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Old 08-06-2018, 06:08 PM   #21
afschell
 
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Southeastern PA
Default Re: TFT on Virtual Tabletops

I have used both Roll20 and MapTools for GURPS. Both support hex grids.

Personally I find that MapTools works better for a number of reasons:
  1. It runs on my machine. This means I control how much disk space I may use (virtually unlimited) and the uploads are painless.
  2. For voice and, sometimes video, I uses a Discord "server". Have not had any issues with it and it appears to take less bandwidth than either Roll20 or Google.
One pain point is that sometimes the map is difficult for the players to locate and zoom in on. This may very well be our inexperience with the tool. Otherwise it works nicely. And the vision blocking layer (VBL) is decent too. I have to make a couple of images with GIMP to get the maps small enough but the VBL algorithm seems to work fairly well.

Have not done any TFT:ITL with it yet. But with the megahexes being available on PDF I am not expecting any trouble at all.

P.S. It runs on a Mac as well. That's what I use.

Last edited by afschell; 08-06-2018 at 06:09 PM. Reason: Added Mac P.S.
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Old 08-08-2018, 02:16 AM   #22
zot
 
Join Date: May 2018
Default Re: TFT on Virtual Tabletops

Quote:
Originally Posted by afschell View Post
I have used both Roll20 and MapTools for GURPS. Both support hex grids.

Personally I find that MapTools works better for a number of reasons:
  1. It runs on my machine. This means I control how much disk space I may use (virtually unlimited) and the uploads are painless.
  2. For voice and, sometimes video, I uses a Discord "server". Have not had any issues with it and it appears to take less bandwidth than either Roll20 or Google.
One pain point is that sometimes the map is difficult for the players to locate and zoom in on. This may very well be our inexperience with the tool. Otherwise it works nicely. And the vision blocking layer (VBL) is decent too. I have to make a couple of images with GIMP to get the maps small enough but the VBL algorithm seems to work fairly well.

Have not done any TFT:ITL with it yet. But with the megahexes being available on PDF I am not expecting any trouble at all.

P.S. It runs on a Mac as well. That's what I use.
Google Docs just runs out of a browser, lets you collaborate in real time very well, and makes it easy to locate maps and whatnot :).

I've been updating my maps document that people can copy, modify, and use for real time collaboration (just added a page-sized hex grid and some extra "parts").
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Old 08-08-2018, 09:48 AM   #23
DeDiceManCometh
 
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Default Re: TFT on Virtual Tabletops

Quote:
Originally Posted by afschell View Post
I have used both Roll20 and MapTools for GURPS. Both support hex grids.
Yes, but do they support megahex grids?
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Old 08-08-2018, 10:43 AM   #24
afschell
 
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Southeastern PA
Default Re: TFT on Virtual Tabletops

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Originally Posted by zot View Post
Google Docs just runs out of a browser, lets you collaborate in real time very well, and makes it easy to locate maps and whatnot :).
I never thought that you could move tokens on a shared document. I will have to check that out. But, wouldn't that require that every time a token was moved, the document would need to be saved and reloaded on all the clients? My inexperience with Google Docs is showing, I'm sure.

Quote:
Originally Posted by DeDiceManCometh View Post
Yes, but do they support megahex grids?
Not sure what you are looking for with megahex support. If you meant "does it display them", I would put them on the map image that gets loaded and the tokens move on. I definitely would not about the application displaying the grid. "Snap-to-grid" features can be bothersome at times anyway.

