Quick Start Guide for Tabletop Simulator 2022

In this post I am going to go through a few simple lessons/steps to get you started with making your board games in TTS. I won’t go into a huge amount of detail for brevity and also because TTS has very consistent logic in its system, so in theory once you know the basics you can infer from there. 

Start a Game

• On the start menu, click create > click multiplayer > enter name and give it a password > click create server > x off menu (unless you are loading in a game you have already created).

The reason for creating a multiplayer game is so that it is set up for testing. There is almost no use case (especially if you have a server password) for you to create a single player game even if you never play the game with anyone else online.

Basic Controls

• Mouse Controls
  • Left click allows you to select and move components (including drag select)
  • Right click allows you to rotate the camera when held, and when clicked, allows you to access more options for components and the camera.
  • Middle Click allows you to pan
• WASD allows you to move
• F lets you flip cards
• ​R lets you shuffle decks
• Q and E allows you to rotate objects
• Any of the numbers on the keyboard allows you, when hovering over a deck of cards or tokens, to deal that number of cards or tokens into your hand.

Learning the UI

• “Games” brings up saved games, and allows you to save.
  
• “Objects > Components” allows you to create game objects such as cards, figures, boards etc.
  

Other options are not important at the moment.

Importing Card Artwork (for a deck of cards)

• Go to steam and find TTS in your library. Then, right click TTS > click properties > click local files > click browse > click modding > click deckbuilder > open TTS-Deck-Editor
• Now that you have the TTS-Deck-Editor open, you can pin it to your taskbar or home screen, if you are going to be using TTS a lot I recommend this. 
• Once TTS-Deck-Editor opens, you will be prompted to select a deck size. It doesn’t matter that much if the deck size is bigger than your actual deck (for example, if you only have 18 cards in your game, selecting a 10x7 deck size (70 cards) won’t cause an issue.
• Next, simply drag and drop artwork into the deck editor.
• Once you are done, click file > export > export again, save the file in a place you will remember.
• Go back into TTS, then click objects > components > cards > drag custom deck into the scene.
• Once the deck has been dragged in the scene, a window will pop up. This window is a way to use the deck we have just created using the deck editor, as well as control what cards it uses. 
  • Next, click the file icon in the “face” field, then import the deck you have created. If prompted, select the “cloud” option.
  • Then, import your card back by importing a single image file, (if card backs in your game are unique to certain cards, you have to create a deck like you did with the face of the cards, but make sure to match up the order in which they are laid out in the editor, then tick unique backs - an alternative option is just to create a bunch of smaller decks for each group of cards with unique card backs. If you don’t have unique card backs in your game, leave it unticked).
  • Adjust the width and height to match the settings used in deck editor. For example, if the deck editor had a height of 4 and a width of 3, you must make sure that you adjust the sliders in this window to the same measurements.
  • Finally, change the number slider to match the total number of cards in your deck.

The Basic Logic of TTS
If you have just followed the step-by-step process of importing a deck of cards, you now have all the logic required to use TTS, including importing almost any component into a scene. Each variation on components have slightly different settings, but with some experimentation, everything in TTS boils down to importing art assets, changing some values… and that’s it!

Save your Game
Just so you don’t lose all your work (though TTS has a very nice autosave function) click games > save & load > save game > enter a name and press save. 
A lot of people try to save by typing in the text bar labelled “search” and pressing save, do not do this. This function is to search for saved games, not save. 

Conclude
Anyway, hopefully you found this all helpful! If you are interested in the game I used for some of the screenshots called Fatal Knockout, consider signing up to the pre-launch page here, it goes live on Kickstarter next year! It’s a fighting game inspired tabletop game, with fast-paced strategic mechanics that make you feel like you are playing in an arcade!

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