Playtest Parlor

Move a game over from Screentop

If your prototype already lives on Screentop, you can carry it into Playtest Parlor instead of rebuilding it by hand, and pick up testing here with playtesting tools built in.

Watch a video walkthrough of importing a game from Screentop.

Send your game across with one click

Screentop has no export button, so Playtest Parlor gives you a bookmark that does the job instead. It reads your game on Screentop, signed in as you, and opens it in Playtest Parlor ready to import.

On the My Games page, click Import and choose Import from Screentop.
Drag the Send to Playtest Parlor button onto your browser's bookmarks bar. You only do this once. If you cannot see the bookmarks bar, press Ctrl+Shift+B (Cmd+Shift+B on a Mac).
On Screentop, sign in and open your game's Edit page.
Click Send to Playtest Parlor in your bookmarks bar.

A Playtest Parlor tab opens with your game ready to review, named as it is on Screentop. Your game stays on Screentop exactly as it was: the bookmark only reads it.

If your browser blocks the new tab, allow pop-ups for screentop.gg and click the bookmark again. If Playtest Parlor asks you to sign in first, sign in, then click the bookmark on your Screentop tab once more.

If you close the Screentop tab, or it stops answering, before your game arrives, the Playtest Parlor tab tells you so. Go back to your game's Edit page on Screentop and click the bookmark again.

Already have a Screentop game file, such as one someone sent you? The same page takes it: choose Upload it instead.

Review the preview first

Before anything is created, a preview shows what the file contains, with counts, and an honest summary of what comes across and what does not.

Comes across:

Tiles and cards, with their front and back art cut from your Screentop assets, at the size you gave them. Round tiles stay round and flat-topped hexes stay hexes. Other polygons, point-topped hexes and custom paths arrive as rectangles the same size, and the report lists them.
Stacks. Tiles of the same component sitting on the same spot arrive as one deck, in the same order: the tile on top of the stack in Screentop is the top card of the deck. The deck lies face up or face down the way that top tile lay, and every card in it lies the same way, both when the import lays it on your table and when you add it from the imported pieces list.
Dice, with every face's art, and counters, at the number they show.
Containers, as boards showing their base art. What sat inside a container arrives on the table where it sat, and tiles gathered on one point anchor arrive as a deck named for the anchor.
Point anchors, as point spaces with magnetism on, named for the anchor.
Guides, as resources on your game: a PDF opens as a PDF, anything else as a link.
Layout. Every piece lands where it sat on your first surface, turned the way it was, face up or face down as it was.
Listing, when you use the bookmark: the game's image becomes its cover, cropped from the center to 16:9, and its page becomes its description, along with its number of players, play time, minimum age and website. A number Screentop leaves at 0 stays blank. A value the listing cannot hold, such as 500 players, a website that is not a web link, or a description longer than 20,000 characters, is left out, and the finished import says which and why. A bookmark saved before the listing came across does not bring it; drag the button onto your bookmarks bar again to replace it. An uploaded game file has no listing.

Does not come across: scripts and the actions that run them, text fields, line anchors, surface backgrounds, and grid dropzones. The import report lists every script, text field and line anchor by name so you know what to rebuild, and any object of a kind Playtest Parlor does not know.

Surfaces and seats

Playtest Parlor has one table, so a game with more than one Screentop surface arrives with each extra surface laid out to the right of the first.

Whatever a seat was holding, such as a player's card holder, arrives below the table, and the table's hand lane turns on, because a game with held pieces is a game that uses player hands.

Watch the progress

During import you see the current step, such as caching artwork or cutting your asset sheets into individual faces, alongside an overall progress bar. If you cancel partway through, the half-finished game is removed for you. If the server stops partway through caching artwork or cutting out faces and cannot finish after a few tries, the dialog says "Preparing the imported art stopped before it finished." with the server's reason, and a Retry button that carries on from where it stopped. If another editor retries it while your dialog shows it stopped, your dialog follows it on instead of waiting for your Retry.

After the pieces are read, they are sent to the new game ("Sent 400 of 876 pieces") and then applied to it all at once ("Applied 400 of 876 pieces"), so the game never holds half of them. Every card of a deck takes the size of the deck's first card. A deck can hold at most 8,192 different cards and one import at most 8,192 pieces; a larger one is refused with a message naming the deck or the count and asking you to split it in Screentop.

The last step, "Placing pieces", lays every piece, deck, bag and snap point out on the new game's table and counts them as it goes ("Placed 400 of 876 pieces"). A large game takes a little while here; the table opens once everything is in place. If placing stops and cannot be completed, the import says "Placing the imported pieces stopped before it finished." with the reason and a Retry button, which carries on from where it stopped; Cancel Import removes the partly imported game instead. If the server cannot take the Retry yet (for example, imports are being upgraded for a few minutes), the import says why and keeps your game, so you can press Retry again. If an editor presses Retry on the game's page, before or while the import shows the placement stopped, the import notices at once: it stops showing the stop and its Retry, waits for placing to finish, or shows the new reason if it stops again. A message about a Retry that could not go ahead goes once placing is done. If you closed or reloaded the page, the game's page shows the stopped placement on its table configuration's row, with the reason and a Retry button, to the game's editors.

A game with more than 8,192 pieces lying on its table is too large for one placement: nothing is placed, and the import says how many pieces there are and asks you to split the game in Screentop and import each part. A table holds at most 2,000 table entities (how much a table can hold); if the pieces lying on the table and the snap points do not all fit, nothing is placed, and the import says how many there are and asks you to split the game into smaller saves in Screentop and import each one as a game of its own. Every message about a limit names Screentop as the place to make the change.

After the import

When it finishes, open the new game and jump straight to a session. If any part of the game's listing could not be brought over, the finished import says which part and why. A short report lists anything skipped or needing a touch-up, such as a piece whose asset had no image, which arrives blank so you can upload its art by hand. You can open the report again later from the game's Import report action on the My Games page, even after you have changed or copied the imported pieces.

Rebuild anything that did not carry over, such as scripted actions, with Playtest Parlor's own tools. See Sequences for no-code automation, and Manual Uploads to add art by hand.