Move a game over from Tabletop Simulator
If your prototype already exists in Tabletop Simulator, you can carry its 2D components into Playtest Parlor and pick up testing here, closer to a real table with playtesting tools built in.
Watch a video walkthrough of importing a game from Tabletop Simulator.
Start the import
Start from the Import button on the My Games page and choose Import from Tabletop Simulator. You provide the save file that Tabletop Simulator exports for your game (a .json file). The save's name becomes the name of your new game.
Review the preview first
Before anything is created, a preview shows you what the file contains and sets clear expectations:
- a breakdown of what will be imported, such as decks, cards, dice, tokens, bags, and boards, with counts
- an honest summary of what comes across and what does not
Comes across: flat pieces, decks and cards, dice, bags, board images, and their layout and positions on the table. Snap points and hand zones come across too, described below. Each deck keeps its Tabletop Simulator order: the card on top of the deck there is on top of the deck here. Every deck arrives face down, and so does every card in it.
Does not come across: 3D models, Lua scripting and automated behavior, and Steam Workshop dependencies. Tabletop Simulator builds these in ways Playtest Parlor does not use, so they are left behind rather than approximated.
Tabletop Simulator's own playing cards
If your save uses the standard deck of playing cards built into Tabletop Simulator, rather than a deck made from your own card images, each card arrives showing the matching face from Playtest Parlor's standard playing cards, named for its face (such as "Ace of Hearts"), with the red back Tabletop Simulator shows. Tabletop Simulator keeps the pictures for these cards inside the game itself, so the save file has no images to copy; matching them to our own faces keeps every card the card it was.
Snap points and hand zones
Both of these are brought across, so you should not need to lay the table out again by hand.
Every snap point becomes a point space on your table, at the same place it sat in Tabletop Simulator, with magnetism turned on so pieces settle onto it. This covers both kinds: the ones placed on the table itself and the ones attached to an object such as a board, which arrive positioned relative to that board. If a snap point had tags in Tabletop Simulator, the space keeps them, and the first tag names the space so you can tell one from another. An untagged snap point arrives named "Snap".
Hand zones turn on the table's hand lane, because a save that has them is a game that uses per-seat hands. Their positions are not copied over: Playtest Parlor lays each player's hand out below their own seat, which is where players expect it, rather than wherever the zone happened to sit in Tabletop Simulator.
Watch the progress
During import you see the current step, such as caching artwork or separating combined images into individual cards, alongside an overall progress bar. If you cancel partway through, or the import fails, the half-finished game is removed for you so nothing is left half-imported. Pieces already sent are thrown away at once; if the tab is closed before the import finishes, they are cleared away within a day. Once the artwork has started caching, the server carries on by itself: it caches every image and then cuts out the cards even if you close the tab. While the artwork is being cached or cut out, the Import Pieces page refuses to copy a piece of the game and asks you to copy it once the images are ready. The other way round, retrying a step that stopped while a piece of the game is being copied waits for the copy to finish and then carries on by itself.
If the server stops partway through caching artwork or separating cards, it starts that step again by itself, from where it stopped, after a few seconds, then half a minute, then two minutes. If it still cannot finish, the dialog says "Preparing the imported art stopped before it finished." with the server's reason, and a Retry button. Retry carries on from where it stopped; Cancel Import removes the half-finished game. Only an editor of the game can retry it; if another editor does 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, and each deck keeps its order from Tabletop Simulator, with the same card on top. 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 Tabletop Simulator.
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 table holds at most 2,000 table entities (how much a table can hold). Before placing anything, the import counts what it would put on the table: every piece lying on it and every snap point (cards in a deck and pieces in a bag do not count). If they do not all fit, nothing is placed, and the import says how many there are and how much room the table has; split the game into smaller saves in Tabletop Simulator and import each one as a game of its own. If something is added to the table while the pieces are being placed and the snap points no longer fit, the pieces stay, the snap points are not added, and the import says so; import the game again to place its pieces and snap points together.
A save 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 into smaller saves in Tabletop Simulator and import each one.
After the import
When it finishes, you can open the new game and jump straight to a session. A short report is available if you want to see anything that was skipped, which is useful for spotting a deck or piece that needs a manual touch-up. You can open it 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 automation that lived in scripts -- using Playtest Parlor's own tools. See Sequences for no-code automation, and Manual Uploads to add pieces by hand.