Tabletop Playground News

The October update brings several new features: grids, custom lighting, and 2D scripted UIs are now available!

• The session options now contain a new "Grid" button where you can set options for a global snap grid: it can be hexagonal or rectangular with adjustable size, offset, and rotation as well as different visibility and snap settings.
• The session options now contain a new "Lighting" button. Here you can set the color, intensity, specular intensity, and direction of the main light. The settings are stored in the game state.
• When arranging objects from the coordinates or by pressing a number button while holding a group of objects, try to keep their current arrangement as intact as possible
• Split horizontal and vertical camera sensitivity options

Scripting
• Add new functionality to create on-screen UIs, with methods like `GameWorld.addScreenUI` and a new class `ScreenUIElement`. On-screen UIs are not visible for VR players.
• Add `Player.isUsingVR` to detect whether a player is using a VR headset
• Add several methods to `GameWorld` to set and read ligthing options (for example `GameWorld.setMainLightIntensity*)
• Add new `GlobalGrid` object to read and modify snap grid properties. Accessed through `GameWorld.grid`.
• Add new `GlobalGrid` object to read and modify snap grid properties. Accessed through `GameWorld.grid`.
• Add `GameObject.onSnappedToGrid`
• Add `SelectionBox.removeOption`, `SelectionBox.setOptions`, and `SelectionBox.getOptions`
• Fix crash in `SelectionBox.getSelectedOption` when no options exist

Fixes
• Updated to a new mod.io version that fixes a mod extraction error on Mac
• Fixed a memory leak from filled containers that caused RAM consumption to slowly rise over time
• Fixed lighting for .obj models with no textures and no normals
• Labels could have clipping artefacts on clients
• When using the object properties window for multiple selected objects, object name and description would always be applied to all objects



These new updates we've added are just some of the many features on our early access development roadmap for Tabletop Playground, which you can check out on our Trello HERE.

Don't forget to join our community Discord to chat with the dev team and give us your suggestions for new features for the game!

This update focuses mostly on bug fixes, but also introduces an option for two sided materials:

• Add a new option for models in the editor: two sided. If checked, geometry from the model is visible from both sides. This is only needed in special cases (vegetation models often use two-sided geometry) and should usually be left unchecked.
• Reduce influence of resolution aspect ratio on size of certain zoomed in objects (such as dice and PDFs)
• Don't allow stacking ground cards and regular cards
• Fix: Cards did not always stay in card holders on clients when loading a state
• Fix: Mac users could not upload new versions of their packages since the last update
• Fix: Snapped measurements did not show correctly for other players
• Fix: Dealing cards from a stack could sometimes knock over nearby objects on clients
• Potential fix for rare issue where a dropped object would still show up as held for other players
• Improved error messages and logs for mod.io HTTP errors on Windows
• Fix: `GameObject.getExtent` returned a zero vector instead of the correct object size when called in the same frame when the object was being created from a template

The August update is out now! With text labels and an in-game web browser, two big new features are available. But it doesn't stop there: a lot of additional UI and usability improvements, more VR settings, scripting features, and bug fixes are all part of the package.

• Moved to a new mod.io version. It brings faster download and progress updates while installing games, with more features to come in future updates! Your mods will be re-downloaded once the first time you start the game after this update. The old download folder is removed automatically.
• You can now place text labels. Labels can have different colors and sizes as well as custom fonts. They don't get blurry at larger sizes or zoom levels. Apart from a fixed text, you can also set labels to show the name of the player in a selected slot. Press K to toggle label mode.
• A new UI element for cursor modes is available in the upper left corner. It allows you to see your current mode and quickly switch to other cursor modes without memorizing the hotkeys.
• There is now a tablet object available among the "General" objects. It allows you to browse the web while playing, the active website URL is synchronized with all players.
• Drawing now supports glowing lines: a new checkbox in the drawing dialog allows you to turn up the emissive value of your lines to make them glow
• Add new permission for editing labels
• Changed emissive map format to be easier to use: now the red color channel simply makes the color at that point emissive, the larger the red value is the more emissive the part of the model becomes. Fully red will make most colors glow. The other channels in the emissive map are not used for now.
• Add a new option for measuring angles (in measure move mode, selected in session options): you can measure the rotation of the movement compared to a straight line as before, or the rotation of the object.
• Angle measurements are now logged together with distance measurements in measure move mode
• Multistate objects have a new option in the editor: Circular. When checked, the states loop around so you can go forward from the last state to get back to the first state and vice versa.
• Add a new option in the video settings to use low resolution textures. This can be useful to allow old systems to run large games that may not run properly with full texture resolution.
• Add support for TGA textures. TGA files are generally larger than PNG, but they can be useful when using an alpha channel as a mask (in the extra map/mask map) because some graphics tools don't save colors properly in PNGs when the alpha channel is zero.
• Use natural sorting in all places where names are ordered (filenames, templates, tags). With natural sorting, numbers in the names are sorted by magnitude and not alphabetically (so 10 comes after 2).
• The drag selection box for the screen cursor is now much more accurate and doesn't glitch for objects behind the camera
• When dice faces are named with a number, use that number instead of the index of the face when deciding how to rotate the dice when a player uses a number action (by pressing a number key while highlighting or holding dice)
• When angle measurement is on, include measured angle in measure move message
• Move measurement number to the cursor (from the middle of the measured line)
• The container explorer now remembers if it was switched to showing card fronts in the same session
• Add new option in advanced interface settings for lowering the drag selection box. Hold Ctrl and use the mouse wheel while drag-selecting to change the setting quickly. Dragging new zones is also affected by the setting, and the value can be changed creating a zone.
• Use sliders instead of text boxes for cell width and height when creating a snap grid
• Hold invert key to rotate objects very slowly instead of the regular speed
• Don't allow changing background in 3D maps because it doesn't have an effect



