Vassal Module: Version 3.5 preview

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2 years 10 months ago - 2 years 10 months ago #7173 by RiverWanderer
I am preparing to release a new version of the Vassal module, v3.5, offering a similar experience to that found in the C&C Ancients module. Feedback is invited, which I will consider as I work to complete final tweaks in the next week or two. A link to download the current test version can be found below.

Features inspired by the C&C Ancients module are:-
1) Card draw can be done from buttons in the hand window, and the hand window is self-organising. There is also an "Elan" button as a reminder and convenience to do the re-shuffling.
2) Combat markers will automatically set to "no battle" once a new attack is formed. To accommodate Combined Arms and Grand Battery there is a new command "Add to Attack" [Alt+A] that appears on ordered Artillery units when an Attack has been declared elsewhere. A hotkey provides for an Attack to be completely cleared and restarted [F6]. For this release, I have stuck to marker pieces, so they can still be moved around independently.
3) Dice are rolled directly from the main toolbar. A new feature is that dice icons appear in chat. The old dice tray is still available [F3 to display]
4) "On turn" indication. The module uses colour to indicate the current on-turn side; tracking starts from the first card played.
5) One stop shop: most fan scenarios from the v3 extension are now incorporated into the main module (albeit, far fewer than the Ancients module and back to standard C&C component graphics, at least for now).
6) Help menu is populated with some useful links and information

In addition, there are some new features and options, such as:
1) Re-designed, clickable startup panel. Features buttons/commands for Random side choice and side switching.
2) Game Clocks. New in Vassal 3.5, this feature allows you to track the amount of time each side's turn takes. An optional feature that is set by the person who starts the game; when enabled, clocks appear on the main toolbar to be started manually. From then on clock swapping is automatic at end turn but you can intervene if necessary.
3) Side Icons indicate turn status, hand sizes and, optionally, player names.
4) An optional "Hints" feature that displays a "mouse-over" brief reminder of terrain or unit features. When off, only the underlying terrain is displayed.
5) Apart from dice icons, other icons appear in the chat log, highlighting key events.
6) Combat Markers have ability to apply multiple hits.

Test release(s) can be found here . Please use the latest, if you are going to try it out (currently, 3.50-a12).  Release Notes are available from the Help menu but I am interested to hear whether the module is familiar and intuitive enough to use without the notes. A couple of Shortcuts are changed (Garrison and R&R). There are also more hotkeys. The full list can be found in the Player Aids (hotkey: F1). Vassal Version 3.5.5 minimum is required to use the module.

For those kind enough to take a look, you will notice that menu options are compacted and there Is some limited filtering to make Right-Click easier to use. I am interested to hear whether this is helpful or not.

Mark B.
Last edit: 2 years 10 months ago by RiverWanderer. Reason: More on non-standard scenarios. Correct the reference to

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2 years 10 months ago - 2 years 10 months ago #7175 by grecian formula
Hi Mark,

looks very impressive. Going to start a solitaire game of waterloo soon, but here are some initial observations.

1) Nice -- pick the card from the card tableau! very useful. (new I think)
2) also nice -- labels for the leaders. (new I think)
3) minor glitch - when picking the 75 card hand, it instead looks like the clock is turned on. then it gets turned back off again and the correct cards are laid out. Not exactly broken but disconerting
4) Can you please add the usual button that nearly every vassal module has, to 'hide# the pieces so we can look at the terrain without it cluttered with pieces?

