E-gaming table

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bearax

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 21, 2003
Messages
302
so...I wasn't sure where the best forum to put this was...figured general gaming was best. It's gaming related...but not really pc gaming. My buddy and I built this table complete with 42" monitor as a e-gaming table for table top rpg (ie d&d) as well as for board games.

Thought it was neat and others might appreciate it.

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Ha, that's pretty neat. Reminds me of the old Pacman table games. Touch screen would be really slick. :cool:
 
cmadki4 said:
Ha, that's pretty neat. Reminds me of the old Pacman table games. Touch screen would be really slick. :cool:
Click to expand...

I am looking into some sort of touch or gesture controller, either an actual touchscreen interface or wiimote.
 
That is REALLY sweet looking.

Were did you get the monopoly software, and clue it looks like?

Would be neat for Axis and Allies, if you could find some decent software.
 
XvMMvX said:
That is REALLY sweet looking.

Were did you get the monopoly software, and clue it looks like?

Would be neat for Axis and Allies, if you could find some decent software.
Click to expand...

thanks!

The monopoly board is just a pic I found online. However, the plan is to do it in flash, allowing the player to select chance or community chest cards. Purchasing property as well as die rolling is planned too. We think that moving the pieces as well as handling money is an a very important piece of the game so we are going to keep those real.

In many cases making the game electronic won't be immediately feasible...games with cards, especially those a player has to hold in hand secretly (clue for example) just would be too much work. Between myself and my friends we literally have hundreds and hundreds of board games. The plan is to take the more popular and at the very least scan or photograph the game boards then make a travel kit with essential pieces.

Once we work the immediate bugs out we are going to try and make android apps that allow us to send info from the game server to our phones for info like player held cards.
 
This would have been nice back in the days when I played mechwarrior (tabletop).
 
That is cool.

I have to question the usability of it though. Without a touch screen interface it makes it very cumbersome to use. Having a full surface that is touchable and programmable would be the ideal end state. I have seen the videos of the Microsoft Surface table. It could react to the placement of the various property models. You could drag cards off of the stacks and flick them to various players as needed. Hell, it can even interact with various phones with the right apps if you were playing a game where cards were needed to be kept secretly like Risk and such.

A project I would like to try someday is the various homebrew Microsoft Surface type projects out there.
 
lloose said:
This would have been nice back in the days when I played mechwarrior (tabletop).
Click to expand...

While it's cool, it's still a lot smaller than a tabletop. I played Battletech and other wargames on a 4x8' table. I'm still waiting on 100" monitors to come down in price.
 
bearax said:
thanks!

The monopoly board is just a pic I found online. However, the plan is to do it in flash, allowing the player to select chance or community chest cards. Purchasing property as well as die rolling is planned too. We think that moving the pieces as well as handling money is an a very important piece of the game so we are going to keep those real.

In many cases making the game electronic won't be immediately feasible...games with cards, especially those a player has to hold in hand secretly (clue for example) just would be too much work. Between myself and my friends we literally have hundreds and hundreds of board games. The plan is to take the more popular and at the very least scan or photograph the game boards then make a travel kit with essential pieces.

Once we work the immediate bugs out we are going to try and make android apps that allow us to send info from the game server to our phones for info like player held cards.
Click to expand...

Give everyone a Ipad to hold their cards. Oh... and give me one too.
 
Just make sure to set ground rules that you are not allowed to flip the board away in frustration :p
 
very nice, would love to build something like this myself.... maybe I will. Trying to think of all the ways this could be used.
 
BladeVenom said:
While it's cool, it's still a lot smaller than a tabletop. I played Battletech and other wargames on a 4x8' table. I'm still waiting on 100" monitors to come down in price.
Click to expand...

Unlike a 4x8 table...the map on the monitor can easily change scale with a flick of the mouse wheel. You don't get to use the miniatures that you spend hours painting though.
 
That is really awesome. You could totally use miniatures on it, with the 'room' they are in, etc as the image. Just set em on top of it.

Battletech, car wars, board games, all sweet for that.

Nice job.
 
Last night was the first test of the table...it went awesome.

We are using maptools (http://rptools.net/) which is pretty darn cool. The GM scanned in map images from the module he is running, and the tools allowed him to add lighting and walls as well as monsters and encounters. We used two computers, the game server, controlled by the GM and a laptop controlled by the players. The map hosted by the GM would be uploaded to the client software and displayed on the big screen. Each player had an avatar on screen with all their stats programed in so the GM could reference them at any time. Players controlled the characters with the mouse or using the keyboard for movement. If you moused over any visible monsters it would give you basic stats on screen like AC and such. The really cool thing was the lighting, map reveal and fog of war.
As we traveled in the dungeon the map would reveal itself, characters with low light or dark vision obviously had better line of sight. Human characters leaving the lighted area would be plunged into darkness. Clicking on a character revealed only what they would see. Clicking on the map showed what the party could see. Columns would cast shadows, peering through cracks in the wall would only reveal the room partially. As we left an area it dimmed out creating a fog of war. Honestly it completely changed how we play the game.
Typical game play had the monk and fighter running in to draw aggro, with wizard, cleric and ranger holding back with buffs and long range spells and attacks. That changed because the monk and fighter were both human, many of the areas we explored were in darkness. There was much more sneaking, more stealth rolls, run in on light spells or what-not. It was pretty darn cool.
 
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