Overview

Containers define areas of the table that can “hold” (or, well, contain) Components. A Container may also hold one or more other Containers inside it. Common uses of containers include boards, player hands, player mats, and zones for decks or resources.

Attributes

Here are the most common attributes to configure:

Name
(Hidden Style: Not necessarily a commonly used attribute but you can find more details in “Open vs. Closed Containers / Hidden Style” below.)
Orientations: If this is greater than 1, players can rotate the container using the q and e keys or by right-clicking and selecting Rotate. If set to 2, the container will rotate 180°. If set to 4, the container will rotate 90°, and so on. When a container rotates, everything inside it rotates together (even if the contained items do not have the same defined orientations).
Height & Width: Define the dimensions of the container. For example:
- A 20” by 30” game board could be 1000 x 1500, if you have decided that your components and assets will be based on a resolution of 200 pixels per inch.
- A horizontal hand for 10 playing cards (sized 125 x 175) could be 1270 x 195, if you wish to have 10 pixels of “margin” around the cards.

View Policies

By default, all players can see all objects. To hide objects from some players, such as cards in players’ hands, you’ll need to configure the View Policy of each of those containers. This must be done not to the component template that defines the container, but rather to that component’s individual objects in the game.

Right-click the container object showing on the surface and select Seats.
Select the player seat that is allowed to see the objects in that container. If you’ve added an Admin seat, also select that seat to also allow the Admin to see the objects.
Select View Policy in the right-click menu and select Allow Seats.

Open vs. Closed Containers & Hidden Style

A container object can be open or closed; You can toggle between the two by hitting F after selecting the container.

If a container object is closed, ****then its variant's cover asset is shown (or its cover fill colour, if no cover asset is set).
If a container object is open, ****then its variant's base asset (or base fill colour) is shown.

But a container being open or closed is different to the contained objects being hidden. That's down to the view policy of the container:

If the View Policy of a container object denies a seat a view of it, then the container's "Hidden Style" attribute takes effect as follows for players in a denied seat:

Hidden Style	Look of the Container to denied Seats	Look of Objects in the Container to denied Seats
Opaque	Always opaque (black)	If the Container is open:
→ Objects in the Container take on their variant’s Hidden Style.
If the Container is Closed:
→ Objects fully inside the Container are invisible. Objects partially inside the Container take on their variants’ Hidden Style.
Open	Base asset (or fill color)	Objects in the Container take on their variant’s Hidden Style.
Closed	Cover asset (or fill color)	Objects in the Container take on their variant’s Hidden Style and cannot be picked up.
None	If the Container is open:
→ Base asset (or fill color).
If the Container is closed:
→ Cover asset (or fill color)	Objects in the Container take on their variant’s Hidden Style.