VR
• Add new cursor mode buttons to standard UI menu that opens when you press the menu button without highlighting an object
• New setting: motion controller dead zone
• New setting: height offset allows you to raise or lower your viewpoint by a constant offset when not flying

Scripting
• Add new class `Label` to control in-game text labels
• Add `GameWorld.createLabel`, `GameWorld.getLabelById`, and `GameWorld.getAllLabels`
• Add `WebBrowser` widget to create web browser UIs
• Add `DrawingLine.emissive` to allow creating glowing lines from scripts
• Add `Canvas.getChildren`
• Add `Card.canAddCards`
• `Canvas.updateChild`, `Canvas.removeChild`, and `Panel.removeChild` now work immediately after adding the child widget. Previously, these methods only worked after the widget had been built a few ticks later.
• Dice faces can now get metadata assigned in the editor. Add `Dice.getCurrentFaceMetadata` and `Dice.getallFaceMetadata`
• Ensure that players see the correct UIs when they switch slots after player restricted UIs have been created
• Add `CardHolder.isCardFaceUp` and `CardHolder.isCardUpsideDown`
• Fix: Playing a sound for the host player played it for all players
• Fix: In some circumstances, scripting UIs on objects could remain after reloading, leading to duplicate UIs which could cause input issues

Fixes
• Joining games through the Steam friend list did not work for all players
• Resizing the whole object in the editor did not work properly for Multistate objects
• In screen cursor mode, moving the mouse quickly while rotating the zoomed object could end the zoom
• Flip back the order of cards in the editor UI
• Fix issue with dragging objects in screen cursor mode after using Escape key to close "Edit Template" screen in preview mode
• Fix graphical glitches in the cyberpunk environment
• Fix lighting for thumbnails and zoomed objects in 3D environments
• Zoomed cards would sometimes flicker
• Reduce force with which dice are thrown apart when rolling multiple dice at once
• Import file dialog did not always remember previous directory
• Drag selection with 3D cursor could select ground objects with drawings on them while cursor was in regular mode
• Reworked "Friendship" achievement trigger to be more robust - it did not work for all players

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These new updates we've added are just some of the many features on our early access development roadmap for Tabletop Playground, which you can check out on our Trello HERE.

Don't forget to join our community Discord to chat with the dev team and give us your suggestions for new features for the game!

The June update is here: It brings glowing objects, improvements to editor and snap points, new keybindings, new scripting UI options, and more!

• You can now add Emissive Maps to models in the editor: They work like a regular texture, but emissive colors are not affected by lighting and look like the object is lit by itself. When used without a regular texture or Normal/Extra map, the object is not lit at all, which looks less realistic but keeps colors closer to the original image. The alpha channel of the emissive map acts as a brightness multiplier: when it is lower than 1 (parts of the image are transparent), both the regular color at that spot and the color from the emissive map are multiplied. Erasing parts of the emissive map completely leads to a high multiplier, allowing you to make parts of the object glow!
• Cards and multistate objects have a switch in the editor to make them emissive, effectively switching off lighting for them
• Add buttons in the card editor to increase or decrease card index by one
• Add buttons in the card editor and snap point editor to apply tags to all cards
• New options for snap point rotation: snapping upright or upside down without further rotating the snapped object
• Add keybindings for rotating the camera (not set by default)
• Add keybinding for toggling drawing mode (by default "I")
• New rotation option for taking objects out of containers: in addition to default rotation and container rotation, you can now select "Flipped" in the container properties
• Improved network traffic for smoother play on slow connections
• "Rotate thumbnails" setting now affects container explorer as well
• The object coordinates window now allows arranging object into a hexagonal grid
• Scaling Gizmo now scales uniformly when uniform scaling is active in the object coordinates window
• Add keybindings for HP Reverb motion controllers
• A new option in the advanced interface settings allow you to change the behavior of the Flip/Upright key (middle mouse/F) when holding a group of objects: instead of flipping or turning to their default rotation, align all held objects to the rotation of the grabbed object
• Flip order of cards in the stack explorer when the inspected stack is face down, so the first card in the explorer is always the card at the top

