• If you get an error saying the application failed to start because its configuration is incorrect, then it's likely you still need to properly install both the VC 2008 Redistributable package and .NET 3.5. See above.
• If the application simply refuses to run with an exception error, there is another problem that at this point is beyond my control. I've run into this problem a couple of times on some machines and I believe I've fixed the problem. Recent experimentation has revealed that it is related to some machines immediately calling the SizeChanged routine for the main form once it is initialized with all its controls. The SizeChanged routine adjusts all the controls as the form resizes, including an override for the chat entry control to allow up/down recall of what you type. This control isn't there yet when these machines call SizeChanged immediately, so the application would crash.
• I recently upgraded my 2008 Express development environment to Service Pack 1. I tested the newly compiled application on a machine with the original VC++ 2008 and .NET 3.5 framework, and everything appeared to work fine. However, if you get odd behavior, you may need to grab the SP1's. The new VC Redistributable and .NET 3.5 SP1 downloads are above.

If you Host but no one can connect:

• The application exclusively uses port 26010. Make sure you are allowing that port through your firewall. The application also exclusively uses TCP, but you may want to enable both TCP and UDP through the port, just in case.
• Your anti-virus software may also be blocking ports. Kapersky prevented this app from hosting during some testing. Try disabling your anti-virus software or configuring it to allow port 26010 TCP/UDP.
• Visit http://www.whatismyip.com/ to see the IP address for your machine. Provide this address to the players to use as the connection address.

• Separate "channels" for file downloads and game events. This means that while your client is requesting graphic files from the host, you can still chat, roll dice, move figures and play the game. High-speed internet users won't see much of a gain, but those still on dialup won't have to wait for a long map download to see game events taking place.
• Add figure portraits and maps while you play! The application supports BMP, JPG and PNG graphics for now. Small graphic files are preferred for all the figures. Maps are expected to occasionally be large. Clients receive new PC portraits in their selection screen as you add them! Extensive use of PNG and BMP files will require longer downloading. JPG recommended mostly.
• Uses GDI+ to render graphics. For now, no special 3D card requirements are necessary to play, although slower machines with slower graphics cards may notice some slowdown, especially on very large maps.
• Displays PC portraits along the bottom row of the graphics area, showing current and total hitpoints as well as indicators for nonlethal damage and temporary hit hoints, and health status (color). Mousing over figures on the map itself also shows health status without revealing hit points on creatures.
• Move figures around the playfield to show their position to other players.
• Additional indicators like a movement path with a distance value (supports x2 difficult terrain movement), attack arrow, markers, and spell effect areas help provide vital information for the game.
• Host can hide or reveal any part of the map using a path tracer that allows any size or shape (up to a certain complexity, more than enough for what you need).
• Clients keep a binary archive of downloaded files for each campaign so they won't have to request the files the next time they connect!
• Optional 5' square grid system that is adjustable while everyone is connected.
• Figures track name, armor class, speed, hit points (and temporary), damage (and nonlethal), initiative modifier, visibility, and graphic for the figure's appearance.
• Sketch mode for drawing lines on a blank map. This allows setting up on the fly maps in case you don't have a particular map graphic ready.
• A combat tracker allows you to advance the turn automatically. It reports a new round and expired spell effects which you can add. It allows you to set the status of a figure to normal, readied, delaying or out of combat (automatically skipped). It also allows a figure to be set to go just before the current figure (to trigger a readied action) or to go after the current one (to stop delaying). You can also move figures in the combat order as you wish, but setting a particular icon as the current one without treating it as a triggered action or ended delay is not supported. Icons are displayed along the top of the map to show initiative order.
• Icons now have "feature" and "locked" options, allowing you to put dressing on maps at the floor level.
• Icons now update 4 times a second on other machines when being dragged. A dragged distance path persists on the dragged icon for 4 seconds.
• Table lookup now supported. Here's a sample table. Place it in the scripts folder (run the program once to see it) and call with /table "Confusion 3.5" d100 (macro also supported). A hosted session will use the host's files only.

TTopRPG was designed around what I wanted in a tabletop emulator. Hit point statuses of creatures are available at a glance, and combat tracking is fairly complete. An older version of this application was used to track the combat involving the defense of a keep. The fight lasted 30 rounds in total, and the application handled it very well. The same combat was attempted using this latest version, and despite one strange lockup which the application fully recovered from (allowing everyone to reconnect and continue), it ran fine. As you conduct your campaign, you'll still be required to have your own mastery of all the participants and spells, since the application won't handle all of the deeper details for you (resistances, damage resistance, spell results, etc.).

