Recently I wrote some scripts for GIMP 3.0 to allow for generation of playing cards for table top games from a template (you can find them here). One of my motivations for this was because when I had looked into commercial solutions in the past I had found them to be either unsuitable or extremely expensive. However now the price of commercial tools has fallen while their quality has improved.
The Commercial Options
Dextrous is an online game creation tool. It now has a basic free tier which allows for you to create two projects. However beyond that it is still quite expensive, given that it is a subscription model and fees will recur.
More promising in my opinion is TableTop Creator Pro. This used to cost over £150 which was a little steep for what was basically a custom layout tool. However over the last couple of years Tabletop Tech have made quite a few improvements to the program, added a basic free version and dramatically reduced the price to around £40 (and under £30 during promotions or on Steam during sales). They have also considerably improved their documentation and tutorials. Take together, this prompted me to obtain a copy to see how it performs and the answer is: rather nicely.
Feature Comparison
Here is a quick summary of the pros and cons.
| Feature | GIMP and Scripts | TableTop Creator | Dextrous |
| Open Source | Yes | No | No |
| Free Tier | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Paid Features | No | Yes | Yes, Subscription |
| CSV support | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| WISYWIG | No | Yes | Yes |
| Handles Layout | Partial | Yes | Yes |
| Icon Support | Partial | Yes | Yes |
| TTS Support | No | Yes | Yes |
| Easy of Use | Poor | Good | Great |
As you can see the paid versions offer considerably more utility. Obviously since they are not open source, you cannot easily extend their functionality. You get what they offer and if it does not fit your needs you are in a bind. However the commercial products are easier to use, and currently offer more features. Now that they offer free versions and are reduced in cost they are most likely the sensible choice for a game designer who wants a convenient computer based solution for designing game components.
Conclusion
Its nice that free and open source options exist, but it can be hard for them to compete with a closed source product which has funding to invest in product development. I rather suspect I will tend to use Tabletop Creator Pro in future, rather than writing further custom scripts for GIMP. I think they have done a good job of competing with free by producing a reasonably priced, easy to use product which gives excellent results.
