFG SWRPG game right now that uses roll20 (to show the map, handle rolls and character sheets, etc...) and discord (mostly for voice and text chat, because roll20 isn’t as good at those things).

We are moving over to a different discord server that doesn’t use roll20 for any of their current games, but would give us a much larger group of people to potentially play with. Of course, there are things that discord doesn’t do that roll20 does.

But if I could point them at a free solution that could take the place of roll20, that might be a boon to the entire larger community.

Do you have any videos showing current gameplay? Or any intro videos showing how to use the system?

It isn't entirely clear to me what this is. Maybe I've got too much DynamicLand on the brain, but I was picturing using a projector (aimed down) to play games on a tabletop, and wondering how you were doing input, etc.

"Screentop is a digital platform for tabletop gaming. Choose a game, invite friends, and start playing directly in your browser." Is there actually any 'tabletop' in the gaming? Is it for playing virtual (tabletop) boardgames? Do you play with your friends over the internet, or is it a local multiplayer situation?

I'm sure the answers to these questions are painfully obvious to you, but as a visitor to the site, an about page to help orient me would be much appreciated. :-)

Yeah I need to clean up the marketing a bit!

For now try it out by clicking the Play button on one of the games such as: https://screentop.gg/@BrotherMingGames/code-geass

Also just posted a few screenshots on the product hunt page which may help clarify: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/screentop-gg

Thank you.

Is there mobile support? I tried to play with the 52 card deck on Firefox for Android and nothing was responding to my tapping.

I second the call for having more info on the site about what this is, it looks very interesting

Mobile is not currently supported.

I'll be in touch, I'm currently building a new piece of infrastructure to support board-games. I almost have hearts working with full rules, and I want to explore some of the AI side of things.

Excited to meet more people interested in this space - send me an email and let's chat!

I really need a word for when I'm pissed someone beat me to an idea but delighted that it exists because of them.

I'd really like to know more on how to specify a game for your platform. A scripting language is a good idea, but I'd like to see it limited in scope. You don't want your board games to just become video games. I never could figure out where exactly those limits should be.

I'm planning a startup around a programming language just for board games.

Do you have a design document or wishlist or blog post for such a language?

I think you are on to something here.

I have several documents, but nothing coherent yet. On the bright side, I'm about to finish implementing hearts in my own language, so that's exciting.

Bittersweet?

The game state is a json schema object and user actions (roll dice, shuffle container, move component, etc) are json patches that update this state.

I want scripting to allow specific mechanics that would be more tedious to perform manually. For example: Draw N cards based on the value of a dice roll. Or to potentially move a turn token around from one player to the next after an action is performed. Haven't though too deeply about implementation yet though.

Serendipity+zeitgeist

Serendeitgeist

Nice, or what about: gazumped + serendipity = gazumpdipity ?

> In the future I'd like to add scripting support so that more complex game mechanics and rules can be implemented.

You're probably aware of this library, but I highly recommend boardgame.io [1]. It also provides React components.

[1] https://boardgame.io/

I spoke to the guy behind boardgame.io a few months ago. Awesome engine but it's more geared towards building out the rules / mechanics of a specific game vs a sandbox approach.

1) How do you handle "push"? Technical curiousity, I wanted to do something similar for just cards but couldn't figure out how to do push (long polling?).

2) Does the site "evaluate" the game state? (Know who's turn it is for example.) Sorry, I have no one to play with or I would try your site.

1) Game state is a json that is synced through websocket via Phoenix channels.

2) It doesn't currently enforce game mechanics like player turn.

Is there a screenshot gallery?

Oops definitely should have done that before posting, will get on it!

This is seriously dope, love it! If you are taking any suggestions for commercial games, then I would play the hell out of Imperial.

I'm curious what made you decide against Phoenix live view with an elixir backend

open source?

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