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- Hacker News
- As a player: What's the lag? Does it depend on the game and the gesture?
As a developer: I'd like to implement a "game" which would be ideal for Dynamicland (tens of cards with ID stickers on the corners), but this might be a simpler platform to set up and use. Would that be possible with the board as sold?
by opminion - Also curious about latency. In the past I've worked around latency using video sensors for high-bandwidth high-latency features, then literally glued a contact mic to my interface to get low latency tap detection. How does the Board hide latency?by fritzo
- There is a huge demand for an off the shelf device like this for TTRPGs. There are entire companies making animated maps that are predicated on people laying a TV on its back on a table and building a custom case for it. I imagine they would all love to sell their maps on a dedicated off the shelf product.by october8140
- would you have a video link to such a map in action? I've never came across this before and sounds very interesting.by _zoltan_
- its too small to work for TTRPGs at the moment but if we could get the capacitive pattern tech and expand that to work on digitiser layer on a tv sized screen, i would be really cool.by qwertytyyuu
- Many say they would be useful for RPGs, but how? I know those that play with a large screen (i.e. old tv) on the table to display maps while playing. You do not need to track the pieces for that though? Typically the GM has a phone or laptop with a UI to control what is displayed when, to reveal new areas etc. I can't imagine a game or time when it would make sense that a player moves a miniature/token on a digital board and triggers something that happens automatically? Maybe if you were playing more like a solo or coop CRPG without a GM, but that is a completely different kind of game and everyone here is specifically mentioning using it to support TTRPGs.by 1313ed01
- Yes, I could see a lot of GMs being interested in plug in and go product that fills that niche. Implementing the right feature set is challenging, as existing dedicated virtual tabletops have already shown. But something like a simple Owlbear Rodeo extension that adds basic miniature recognition might be all we need.by shib71
- Reminds of Microsoft Surface, the original coffee table [1]. It was quite cool at the time, but too expensive for what could have been useful application.
Hopefully for them, this will have more luck.
On a side not, the website is completely blank on Firefox.
by mrighele - Not really a coffee table, it's more akin, at least the one i have, to an old arcade cocktail cabinet in almost every way.by sleepybrett
- As someone who plays amount of “boardgame arena”, I appreciate this. Having software mediate rules helps bootstrap games.
But you still need physical pieces to loose and store.
Reminds me of a “digital roulette wheel” I saw in a casino.. which was wierd, untrustworthy yet somehow very cool.
by acomjean - Conceptually, it reminds me of DropMix by Harmonix. The physicality of it was really cool, but it also ended up being really unsuccessful, and I can imagine why: - Compared to a traditional board game (well, most of them), it was expensive and hard to procure; - Compared to a pure videogame, it had many moving parts that are more difficult to transport, manage, store, etc; - Since it was a multiplayer experience, that created added friction on top of everything else (everyone needs to be in the same place as the rare, expensive gadget and parts).
The issues seem exacerbated in this idea, however I think it's just as cool. I would love to play on it.
- I think this is a neat product but not one I have any interest in. I play board games in part to avoid the digital world.
If a board game needs a computer to handle the rules, then it is a needlessly complicated board game.
- There's plenty of games where either the setup is tedious, or some of the rules create confusion. Game of the year "Wingspan" confused everyone in my group the first time we played, and only made sense after watching a YouTube explanation. A confident system would have been great.
Setting up a game can be tedious as well; Axis and Allies is notorious for taking longer to set up than to play, but it's a lot of fun once you get going.
- Surely a companion app wouldn’t count, right? I couldn’t DM without it. I would need binders and binders of information or my iPad. I prefer my iPad.by reactordev
- Cool product. Is the SDK open? Any time I play a complex board game like Ark Nova, Spirit Island, etc. game running consumes a lot of time. So this tool is to me better showcased with a complex game that needs game-running that computers handle better. Also I'm curious about the board pieces and how more could be made. Do they have stickers on the bottom I could just transpose onto existing pieces, etcby arjie
- Yes, the SDK is open. It's built for Unity in C# with Unreal/Godot to follow.