That said, using the emulator will make it clear that it is very geared towards combat, and there may be a degree of pulling people out of the roleplaying as the emulator keeps combat variables very visible. So far, my players haven't noticed a real problem with this, so it really depends on the users.

Other notes

Sharing your campaign with others

If you want to share your campaign with others, you usually just need to zip up the folder with the campaign's name, and have others unzip it into their campaign folder. This of course assumes that they don't have any campaigns by that name already. A couple of important notes about this, however:

• Even though all campaign specific monster graphics and macros are stored inside the campaign's folder, the common Character and Monster portraits and saved Character macros are not. So, if you plan to share a campaign with others, make sure you are using only campaign specific monster graphics for all your icons (using the portrait manager, Copy all the common portrait graphics you used on icons into the Campaign Monster list, and assign all of the icons in the campaign to use those instead). You could send the other users your portraits folder as well to make this easier, but this will overwrite the index files in their portraits folder, causing them to in effect lose their common portrait library!!
• In order to share Character macros, you're probably best off just loading those into the Character slots on the macro control in the program, then saving the campaign. That way the PC macros will load when the other user opens the campaign.
• If you've tested the campaign by Hosting and Connecting to it from the same folder, you'll have archive.idx and archive.bin files in the campaign folder. Delete these before you zip it up.
• Older versions of TTop will refuse to load campaigns saved with a newer version. TTop will tell you what version you need (that version or later) if this happens.

Re-using a campaign

If you are setting up a campaign and you plan to use it multiple times, here's how you can re-use it:

• After you get the campaign ready to run, Export it. It will create an Exported campaign with the same name (you can make modifications and export it again later to overwrite the earlier Export, but don't do this if you have started your actual campaign!)
• Every new campaign you want to use it for, create the new campaign from the Export

OR

• Set up the campaign for running, but just save it off
• Every new campaign you want to use it for, create the new campaign off from the existing one (Copy Campaign)

Sadly, if you've set up a campaign and have started using it in an actual session, there is no way to restore it to its original form, short of going through every map and changing everything back.

Dial-up users

I've tested TTopRPG 2.0 with my own secondary dial-up connection, and it seems to work fine. However, there seems to be a repeated timing out problem, but I've added some wake-up messages that help jiggle the connection when it happens. Usually, the connection recovers during the second timeout.

A typical 1 meg-size map with all relevant data usually arrives to dial-up users in about 5 minutes with a decent 50k connection. Most maps are smaller than that.

I do NOT recommend that dial-up users host with a large jpeg map. You have to send that map data down to all users, and that would take a while on a dial-up hosting connection! Sketch maps should be fine. And make sure your icon graphics are decently sized (no larger than 10k each or so).

Current bugs

• Some machines exhibit inadequate region rendering, meaning the fog of war (occlusions) can appear corrupted. This is being looked into.

Coming soon

• Sketch erasing splices line segments instead of only dealing with points (so far dealing with only points has been enough)
• Multiple icon selection and moving (including toggling visibility and possibly setting other values)

Things you might not know

• If you set an icon's total hit points to zero, it will appear as a normal object with no hit point status when highlighted. This works well for showing NPCs, pit traps or corpses when you don't plan to track any damage to them.
• Making an icon invisible is the best way to hide it from the players. Players would still be able to highlight a visible icon that is completely hidden in an unrevealed part of the map. Also, if your intent is to show an icon moving out of the visible battlefield into a hidden area, trace the visible path out of combat, but don't automatically move the icon there. Instead, make the icon invisible, then drag it to the end of the path. This way the players know the icon has left the area, but they can't tell where it went by highlighting.
• Hold SHIFT to show the hp status of all visible icons (host or player)
• If you are hosting and want to conceal an icon's drag path while moving it, hold SHIFT.
• Invisible icon drag paths will not be visible to players (even if you make the icon visible while the last dragged path is still there), nor will plotted paths started on an invisible icon. When the path is partially transparent, it's invisible to players.
• There are a number of keyboard hotkeys on the map:
  • When nothing is highlighted:
    • A places an attack arrow
    • M places a marker
    • P or S begins a path plot
    • R starts Reveal Mode (host only)
    • H starts Hide Mode (host only)
  • When laying an attack arrow:
    • Esc will cancel it, as will right clicking
  • When an icon is highlighted:
    • Double-click will modify it
    • Enter will modify it
    • A will place an attack arrow beginning on the icon
    • P will begin a path plot with the icon highlighted (see below)
    • I rolls initiative
    • F will find it (as a player, you can highlight a PC portrait and hit F - it will find your icon on the map as long as it's visible)
    • Delete or R will remove it (host only)
    • V will toggle its visibility (host only)
    • H will heal it (host only)
    • D will damage it (host only)
    • E will access its Effects list (host only)
  • When a marker is highlighted:
    • Delete will remove it
  • When in plot path mode:
    • S starts over
    • Esc or C cancels
    • Backspace or B backs up one segment
    • Enter, P or D finishes the plot
    • When an icon was highlighted at the beginning, M, space, Z or X will finish the plot and move the icon to the end
    • Holding shift will cause the next segment to represent difficult x2 terrain (purple)
  • In Reveal or Hide mode (host only):
    • R and H will switch modes
    • D, Enter or Esc will leave Reveal/Hide mode and return to normal
  • When an infobox is highlighted (host only):
    • Enter will modify it
    • Double-click will modify it
  • When a spell effect is highlighted (host only):
    • Enter will modify it
    • Double click will modify it
    • Delete will remove it
    • V will toggle its visibility
  • While drawing out a region to reveal or hide (host only):
    • Right Click will cancel the draw (in case you make a mistake while drawing it out)

