When it comes to game design, Tabletop Simulator and Tabletop Playground are great tools to play with components without having to physically create them.
I love playing games. It’s a huge surprise, I know. But as I play games, I get ideas. Most of them are terrible but they are fun to explore. And I have a few friends who are also interested in the game design space.
Online gaming (in my life) takes place mainly in Tabletop simulator and Tabletop Playground. Tabletop simulator has been a staple in the community for some time while Tabletop Playground came onto the scene a little more recently.
Both are tools that can be used to play games and upload custom models to test out game design. I wanted to create a quick guide for creating a first pass at a game. I am not going to go over any type of coding or specialized functionality. This post is mainly focused on how to make components that you might have with a physical copy of the game.
I will say that file prep is the most important part of this process. Having a tile or meeple with a specific shape is only achievable with a .png file that has the empty sections as translucent. Cards and dice must be formatted in a particular way to be inputted into either system.
Check out the Game section of MCG for more written reviews or check out the MCG YouTube Channel for Videos and the Reading Rulebooks Podcast!
What are the different systems?
What is the difference between a tabletop simulator and tabletop playground? Honestly, there is not that much in terms of interface. They are both physics simulators, and the limitations are mainly around user input.
Both systems are available on Steam (links to each can be found in their sections below) but they do run on different code. Tabletop Simulator runs on Lua while Tabletop Playground runs on JavaScript. Do you need to know either of these codes to make components? Luckily, no.
tabletop simulator
Go to the Mod on Steam
Custom Board
Quite a few board games have a board and being able to upload a custom board is important. Tabletop simulator does have a custom board function. When uploading to this object, it will naturally create a boarder around the custom image. This is very similar to a chess board type look.
If this is not the desired aesthetic, and I know it is not common, the board can be made from a custom tile instead to avoid having this bordered look. I have used this type of board before in game design mainly because it didn’t really matter to me. But most board games lack a border so I doubt it would truly be reflected in and physically printed version of the game.
Custom Tile
The custom tile function is great from a multitude of uses. It can make boards (just make them big tiles), stackable tiles, and non-stackable tiles. This is good for making chits, polyominos and the like.
I am making a game with polyominos, and the script automatically reshapes the tile into the correct shape making the image. This is great for games when the tiles need to interlink into each other since they are not a standard shape.
Custom Tokens
Meeples are effectively just large tiles. Or rather, very thick tiles. The one unique factor about them is their orientation. TTS allows for a standing option which will determine the meeples orientation on loading. This can change a meeple from standing to being a sleepy meeple. Thickness is also an important factor when creating a meeple as it helps separate a meeple from a tile.
Custom Card(s)
Cards are something that can be a little intimidating because, more than likely, you’re not only trying to make one card, but you also want to make a deck of cards. I feel cards are fairly common in game design. Luckily, this is one of the components that has a template. You can find these templated in the TTS modding files but I’m going to leave some here as well.
With a single card, there are only four options: what type (shape) of card you want, the design on the front, the design on the back, and if the card is currently sideways in the uploaded design. For this type of card, you don’t need a template, just two files (one front and one back) that are the same size.
Making a deck is a little more involved. All the cards should be transferred onto the above template. If there are different backs, then a template will be needed for the front and the back. If not, then only a single card back images are needed but the ratio should be the same as the ratio of the cards.
I don’t typically mess around with the width and height too much, but it is an area that you can play. If they are standard shaped cards, I like to keep the preset. With square cards, I adjust the width down to 7.
The number of cards will indicate how many spaces of the template that the script will look at. It will look in the order indicated on the template.
Custom Dice
Dice is another difficult upload without a template. Luckily, I was able to pull those from the modding files as well. If your game design includes dice, this is really the only way to get them into the system. I don’t fully understand what is going on in the background that requires the dice to be oriented in such a way but luckily, I don’t need to understand in order to make dice.
Tabletop Playground
Go to the Mod on Steam
The method of creating custom objects is very similar to Tabletop Simulator but there are a lot more options for modifying the objects. The Tabletop playground had a more involved method of making objects but I’m going to keep it relatively simple and just talk about the basics of object creation for game design. All objects need to be made when in editor mode.
Custom Board
The process for making a board is very simple in the tabletop playground. When choosing the board, the board image is inputted in the very first prompt. I haven’t really played around with the other inputs beyond adjusting the dimensions of the board if needed but I have rarely needed to touch that.
Custom Tile
The custom time function is very similar to that of TTS. It allows to indicate stackable tiles, non-stackable tile, and thickness. The shaping is done based on the uploaded image and the back and front of the tile can be customized as desired.
Custom Meeples
To add a meeple, a flat image that has the correct cut away spaces is needed. The meeple is effectively a thick tile with a standing capability which gives it’s a standardized orientation. If you want a meeple that changes shape from one side to another, well I don’t know how to do that… That’s more advanced than I would use for beginner game design.
Custom Card(s)
The card template used for TTPG can be the same as the template for TTS. The image should contain the card in order going from left to right, and then top to bottom. Just like the template.
When entering the image into the system, the editor will assume it to be one card. This is going to be modified in the right panel. First, I want to indicate if there is a back image that is static for all cards or if the back changes depending on the card.
Then the size of the template needs to be indicated, identifying the number of rows and columns. This will help the editor divide up the image into the appropriate spacing. It is important to address the shape of the card and rectangular cards and square cards will divide differently.
The plus sign will increase the number of cards that is pulled into the deck. If the deck has 10 cards, then the plus button should be used 9 times until all ten cards are visible in the panel on the right.
Custom Dice
The dice are difficult to upload without a template. And the template is different from the TTS template. I’m assuming that must do something with the different coding methods. But I was able to find templates for these dice so you can make it work with any game design.
Leave a Reply