Please reach out if interested to develop: https://board.fun/pages/developers
My colleague has some discussion here about how pieces are made: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45754851
by ryanmeasel - Not the first, has everyone forgotten the Surface/PixelSense table?
https://blog.azureinfra.com/surface/
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Surface_table.JPG
https://www.theverge.com/2012/6/19/3096652/microsoft-surface...
"Microsoft Surface PixelSense 'Coffee Table' Hands On"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qh9cOlVFItQ
Granted, this is very hard to search for, when not being around the time it was available, as most results will be about the current tablets marketed as surface.
by pjmlp - But perhaps the first well-executed?by Hydraulix989
- Not quite the first such product, Microsoft's original "Surface" advertised similar boardgame potential. But if it worked well, I don't know of anyone who was rich enough to try it!
Hopefully the technology has matured since then.
by vintermann - I think I used there was a Surface used at the "Sum of all thrills" attraction in Epcot in Disney World.
It behaved very similar to the Board. It definitely had a "knob" that you placed on a screen could spin to make adjustments.
by waltbosz - I played games on a Surface table in 2012. It was fun but very finicy with input. I imagine this as 10+ years of better input detection technology.by october8140
- I have a first gen surface in storage. Company I was working for wanted to get rid of the heavy as hell awkward thing... There is a backgammon app on it, when i played it years earlier there were physical dice and pieces. Buy lost from my table or not included, but playable by tap as well.by sleepybrett
- (Disclosure: I worked on both)
Detection technology on Board is much more robust. The MS Surface FTIR approach was lovely, but so over-featured no one could imagine a scoped-down (ie. cheaper) version of it.
- Nice job! Very slick demo video. As a dev, a couple of things immediately stand out to me.
1. Launching at $500 means it is going to be a "relatively" boutique product. At around the same price as an iPad Air, you're definitely going to want to focus on how the included games simply would not be playable on a more conventional touchscreen interface without the corresponding physical components.
Which leads to my second question:
2. Are the included physical pieces modular / generic enough such that prospective game developers could leverage them in future apps, or would they essentially need to design, 3D print, or contract out to your team to create their own props?
by vunderba - > At around the same price as an iPad Air, you're definitely going to want to focus on how the included games simply would not be playable on a more conventional touchscreen interface without the corresponding physical components.
And why that’s worth $500. I can’t think of any game(s) that are so fun or unique I’d pay $500 to be able to play them, even with my family.
by nkrisc - 1. This is absolutely the case for the launch portfolio. These games are super unique experiences that are really only possible from mixing the physical and digital in this way. Does the site not make that clear to you? Super useful feedback!
2. The piece sets can be used as is for new games/apps, especially for prototyping! However if it’s super promising and you want to bring it into our (future) store, we’d love to work with you to make a bespoke set of pieces to go with the game. Whether the launch sets are modular enough as-is is really dependent on the ergonomics and aesthetics of the game you want to make. We’re excited to make ourselves available to devs who want to explore this though, and happy to work with folks to figure out ways forward.
by nicoles - I don't really play board games, but if I did I can imagine being worried about forced updates, general online connectivity, inevitable ads, microtransactions, longevity, etc being a concern.
The current people behind Board might promise to deliver now, but who knows what will happen 5 years down the line.
by CapsAdmin - I can tell this is much more than just “Tabletop Simulator on a tablet”, although at $500 you’re likely to get a lot of attention from the Twilight Imperium and Gloomhaven crowd. I know more than a few childless people in my local gaming circle who would drop a half-large on accessories that simplify game execution.
But clearly this product isn’t about making existing board games easier to set-up/play/clean-up. I think the marketing dept has a lot of heavy lifting to do, convincing buyers that this isn’t just Juicero for existing board games.
by jkhdigital - I don't think the existing board game community is their market, but it's for people who like to be early adopters of tech and think they'd like to play games and have extra money, which is a pretty small market.by Suppafly
- Board seems cool, but it's not a way to consolidate your collection of euro, war or 4x games into one surface. The appeal to me is making new experiences involving physics, exciting visuals, and sound. Sure maybe you can replicate some smaller abstract games, but this would make playing TI or Gloomhaven absolutely miserable. People that don't play complex games assume that the scale and number of components is a burden, but they're carefully designed to give the ability for the players to make sense of and organize the scale and complexity of the game itself (especially in TI)by cush