Hi Michael,
Comments below.
Cheers,
Brent.
>*********** REPLY SEPARATOR ***********
>
>On 24/08/2006 at 9:08 PM mirec_delech wrote:
>Hi there,
>In my quest to discover how to use Vassal by working on a light
>Diplomacy module (please stop me immediately if there is already one
>somewhere which I might not have spotted :), I have tried to prevent
>pieces from being stacked in any location.
>
>1. My first objective was that there could be only a single playing
>piece in any map location. I therefore defined a prototype AnyPiece
>with the property "Does not Stack". All my single pieces (should) have
>inherited that property from AnyPiece. I had also chosen "disable
>stacking" in the Map options.
>
>Unfortunately, when I drag pieces from the palette, it turns out that
>I can add as many pieces in a single map location as I want.
>My first question is therefore: how can I prevent this from happening
>? I thought that "Does not Stack" was exactly that...
No, 'Does Not Stack' just prevents pieces from stacking together, it does not
prevent them from being in the same place. So if you put two 'Does Not Stack'
pieces in the same place, they end up exactly on top of each other and hide the
bottom one.
If I was you, I would forget about having VASSAL trying to prevent having
multiple pieces in a location and have the players do this instead. Does a
paper Diplomacy board stop a player putting two Armies in one location? No -
all the other players yelling at the offender does.
Same principle. There is a limit to what 'rules of the game' you can get VASSAL
to enforce. This is one of them. I would make the pieces stackable so it is
obvious when multiple units end up in the same location.
>2. Then I realized that I would like to reflect the restricted amount
>of armies and fleets by creating locations outside the actual gaming
>board where one could have a stock of one's pieces: each nation has
>only 9 armies and 9 fleets. When an army or fleet disappears from the
>board, it should go back to its corresponding nation's stock. There is
>therefore no need to delete etc.
>To solve this, I intended to use an Option "Send to Location", and to
>combine this with a starting set-up that I would create by creating a
>game and saving it with hidden palette, offering a pre-defined setup
>only. Yet then I realized that forbidding pieces stacking (which I
>didn't manage anyway) would foil this plan. Yet all players should be
>able to see how many units they have left in their stocks, stocks need
>to contain more than one unit (up to 18 for an eliminated player), and
>it would be nice to prevent several units to stack on the gaming board.
Stacking only applies when there is a grid to stack to. Making your pieces
Stackable (as above) will help.
Where do you want your players to keep their off-board pieces? In a private
window, or in a shared off-board window somehere?
Either way, if you do not specify a grid in that location, the pieces can be
stored there without restriction. An your 'Send to Stock' option is definitely
a good idea.
You idea to use a pre-defined setup with the 18 pieces layed out in each 'Force
Pool' area is the way to go in my book.
Other areas you may want to (or already have) look at:
- Define player sides and restrict access to a players own pieces. Does not
always work if you want players to be able to remove opposing players pieces
after a battle.
- An Irregular Grid on the map to provide a single snappable location for each
board location. Helps prevent pieces creeping into adjacent locations and
allows reporting of move to/from in the chat window.
Actually, remembering Diplomacy, this wouldn't work for you as you need to
place pieces on the borders to indicate Attacking and support. You could either
add additional snap points on the borders, or use a Multi-zoned Grid and draw
named zones over the top of each map area and report movement using the zone
names.
Hope these ideas help,
Cheers,
Brent.
>Can anyone suggest a solution ? Sorry if I sound utterly newbie.
>
>If a tutorial or a well-known message on this board deals with that,
>pointing to the right place would do :)
>
>Thx, Michel.
>
>
>
____________________________________________________________
Brent Easton
Analyst/Programmer
University of Western Sydney
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vassalengine/
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