Thanks. as said, will test drive a solo game and see what else pops up.

cheers < Marc

Prajñāpāramitā
Last edit: 2 years 10 months ago by grecian formula. Reason: typos

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2 years 10 months ago #7176 by RiverWanderer

.
1) Nice -- pick the card from the card tableau! very useful. (new I think)
2) also nice -- labels for the leaders. (new I think)
3) minor glitch - when picking the 75 card hand, it instead looks like the clock is turned on. then it gets turned back off again and the correct cards are laid out. Not exactly broken but disconerting
4) Can you please add the usual button that nearly every vassal module has, to 'hide# the pieces so we can look at the terrain without it cluttered with pieces?
.
Hi Marc - thanks for your initial feedback; here are my responses:-

1) ...pick the card from the card tableau! very useful. (new I think)   - yes, a new feature. Left-Click on a card in hand and it will play (unless deemed inactive, which is shown by a sub-dued border). Cards can always be played by dragging to the board and right-click menu options are there too.  Left-Click option is a user-preference, on by default. Can be disabled in the Vassal Preferences (Game Options tab).

2)  also nice -- labels for the leaders. (new I think)  - well leader labels are already there in the live version, thanks to that version's developer (Bayerniki). I merely played with the format. I think it looks a bit nicer (maybe) and was little work for me but only possible because of great work behind the scenes by vassal developers who recently made Text labels updatable in pre-set scenario files.
 
3) minor glitch - I haven't been able to reproduce clicking on the 75 option and seeing the clock setting change as well. I have seen the clock flash briefly from off to on when a scenario starts up. This may be to do with the save file state, as the setting is read from user preferences and adjusted during start up.  Or perhaps a difference in our machines e.g. screen dimensions or zoom levels.   I'd like to investigate further if you can reproduce and give more clues.

4) 'hide the pieces' - new function is ready. It will be keyed on F7. I will release this update shortly.  I have changed the command key for the rarely using "Conscript" setting (was using F7), and I need to update the shortcuts player aid.

Thanks for testing, please let me know anything else you find or ideas.

Mark
 

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2 years 10 months ago #7177 by RiverWanderer
v3.5a13 now released .

Comprises:

1. Terrain view requested by Marc. F7 to show / hide terrain view.  
2. French Line "Conscript" is moved from F7 to Alt+C
3. Suppress a module version report line when scenario is opened.


Mark

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2 years 10 months ago #7178 by rjvonline
Crossposted from BGG:

Few comments:
- my opponent (Guillaume Gleize) complained of not being able to magnify cards on the map or his hand
- he also noted that the main toolbar is too wide to fit in one row on his 15: screen so it wraps around
- I'd love for the charts window to be a bit narrower (it uses a lot of real estate), which you could do by reducing the size of the chart images
- “Hide cards” button in hand windows does not seem to be working
The following user(s) said Thank You: RiverWanderer

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2 years 10 months ago #7179 by RiverWanderer

Crossposted from BGG:

Few comments:
- my opponent (Guillaume Gleize) complained of not being able to magnify cards on the map or his hand
- he also noted that the main toolbar is too wide to fit in one row on his 15: screen so it wraps around
- I'd love for the charts window to be a bit narrower (it uses a lot of real estate), which you could do by reducing the size of the chart images
- “Hide cards” button in hand windows does not seem to be working
 

Thanks Renaud, I'm working through your points. On one of them, I could do with a little more information. See  reply posted on BGG .

Mark

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2 years 10 months ago #7180 by grecian formula
Quick report based on several turns back and forth of waterloo

1) no glitches
2) It is true that cards on the map are not magnified and this would be an improvement, but they are magnified once discarded, although not by much. maybe the magnfication factor could be increased slightly.
3) hand windows
a) the global button for hide cards could be functioned to unhide cards if hit again. right now it seems to only hide.
b) the leftmost card is pressed up right against the window when the window is displayed. while the card can be read, it would be more aesthetic if there were a border space area separating the card from the edge of the window.
If there is more, I'll let you know. basically, though, I really like this new module and the way it functions more smoothly than the older versions. Marc

Prajñāpāramitā

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2 years 10 months ago #7183 by RiverWanderer
v3.5a17 beta now  released  .

Includes the following:

1. Shortcuts chart updated and narrowed to fit same format as the other charts.
2. Mouse-over now magnifies cards on the main board / side board.
3. Mouse-over is available in the hand window as a user preference (See Preferences.... Game Options). Off by default because, until/unless a Vassal bug is fixed, it does not work very well for the card rows in hand windows.
4, Toolbar compressed. Now fits across a 13" screen.
5. Further development on the Combat Markers to integrate better with attacker piece retreats and momentum advance.

