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Any Multi-touch, Multi-user options available?

Discussion in 'Feature Requests' started by Blind2karma, Mar 17, 2017.

  1. Blind2karma

    Blind2karma New Member

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    I noticed on the Kickstarter campaign page that "Multi-touch, Multi-user" is listed as a stretch goal. I'm quite curious about what you have planned since multi-touch appears to be a Mesa Mundi Inc. specialty area. Are any of those features currently in d20pro?

    FYI - I'm most interested because I just finished a 65" 4k (PCAP) table build and this would be my ideal interface. My current group consists of 4 local players at the table and 3 others logging in remotely. It would be awesome if the local players could all sit around the table and play together.

    Tablemode.JPG looking forward to posting some pictures of D20pro being played on it soon;)
     
  2. owlbear

    owlbear Administrator
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    Nice! is that a 3m screen?

    As to the touch set up, not fully yet. You can use D20PRO with touch but not multi touch.

    You can enable oversized icons and a nice corner drag handle... not great but a fix for the time being.
     
  3. Blind2karma

    Blind2karma New Member

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    Good eye!
    It is indeed a 3M, model C6587PW to be exact.
    It had all the specs I wanted and just happened to be available for a decent price. It's a hefty beast though I got it home and completely redesigned the mounting system that I had originally planned would support it. The picture shows it in table position but it also swings up into a kiosk/TV position and down into a position in between like a drafting table.
     
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  4. owlbear

    owlbear Administrator
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    This the setup we currently use to play. I have one of our 55" touch screens (we make them ourselves at Mesa Mundi Inc.) set up as a coffee table with a small PC attached. Then I host from my laptop -- also a touch screen. While the table is fully multi-touch capable, d20pro isn't yet. However, since RPG's tend to be turn based anyway it's never really slowed us down.

    The plan is to deploy full, native multi-touch into D20PRO but it's a bit further down the current dev path. In the meantime, we don't really feel it slowing us down.

    55-inch-gaming.jpg
     
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  5. Blind2karma

    Blind2karma New Member

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    Really Nice!
    I like the lower height of your table. If I make another table I'll be sure it can sit low also.
    I'm currently working on the GM unit that sits at the end of the table, it's a separate piece but I want it to fit together with the table.

    Here's another shot of mine in the Kiosk position since we're sharing. You can see why height is pretty much set for me:/
    Koiskmode.JPG
     
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  6. cyderak

    cyderak Member

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    I have a 65" 4K LED TV in the living room, But I kept the game table at a manageable 48" LED TV. Whew, with all these TV's, you really gotta watch the sales. Thanks god the HHGregg went out of business up here in Wisconsin so I got a real good deal on the TV's.

    Still sitting on a 48" LED TV for a game table I was supposed to build for a guy but then he backed out ......so if you know anyone who wants a quality Oak Game table with a 48" inlaid LED TV built in, let me know.
     
  7. cyderak

    cyderak Member

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    @Blind2karma.......we really need to compare game rooms some day. You know...... just to make other gamers drool. Hehehe.
     
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  8. Blind2karma

    Blind2karma New Member

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    @cyderak - The wood looks so good! Both tables are a great size and I like that you have a border around the screen for books paper etc. That is a problem with mine especially being a touch screen, thank goodness for palm rejection otherwise it'd be nightmare. You know It's pretty insane when you start adding up all the this's and that's we accumulate over the years just to play games. But hey the way I look at it everyone has their thing, I mean it could be a snowmobile or something like, I mean they're only usable a couple months out of the year. Which reminds me I see you're in Wisconsin, I have some friends in Appleton and Racine, a lot of them are down in Schaumburg, IL this weekend for Adepticon. If you wanted to sell that table I'm certain it would go fast there, plus it's freak'n Adepticon which is AWESOME!
     
  9. cyderak

    cyderak Member

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    Yeah, thats probably my only vice.......I don't go to the bar......I party occasionally......but yeah.....not too much else I spend my money on.

    If any of your friends are interested in a Game table, tell em to get ahold of me. I'm in Fond du Lac, WI.
     
  10. owlbear

    owlbear Administrator
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    Nice table @cyderak ! The screens we currently build are 42, 55, 65, and 84 inches. Clearly the 65 and 84 can be unwieldy although @Blind2karma clearly pulls it off :)

    Our new screens are nice and flat and fully multitouch. Still a bit on the expensive side, but totally turnkey now.

    Metal enclosure, designed for table mounting, sealed face, and LG LCD on the inside, so bright and designed for 24/7 use. These are not TV's however, so no built in netflix or such.

