>
> Bummer. The worst the updater ought to do is leave a piece alone.
If it's
> removing pieces or adding extra pieces, that's a bug that'll need more
> investigation.
>
> rk
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
For your information on some of the things that went wrong:
In Hammer of the Scots, there are two facedown decks of shuffled units
-- the draw pools. I had two scenario files in the game. After I
updated, the new versions had stacks of units adjacent to the pool. I
dragged them to the pool, and I should have checked them because the
deck composition was wrong. Extra units of one type and missing units
of another.
In Clash for a Continent, I have 15 scenario files. I decided to add a
new property to each unit so when it was killed, it would be sent to a
location -- a killed VP pool. After I update the 15, I found problems
in every scenario I inspected. Some scenarios had British units
stacked with french where there should have been only one french unit,
and some extra units, who should have not been in the scenario, still
had the unconverted properties from the original module. This one I
can give you if you want a test case for debugging.
I found the idea of a scenario update to be a godsend, so it's a
disappointment that it does not work properly.
I am bit surprised that so much static information is written to the
saved files. I can understand that dynamic properties such as face up
or face down, rotation, and location on a game board must be in the
file, but I would not have expected static properties to be there as
well. Oh well.
While I am blathering on, I will add some other thoughts and requests.
I really appreciate that you added the ability to test dynamic
properties in the global commands. Since I do modules for block games
with hidden units, this has been a big help because now I can define a
button that flips facedown only units that are faceup, which I could
not do before. Before, down units went up and up units went down.
And thank you for fixing the stacking problems. In the past, stuff
would not stack unless I overlayed some sort of grid on the map and
had pieces snap to the center. I don't have to do that anymore, and
it's made things much easier and better.
Things I'd like to see:
I'd like you to decouple the ability to move a unit from the
restricted access property. It would be nice if they were two separate
piece properties -- Moveable and Restricted Access. I could use that.
(I realize the problem here is maintaining backward compatibility.)
I wish decks, and especially faceup discard piles, could be restricted
to only certain types of units being put on them. Right now anyone can
throw cards and pieces onto a faceup discard pile, and it will unmask
everything. I'd have to disallow players from moving pieces
(restricted access) to prevent this, but restricted access with its
'no move' policy is a real pain in PBEM play. (I'd suggest linking an
optional property to each deck so that it only accepts pieces with
that property.)
Finally, I wish stacks of units or hands of cards would automatically
sort themselves in some predefined order, such as a stack of units
always putting leaders on top or a hand of playing cards always
sorting itself by suit and rank. This could be done by allowing the
mod designer to assign a number to each piece that the components
would respect. For example, with a standard deck of playing cards, the
mod designer would assign the King of spaces a "1", the queen a "2"
and so on down through all 52 cards. Now when you put the cards in a
hand (or pieces on a stack), you'd first sort them by this ordering,
and voila! you'd have a sorted hand or stack.
Stan Hilinski
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