Autoduel by Telepresence

[beetle496]

My two brothers have agreed to duel each other, with me hosting. Has anyone tried Car Wars via Zoom or similar? Any tips? Will you be playing a second game that way?

I have two phones (cameras) which I plan to put on a static mounts (so maybe POV from behind each car), and my brothers will both be audio only. I am not playing (per se), just teaching, moving the sleds, rolling the dice, etc., all per their instructions. We are using two of the red PRS for this experiment.

I think it might work…

[svawter]

Originally Posted by beetle496

My two brothers have agreed to duel each other, with me hosting. Has anyone tried Car Wars via Zoom or similar? Any tips? Will you be playing a second game that way?

I have two phones (cameras) which I plan to put on a static mounts (so maybe POV from behind each car), and my brothers will both be audio only. I am not playing (per se), just teaching, moving the sleds, rolling the dice, etc., all per their instructions. We are using two of the red PRS for this experiment.

I think it might work…

I *LOVE* the idea of this! I talked with my gaming group about trying this approach out for games without "secrets" (if there are cards, etc. that you have in your hand that other players don't have details of) laying via video call with one camera placed topside looking straight down...

I'd suggest not having cameras placed as *only* POV as it will be much more difficult to get a good feel for the overall view, but perhaps 3 cameras, 1 top down of the table and 1 each POV sounds AWESOME.

Good luck!

[beetle496]

Experience was not great. I could not find a camera angle that had more than one element in focus at a time. As a result, dice roll results were not visible, unless that was the only thing the camera was showing. As @svawter mentioned, a third camera might have helped. Having the cameras higher (i.e., closer to eye-ball height) might have helped.

If we try again, the plan is to try an all-digital approach. I want to keep the 6e dice in the game, so I need to think about that aspect. There has to be 100 open source dice rollers, but we need one where we can customize and keep and reuse the configuration.

Ultimately, we decided to give TTS / Jaws of the Lion another try. (Another experience which was frustrating enough that we gave up after a half dozen sessions. But that was months ago, and we have not yet found something better.)

[baakyocalder]

Originally Posted by beetle496

Experience was not great. I could not find a camera angle that had more than one element in focus at a time. As @svawter mentioned, a third camera might have helped.

If we try again, the tentative plan is for an all-digital approach next time. I want to keep the 6e dice in the game, so I need to think about that aspect. There has to be 100 open source dice rollers, but we need one where we can customize and keep and reuse the configuration.

Ultimately, we decided to give TTS / Jaws of the Lion another try. (Another experience which was frustrating enough that we gave up after a half dozen sessions. But that was months ago, and we have not yet found something better.)

Try the Unofficial Car Wars Discord for a dice roller. If you don't use the one built in, several people have some coding and there's at least one dice program there.

[beetle496]

Thanks @ baakyocalder — I am sure you mean this one by @HeatDeath