Most recent changes:

• v 0.95 (7/6/08) - supports 1 decimal of accuracy for object positions, allowing smoother placement on low res maps
• v 0.96 (7/11/08) - supports sketching and creation of blank maps (no erasing yet, that's coming)
• v 0.97 (7/14/08) - added password support
• v 0.98 (7/15/08) - whisper support
• v 0.99 (7/16/08) - sketch erasing support
• v 0.99.001 (7/19/08) - pings and dice stats
• v 0.99.002 (7/20/08) - correct version number shown in wrong version message from host
• v 0.99.003 (7/24/08) - added quick reply (/r), small bug fixes
• v 0.99.005 (8/5/08) - turn roller, minor bug fixes on campaign create and load (no longer allows you to copy a campaign that has no index file), port switched to 26010
• v 0.99.006 (8/7/08) - supports icon and campaign exports, hyperlinks supported in chat
• v 0.99.007 (8/8/08) - hide all function, fixed minor artifact error on blank map, shows maps added so far on New Map screen
• v 0.99.008 (8/30/08) - fixed bug with loading character file on a client while connected
• v 0.99.009 (9/2/08) - allows conditions on icons outside of combat now
• v 0.99.010 (9/8/08) - optional snap icons to grid and hide monster init order from clients, fixed X and O thickness on low grid size maps, fixed extra space on in-character emotes
• v 0.99.011 (9/11/08) Fixed grid-snap shimmer, cleaned up mouse selection (now infobox/effect/marker/icon), adjust grid by moving two points, fixed crash that occurs on DrawArc. Changed to DrawEllipse
• v 0.99.012 (9/18/08) Fixed remaining shimmer, hopefully fixed locked map graphic resource problem (occasionally caused an interruption when you tried to load a map that you just added).
• v 0.99.013 (9/26/08) Init order list now displays as a player correctly when asPC checked (when hosting). Capture all / commands for errors, #, /tell added for whispers, broadcast infoboxes in host's color, inform clients of timeouts, added some guaranteed wakeup messages and increased guaranteed re-send to 3 seconds to help dial-up clients
• v 0.99.014 (10/10/08) Explicitly populate playerName in normal MSG_CHAT and MSG_CHATREQUEST packets to prevent InvalidatePacket errors on clients, added feature option to icons (no outline, drawn under grid, sketches and normal icons, lockable)
• v 0.99.015 (10/11/08) Included Feature and Locked attributes in exported icon files (oops), no more placeholder rectangle for unloaded feature graphics (makes unloaded popup maps less obtrusive), fixed icon arrangement bug introduced by feature changes
• v 0.99.016 (10/17/08) Fixed rare bug involving altering icon PC flags between maps resulting in duplicate PC icons, cleared PlaceIcon form graphics selection when load a new campaign, bad packets received and reported from clients are now saved, dragged icons leave paths behind them with player color (disappears after 4 seconds), dragged icons update 4x a second on other machines, improved timing of map redraw to help prevent client timeout on slow machines while scrolling or dragging (still a problem on large maps), host no longer echoes path requests back to requester -making pathing less confusing for dial-up clients (end of path no longer sometimes erased if click too fast), clients now notify that someone has joined
• v 0.99.017 (10/21/08) Dragged icons now show distance in white box, further improved timing of scroll and drag redraws, syntax errors in dice rolls echo back the command with the error, icon drag paths are hidden when visibility toggles, feature icons leave no drag path, SHIFT will conceal icon path when dragging (host only), fixed minor bug with spell duration timers, chat messages now logged in .txt files in campaign folder of both host and client, made markers more apparent (added circle), fixed small exported icon selection bug
• v 0.99.018 (10/25/08) Version checking when loading a campaign (older versions of TTop can no longer load campaigns saved with a newer version)
• v 0.99.019 (10/28/08) Ctrl-select multiple icons for moving, visibility toggle, deletion and modification, optimized download remaining calculation on players (host only), removed repeated repair of player list (sometimes typing icon would not function, was a simpler error than I thought - this may change back), added cancel option to Save Campaign query on load map and close program to cancel the operation, ctrl-C (copy) and V (paste) work on single icons and selected icon groups (host only)
