Use manual uploads for selective setup
Manual uploads are the right fit when:
- the source game is not in The Game Crafter
- you only want a subset of assets
- you are iterating on a few components without reimporting everything
You upload from inside a game, on its Import Pieces tab.
Choose what you are building
The upload panel is organized by the kind of piece you want to create, so you only see the fields that matter for it:
- Tile Stack -- the main flow for cards and tiles, single or in a deck
- Dice -- custom dice built from face images
- Image Token -- a flat token from a single image
- Model Token -- a 3D token from a model file
- Book -- a multi-page reference or rulebook
Build a tile stack from images
Tile Stack is the workhorse for cards and tiles:
- Start with Back Images if your cards share a back. One back can be reused across many cards.
- Add your Face Images. Each image becomes a card in a grid of previews.
- For each card, set:
- Name -- defaults to the file name, editable to whatever reads clearly at the table
- Qty -- how many copies of that card to create
- Back -- which back to pair with it, or no back at all
Each card shows a checkmark once its image finishes uploading, and a progress bar reads "Uploading tile X of Y..." so you can watch the batch complete.
Uploads are live at once: each new piece is part of your game as soon as its images are up, with no draft to publish and nothing to wait for. Changes on the Import Pieces page work the same way. Renaming a piece, changing its quantity, reordering a deck, adding or removing a card, replacing an image, and moving, replacing or deleting a book's pages all take effect as soon as you make them. If an upload stops partway, the pieces added before it stay in the game; upload the rest again. While an import from The Game Crafter is being applied to a game's pieces, or a piece of them is being copied, changes to those pieces wait and say why; make the change again once it is done.
If your files follow a naming convention, the panel can also read the name, side, and quantity straight from the file names, which is handy for large sets.
Copy a deck, bag or book
On the Import Pieces tab, Copy on a deck, bag or book makes a copy of it with everything it holds: a deck's cards, a bag's decks and their cards, a book's pages. The copy keeps the same name and shows the same images. It is made in the background: the tab shows "Copying (12 of 40)..." and the whole copy appears at once when it is done.
A copy that would take the pieces from one source (your uploads, or one import) past 8,192, or a full deck past its 8,192 cards, stops with a message saying so, and nothing is copied: the tab keeps showing "A copy of a piece of (name) stopped:" with the reason and a Retry button, so you can make room and retry, and copying another piece or importing the game again clears it. So is a copy of a piece whose images are still being prepared (a Tabletop Simulator, Screentop or .pp import caching or cutting out its card images): the message says "The images of (name) are still being prepared. Copy the piece when they finish." If copying stops and cannot finish by itself, the tab says "A copy of a piece of (name) stopped:" with the reason, and a Retry button that carries on from where it stopped. If Retry stops with the same reason every time, contact support: they can discard the stopped copy. The part it had already copied stays (a copied deck holds the cards copied so far), and you can remove it.
Only pieces still in the game count toward the 8,192 a source may hold: removing a deck or bag frees a place for it and for every card, deck and bag inside it, so a copy refused for the limit can be retried straight after.
A copy of pieces that came from The Game Crafter is removed by the next import of that game from The Game Crafter, which does not have it. See Importing from The Game Crafter.
Upload in small batches
Smaller uploads are easier to verify. Bring in the pieces needed for the current workflow, confirm they look correct, then continue. Anything you have already uploaded stays listed on the tab, where you can review or remove individual pieces.
Normalize before playtesting
After upload, make sure the pieces are named clearly and placed into a usable table layout. Upload alone is not the goal; a table that supports the session is.