    We also have standard legs now for table height and such so we can do height adjustable tables really easily!

    wheee!
     

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  11. cyderak

    cyderak Member

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    Those are nice Multi-touch tables, but as of right now there is no definitive software that just blows my mind as to the "hands-down" option for presenting maps and facilitating RPG games.

    Unless you have a walkthrough video of D20Pro's in-action showing that just blows peoples minds or even another piece of software that can handle the task beautifully that would justify buying a huge touch table like those.
    Who the hell am I kidding, with the money I spent on my game table there is no way I could justify to my wife why I need a huge Multi-touch table. Hehehe. She'd beat me with a dead fish. :)

    And these days it probably more expensive to buy a Multi-touch bezel to place over the existing screen I already own, although I haven't priced any out, who knows......maybe they came down in price.
     
  12. Blind2karma

    Blind2karma New Member

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    Very nice tables indeed @owlbear! I especially like the table and stand in image DSC04608. I'm curious I don't see any fans on the back, do your models have active cooling? I also noticed that your stand attaches outside the VESA mount pattern, did you custom design the internal frame to do this?

    On mine I struggled the most over whether or not to use the VESA mounts as support points when in the table position. Really In my opinion there doesn't appear near enough support to prevent rear panel or internal chassis flex and the potential shorting to the chassis. Additionally I also had concerns about the compression stresses placed on the unit when laying flat. Hoping for a bit of reassurance that this was all planned for, I decided to contact 3M and speak with their engineers, though apparently I didn't rate a response, even after being quite persistent. So crossing my fingers and holding my breath I decided on a combination of VESA mounting plus cradle support in the table position, kinda like a boat trailer.

    Anyway I wish I knew you guys made such nice units two months ago, they appear to be just what I was looking for. The thing that would have sold me for sure is them being made by people who do just the thing I planned to do, it doesn't get any better then that.
    So glad I ended finding my way here anyway:)
     
  13. Blind2karma

    Blind2karma New Member

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    @cyderak It's not so much the Multi-touch but the Multi-user support that's missing. There are quite a number of Multi-touch enabled VTT-ish options available, but almost no Multi-touch + Multi-user that I'm aware of unfortunately. It was years ago when I saw a group at MIT playing D&D on the Microsoft Surface Table, using figures and everything that got me headed down this path. I came close many times to actually buying one of Microsoft's SUR40 (PixelSense more recently) mostly out of desperation since there wasn't much else then, thank goodness I didn't because they pretty much stopped making them. Anyway since then I've kept a lookout for the tech and software that would enable me to do what that group at MIT did seemingly so many years ago. Only just recently do I feel the hardware necessary to do this has been made available to the consumer market for a reasonable price. I acknowledge that $7000 for what is in essence a giant iphone might seem far from reasonable to some, but how many people do you know with fancy home theater systems which likely cost a lot more then that and yet all it does is play movies.
    My greatest desire is to bring everyone to the table and play there with all the wonderful things computers can add to making games more enjoyable. You need a Multi-user interface to do this, hotseating doesn't cut it for most games either. I have ridiculous space being consumed by physical games which personally I'd like to reclaim. I'd also like to use all that time I normally spend setting up or putting away a game, instead playing it, example Axis & Allies, Twilight Imperium etc. Likely I'm in the minority, seems most are content to play with faceless strangers across the internet these days:( Me personally I like to see my friends, drink beer with my friends, play games with my friends, but pretty much just be around my friends, what we do is secondary. A Multi-user interface would make much of this possible.
     
  14. Tay-Dor

    Tay-Dor Active Member

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    I'd love to have an in person gaming group again. Working evenings for 20 years killed my social life. I do all my gaming on-line with a steady group of internet friends, some of whom I've met in person, such as Krilion and his wife.)

    Far as set up for axis and allies, there's where things like Tabletop Simulator come in handy.
    20170326163619_1.jpg 20170326163639_1.jpg
    Start it up and all the pieces are already set up. :)
     
    #14 Tay-Dor, Mar 26, 2017
    Last edited: Mar 26, 2017
  15. Blind2karma

    Blind2karma New Member

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    I hear what you're saying, and I realize the remote in method works for a lot of people, hence the comment about being in the minority:) I too have met many of my friends online playing different things and for the most part that's enough. There is however one group that I'd like to have the ability to play around the table with and that group is my family. I have four kids, oldest is 18 youngest 13, they have all grown up with us playing games together around the table, it's as much a part of what we do as a family as having Sunday dinner. Also my best-friend happens to be my wife and she is easily my gaming equal, together we have spent countless hours playing anything and everything around a gaming table but she has no interest in sitting at a computer to play games. When I was young people had pool tables and ping pong, played cards and Risk or Monopoly etc. this just seems a modern day equivalent, is it such a strange idea to want something like that?