I have chosen a 1.5x magnification for the card mouse-over. Do people think this is enough? Anyone who wants to experiment can try the zoom in a hand window - you can set the magnification there to whatever value you wish to try.

On the "Hide Cards" button and any other hand window stuff, I would like to wait to look at these again when I get on to doing some more work on the card handling.




 

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2 years 10 months ago - 2 years 10 months ago #7184 by grecian formula
I tried the new update v3.5a17 beta and finished waterloo. crushing french victory.

1. magnification at 1.5x is great for me on my system.
2. I noticed there is no 'back' button for correcting mistakes (e.g. wrong moves, etc.) maybe i missed it, but the icon is usually there for most Vassal modules as a generic 'roll back' arrow. This could still be useful or at least easier to see, no need to change the generic look imo.
3. Perhaps automation of the square up process could be considered. it's a bit tedious to square up with multiple squares and then square them back down when coming back out. would also be nice if the cards that are on the square displays could have a right click option 'return to hand,' automating that functionality as well. Not sure how easy or difficult this is. problem with automating vassal stuff is that it seems the more that is automated, the slower it gets/more stuff goes wrong;)
4 as you mentioned not fiddling with this yet in the card hands, but 1.5x magnification would be useful there too.
cheers and thanks a lot! Marc

Prajñāpāramitā
Last edit: 2 years 10 months ago by grecian formula. Reason: typos

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2 years 10 months ago - 2 years 10 months ago #7185 by RiverWanderer

I tried the new update v3.5a17 beta and finished waterloo. crushing french victory. Thank you!

1. magnification at 1.5x is great for me on my system.  Great!
2. I noticed there is no 'back' button for correcting mistakes (e.g. wrong moves, etc.) maybe i missed it, but the icon is usually there for most Vassal modules as a generic 'roll back' arrow. This could still be useful or at least easier to see, no need to change the generic look imo.
It's there in the normal place; in fact, it is not possible to remove the first 3 buttons from the toolbar. The button image has changed, but only to make it consistent with C&C Ancients/Medieval. Also, UnDo has shortcut Ctrl+Z in CCN.
 

3. Perhaps automation of the square up process could be considered. it's a bit tedious to square up with multiple squares and then square them back down when coming back out. would also be nice if the cards that are on the square displays could have a right click option 'return to hand,' automating that functionality as well. Not sure how easy or difficult this is. problem with automating vassal stuff is that it seems the more that is automated, the slower it gets/more stuff goes wrongI plan to do this; proposal below.
4 as you mentioned not fiddling with this yet in the card hands, but 1.5x magnification would be useful there too.
cheers and thanks a lot! Marc Actually, I did fix this in a17 but there is a Vassal issue that means all cards in a row zoom up not just the one you point at (why I disabled it in the first place). I made it a user preference (Off by default). Over-night, one of the Vassal devs picked up on my problem report and it looks like the issue will be fixed in Vassal 3.5.6, in which case I will make mouseover in hand the default again.

Squaring:

I've already done this in development versions and I think I can implement it safely in v3.5.

My ideas for this are:-
1) Square is done by a simple press of the square button in the inactive player's hand window. i.e. this would automatically allocate a marker to the Targeted infantry unit.
2) Playing "Hasty Square" would bypass the card discard and square the unit.
3) Unsquare would become Ctrl+U on a squared piece.
​​​​​​​4) Card will be retrievable from the rack, by right-click command or a single left-click from the owning player, if the square marker had been de-allocated. Dragging the card back to hand also has to be tolerated, but I would leave the player to Unsquare the infantry unit manually.
5) If a squared unit is moved into either the top or bottom (banner) zones , the Unsquare and card retrieval can be automatic.
Last edit: 2 years 10 months ago by RiverWanderer.

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