• v 0.99.020 (11/3/08) Fixed infoBox close window ordering problem (only happens when I run it with VS 2008 up), fixed minor difficulty with ctrl key being held as mouse leaves chat control (control continued to believe the ctrl key was still down after it was lifted), host's response to CHAT_REQUEST changed to SendNow so the result is immediate for users suffering poor download speed, added GIFs to supported graphics to load, added portrait manager screen
• v 0.99.021 (11/6/08) Host now sends markers in bulk to new joiners instead of one at a time, when objects are deleted next object underneath will be highlighted, F key now finds icon (highlight portrait, hit F to find your icon), you may no longer highlight markers that are not yours (host can still highlight all), new icons will cause highlight if they are under your mouse, Ctrl and shift operation cleanup, fixed small bug with coordinate snapping to grid with large icons (were being placed wrong and drag path would appear after modifying the size), improved appearance of plotted path distance, improved captions slightly, portrait mgr supports managing any campaign portrait, even while hosting, now validates large multi-packets as well, mode indicator (path/reveal/hide), path plot menu no longer permanently shows ", Move Figure"
• v 0.99.022 (11/6/08) Attack arrow not from an icon now requires 2 full clicks to place again, first click of plot path can highlight an icon to bind it (SHIFT prevents), first plot point on icon sent to other machines, all forms of pathing (plot, drag) now count squares instead of showing accurate distance, supports 4e as well
• v 0.99.023 (11/8/08) Supports 4e marking (multi-icon support), when multiple players are attempting to path, each path is preserved (although still temporarily erased when other player submits a path), can hold or lift SHIFT while dragging path point to change terrain difficulty, markers now colored properly for host when maps loaded, color changes and when disconnect
• v 0.99.024 (11/11/08) Fixed bug with Path Move Figure when two or more users are pathing (could use other user's path to move), fixed minor visual bug when rectangle selection of icons begins (only area under disappearing tooltip would update on the first animation), feature icons no longer display hit point status or AC/Spd when highlighted (host only), when host snaps to a position, player dragging map is cancelled, further simplified non-icon attack arrow placement, portrait manager no longer bombs out on missing graphic file, improved appearance of combat screen (and corrected spell timer additions - valid init range of spell timers and combatants now -200 to 200), 4 levels of transparency on effects
• v 0.99.025 (11/14/08) When ctrl-Ving to place more icons, now highlights the new one under the cursor, added campaign and common pic button to multiple Icon mod screen, corrected portrait names in multiple Icon mod screen, marked (4e) icons now show orange borders when not highlighted
• (v 0.99.025) (11/16/08) New version number not required. Context menues disabled when dragging icons infoboxes and effects, Heal message and icon reporting still take place even when the only healing is to nonlethal damage (bug fix), DeleteSketch messages remaining fields explicitly populated to prevent validation errors on client, Rclick menu on player list added (Send Tell option), Current combatant indicator thickness for small icons now adjusted for icon size to be less obtrusive , X's on icons set to a minimum thickness for easier visibility when zoomed out, Disable context menu while dragging path point (prevents index out of range error as well)
• v 0.99.026 (11/18/08) Move caret to end of command instead of highlighting it all when click Send Tell menu option, Text entry gains focus when move mouse into chat output or text entry, Table support in /scripts folder (// comment or ##;result or ##,##;result for each line - syntax /table ["]filename[.txt]["] dieRoll), Supports effects list on icons, Corrected clients snapping every time host does (should only happen when host selects Snap To Here)