itabletop

[Lazybones]

http://itabletop.com/

Looks interesting, I am not sold, but over all it looks kinda slick.

[Mr. Analog]

It looks very polished, I wonder how it plays?

[Thorin]

Have you downloaded it yet to see how it runs?  The marketing speak makes it sound great, but I do wonder what happens with five or six webcams going at the same time...

Still, I'm gonna check it out and see what it's like.  I wonder if any of our D&D players would be interested in virtual tabletop games?

[Mr. Analog]

Something to consider that's for sure!

[Tom]

Might be neat. The SilverTop version once its done might be more neat as I wont have to run the program in a vm

[Thorin]

lolz at linuxer

So, I downloaded and installed iTabletop.  Here's how it works, basically:

I have a new chat program running.  In that chat program, I can have contacts and place them into groups (like any chat program).  I can then make Gatherings, and invite contacts to Gatherings (Video, Audio, and Custom Audio/Video Gatherings).  If I had any friends I could try out the Video Gathering.  Err, if I had any friends with iTabletop installed.

To sign into the chat program I had to create a user account.  That user account also lets me sign into the forums to see the FAQ written by another user: http://www.itabletop.com/Support/iTabletopSupportForums/tabid/133/aff/6/aft/37/afv/topic/Default.aspx.  Too bad it requires a login for an FAQ, that would've been useful info to make publicly accessible.  Oh well.

So the strength of iTabletop is (according to its makers) its simplicity.  You see a shared map and can move things around on it, you can video- or audio-conference (or both), there's a simple dice roller in the chat section, and there's no complicated scripting options.

I've tried the mapper and quickly got frustrated with it, though.  It's completely non-obvious what object I'm grabbing, so I kept moving the grid by mistake, and there's no Undo for any moves.  And I'm not interested in making glossy maps for online play, I just want to be able to sketch out the surroundings and get on with it.  But no, sketching out the map was frustrating.

[Thorin]

Let me expand on that - it didn't just frustrate me, it pissed me off.  Basically they made this great videoconferencing software for businesses, and are now trying to shoe-horn that into a Virtual Tabletop for roleplaying games.  The videoconferencing part works great, but the shared whiteboard doesn't work very well for maps.

[Melbosa]

That would be the point wouldn't it?  The shared whiteboard stuff?

[Lazybones]

So your saying we should host a OCS / Live Meeting server instead

[Thorin]

iTabletop is sorta like running a Live Meeting server, yes.  A Virtual Tabletop, though, needs to allow easy square and hex grid mapping.  And iTabletop does not allow easy mapping.

[Melbosa]

So your saying we should host a OCS / Live Meeting server instead

Hmmm... seeing as though we are setting one up at work currently... and with our MSDN subscription....