    @Tay-Dor As you pointed out Tabletop Simulator can do some of what I'm asking for, but It's still missing the most crucial part, the multi-user interface. I've asked for it on their forums too but haven't received much response. Honestly speaking it was one of the most frustrating experiences ever just trying to play a simple game with more than just two players using the touch interface, we just kept fighting over who was in control, it was maddening.

    Anyway I'm going to let this sit for awhile I've ranted enough here for ten people. The forum here is just so great I think I got a little carried away, thanks to everyone for their input and being such a great place to share.

    AxisAllies.jpg Twilight.JPG
     
    #15 Blind2karma, Mar 27, 2017
    Last edited: Mar 27, 2017
  16. Tay-Dor

    Tay-Dor Active Member

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    Not at all. I'd love to sit around a table and game. its what I used to do. :)

    I need to steal that screen...
     
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  17. cyderak

    cyderak Member

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    @Blind2karma - I know exactly what you are talking about and I have tried myself to re-create that SUR40 setup by the MIT kids and I believe it was called Dungeonscape. They were going to try and make it available to the public but it just never took off. Too bad, they had phenomenal radial menus, animations, great gameplay......the works.

    I am also a huge fan of being around the game table with friends and ENHANCING our gaming experience with technology. I put that word in CAPS not to convey the thought that I was yelling it but just to put an emphasis on it. I know there are a ton of players who are anti-tech when it comes to RPG's but not me. It speeds up the process so as to get so much more accomplished which leaves way more time for bullshitting with friends. It also leaves more time for players to Role play because I don't have to take forever describing what is happening in a scenario if it is already being visually represented perfectly on my digital game table. In my book its a win-win all the way around.
     
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  18. owlbear

    owlbear Administrator
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    We built our enclosures out of steel and have very low heat 24/7 displays designed for horizontal inductive cooling. The result is a little temperature bump on the edges when running for 10+ hours, but nothing that isn't actually a bit comforting to touch!

    3M's screens are used by Ideum for all of their tables, so yeah, the screens are solid for table use. The main thing is to ensure you have adequate cooling and ventilation -- although it looked like you did! The 3M screen has virtually no parallax, which is nice, ours is modular so you can replace parts if they get damaged (We've survived metal dice, but this weregeek comic always sits high in my mind - http://www.weregeek.com/2011/01/19/)

    For mounting, the coffee table has screw holes for the legs in production. The mock-up -- proof of concept I have is using industrial velcro!!!

    Another thing we did to our screens to prevent flex, was put a steel bar across the length of back plane. This gives us more mounting options as well as rigidity so pressing on the extreme edges doesn't result in a bend in the LCD.

    Fun times :)

    The 3M should have a similar design, again, based on Ideum's use of vesa mounting to attach to their table bases.
     
  19. owlbear

    owlbear Administrator
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    I played that at the first PAX East when the guy was demoing it. My wife and I were building our own VTT at the time (hadn't bought in to D20PRO -- or even heard of it then!). What we found frustrating about Dungeonscape was that it was too video game-like. It was pretty, radial menus, rules light with built in reference guides, but the game play was you, the player staring at the screen and watching what everyone else animated character was doing. As we left the demo, I could barely tell you what anyone at the table looked look like. Neither my wife nor I even looked up to coordinate attacks.

    So we decided then and there that whatever we did for a multitouch VTT would be focused on face-to-face play over the cool-factor of a touch interface.

    We've been working to ride that fine line ever since. We're slowly chipping away at D20PRO's old Swing interfaces and hope to replace them with touch enabled HTML5 or JFX interface as we move along. Additionally, as @thraxxis would tell you, there is the original Mage Hand code base -- a fully re-written JFX core for VTT which support native multitouch, map rotation and a whole lot of other interesting bits and bobs.

    We're hoping to salvage what we can from Thraxxis's work on that engine to complete the upgrades in D20PRO. But first the feature library has to launch!!
     
  20. KainPen

    KainPen Member

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    owlbear do you guys make 46 inch touch overlays for TVs? As I just posted in bug thread, I just moved my 46 inch TV to my Table it is standing up right now. So I was trying to test out oversized interface and found the bug. But the plan is to mod the table and use that in the table flat since it has great angle view and size. I just need to find a over lay to fit it. Also do the touch over lays out their require you to remove bezel of the TV? This is my 1st mod like this no clue where to start with that stuff.
     

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