Scripting
• Add new `PlayerPermission` class and use it in the play methods of `Sound` to determine for what players a sound is played, and in `UIElement.players` to control which players can see a UI
• Add `UIElement.presentationStyle`, allowing UIs to automatically align to the camera or to be shown directly on screen
• Add new parameters to `GlobalScriptingEvents.onScriptButtonPressed` to indicate whether modifier keys (Shift, Ctrl, Alt) were held while pressing the button
• Return whether a line was added successfully on `GameWorld.addDrawingLine` and `GameObject.addDrawingLine`
• `World.getTableHeight` did include ground objects (in addition to just the table) in the height calculation

Fixes
• Object Coordinates > Arrange Grid > "Keep rotation" function is reversed
• Blindfolding was allowed while editing a template in preview mode
• Autosaves were generated while in main menu
• Physics for tables with custom colliders could get activated when loading a state in-game
• When changing the back image type for cards in preview mode, the card wasn't updated visually. Sometimes this could also happen in the editor.
• Loading stored camera setups in very quick succession would cause a wrong result
• Pressing "Save as new" for a new template resulted in an error
• Player rotation could remain snapped when changing the snap angle setting in-game
• Since the last update, cursors of other players were hidden when in screen cursor mode
• In some circumstances, zones did not prevent snapping or hide cursors on clients
• Cards with square shape could show slight ghosting of the back image on the front
• Fix a crash related to accessing online URLs from scripts
• Held dice and other clumped together objects could knock over other objects at low hold heights
• Clients changing object descriptions did not have an effect for other players



---

These new updates we've added are just some of the many features on our early access development roadmap for Tabletop Playground, which you can check out on our Trello HERE.

Don't forget to join our community Discord to chat with the dev team and give us your suggestions for new features for the game!

The May update upgrades to the latest version of Unreal Engine 4, future-proofing the game and fixing a few issues with the previous Unreal version. In addition, you now have more options for player slots, a color palette, improved object rotation, and more:

• Updated Unreal Engine to 4.27
• Slot names now have names and default camera setups: the "Player Colors" button in the session options has been renamed to "Player Slots". The window accessed through the button now allows to set a name and store the current camera setup in addition to adjusting the color for each player slot.
The slot name can be used to whisper in the chat to the player currently occupying that slot, in the same way as player names are used. By default, all player slots are named with their index (1 to 20).
When a player slot has a stored perspective, a player who joins the game in that slot or switches to the slot through the player options will move to the stored perspective. This can be used to emphasize where on the table a player in a given slot is seated.
• Holding down rotation keys (Q/E/Arrows by default) now continues to rotate objects
• Color pickers now have a color palette where you can store and load your own selection of 36 colors
• Increase speed of turn-in-place animation (when presseing Q/E or arrows while highlighting, not holding, an object) and keep the rotated object in place in relation to other objects - it used to land on top of objects above.
• Store hold height between sessions
• When editing snap points in preview mode for an object with global snap points enabled, allow adding points snapped to other objects that aren't on top of the edited object

Scripting
• Add `GameObject.removeDrawingLineObject` and `GameWorld.removeDrawingLineObject´
• Add `Player.setDrawingColor` and `Player.setDrawingThickness`
• Add `DrawingLine.tag` property
• Extend the occasions when `Card.onRemoved` is called to all actions where players remove cards (dragging a card off the stack or the container explorer, drawing or dealing cards, or when a player cuts/splits/divides the stack)
• `Text.setAutowrap` did not work for clients (only affected host player)
• `Player.getSlot` and `Player.getName` did not return correct results for players who rejoined games in progress
• Don't allow setting primary color on card holders (the color is determined by the owning player)
• Increase time that `Player.showMessage` messages stay on screen

Fixed
• Autosaves were not available to load on Linux
• Using keyboard shortcuts for editing card decks in the editor made previously edited cards re-appear
• UI elements for properties of snap points in a new grid were not enabled when the object had no snap points
• After closing the chat using the Enter key, it couldn't be opened again using enter until clicking with the mouse



---

These new updates we've added are just some of the many features on our early access development roadmap for Tabletop Playground, which you can check out on our Trello HERE.

Don't forget to join our community Discord to chat with the dev team and give us your suggestions for new features for the game!