If you meant "count the range in megahexes" I doubt it. We always manually count the hexes (or megahexes) for that. Just as if we were playing face-to-face

Last edited by afschell; 08-08-2018 at 11:19 AM.
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Old 08-08-2018, 01:48 PM   #25
zot
 
Join Date: May 2018
Default Re: TFT on Virtual Tabletops

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Originally Posted by afschell View Post
I never thought that you could move tokens on a shared document. I will have to check that out. But, wouldn't that require that every time a token was moved, the document would need to be saved and reloaded on all the clients? My inexperience with Google Docs is showing, I'm sure.
It updates in real time. When someone moves a token, it updates in the other peoples' pages right after that person releases the mouse.
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Old 08-24-2018, 02:27 PM   #26
TLR
 
Join Date: Aug 2018
Default Re: TFT on Virtual Tabletops

Since I moved out of state 10 years ago, all of my TFT games have been online. Until recently, we were using the open-source GameTable app. Currently, the group is drifting towards the Roll20 service. I don't like it as much, but they do provide the server, and it has more "map-capacity" than I was able to serve on my own laptop.
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Old 08-24-2018, 02:31 PM   #27
TLR
 
Join Date: Aug 2018
Default Re: TFT on Virtual Tabletops

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Originally Posted by afschell View Post
If you meant "count the range in megahexes" I doubt it. We always manually count the hexes (or megahexes) for that. Just as if we were playing face-to-face
On GameTable, there is an ability to set the metric for hex-size (or square-size, if you prefer those), and there is a point-to-point measuring tool that returns length in those same units. It doesn't really "count hexes", but if you use 1 hex = 1 meter (like I do), then a straight-line length in meters comes pretty close (isn't that the whole reason for using hexes instead of squares?).
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Old 08-24-2018, 04:10 PM   #28
ak_aramis
 
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Location: Alsea, OR
Default Re: TFT on Virtual Tabletops

Quote:
Originally Posted by TLR View Post
On GameTable, there is an ability to set the metric for hex-size (or square-size, if you prefer those), and there is a point-to-point measuring tool that returns length in those same units. It doesn't really "count hexes", but if you use 1 hex = 1 meter (like I do), then a straight-line length in meters comes pretty close (isn't that the whole reason for using hexes instead of squares?).
Lower error, not no error... any discrete system of movement spaces is always an approximation. A useful one.

The reasons for the hex-grid are more than just the easier measurement of range.

Since facing matters, it regularizes facings, too. And makes vision easier to calculate (angles, not distances).

With square grids, you've 4 easy directions, 4 hard ones. 45° chunks are the easy measure.

With hex grids, 30° chunks are easy enough at 2 hexes+, and 60° at 1 hex range.

Last edited by ak_aramis; 08-24-2018 at 04:15 PM.
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Old 04-27-2019, 04:30 PM   #29
Carnifex
 
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Join Date: Jun 2011
Location: Harker Heights Texas
Default Re: TFT on Virtual Tabletops

I spent this afternoon building a character sheet for Melee and Wizard on Roll20. It is not much to look at and it is barely functional, but it is a start.
  • Download TFT_html.zip from the link below and extract it.
  • This should give you a file named TFT.html, open it in a text editor.
  • Now goto Roll20 and create a new campaign, type in the name you want and under Choose a Character Sheet, choose custom from the drop down menu and press the Create Game button.
  • Once at your new games home page, click on the Settings drop down and click Game Settings.
  • On this page scroll down to Character Sheet Template and you should see a black editing box, make sure you are on the HTML Layout tab, copy all of the text from TFT.html and paste it into the editing box.
  • Click Save Changes, then you can click on the Preview tab and if you did everything right, you should see the character sheet.
  • You can now launch you game and add characters.

I am not sure how much time I am going to have in the future to improve this, but I will certainly take feedback. Eventually I will make it available on Roll20's github. I make no claims to this code, do what you want with it, all I ask is if you make improvements, you give back to the community.

Download link:
https://carnifex.org/downloads/TFT_html.zip

For a screen shot of the character sheet:
http://carnifex.org/blog/wp-content/...ection_010.png
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Old 04-28-2019, 09:53 AM   #30
Allensh
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Mt. Pleasant, Michigan
Default Re: TFT on Virtual Tabletops

I am not getting a Custom selection under Choose a Character Sheet.
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