Hi, Comments below on how I have handled similiar situations in some of my modules.
Cheers, Brent. >*********** REPLY SEPARATOR *********** > >On 17/01/2007 at 7:58 PM rindis8 wrote: >Okay... I've been poking at this for some time now, and can't seem to >come up with any great solutions. So, I'm going to try and describe >the entire complicated mess, and see what suggestions fall on me. ^_^ > >I've been working on a module for Federation & Empire. I've finally >caught up to all the expansions, and I'm trying for that extra degree >of "polish". > >F&E features a fantastic number of individual ships (easy enough) >which you can move and do un-neighborly things with. Bases don't move, >but can be built and upgraded and attacked. Planets are effectively >terrain features which can be defended and attacked and captured. > >That last gets complicated. After capture it takes some time absorb >into your supply structure. Also, after a while, it can be 'annexed' >by the capturing side, making it a more permanent possession. Much the >same type of thing is true of 'provinces' (a collection of 5-6 hexes, >defined on the map), and individual neutral zone hexes. > >This is all generally taken care of on paper normally, but I'd like to >handle as much of that on the board as possible. > >I have bases as counters much like the ship counters. However, it'd be >nice if, when moving a stack of ships, I didn't have to expand it just >to select everything other than the base. I could make it 'does not >stack', or put it on another layer, but then it effectively >disappears, and it's important to know it's there (and pick it up to >put it in the combat chart when attacked). I would have the base control counters in a separate layer and make them either larger than the ship counters, or offset them so they are visible below the stack of ships in the hex. For a WW2 game, I made the control counter a small flag that sat in the bottom of the hex below the other counters. To change control, you clicked in the flag and selected the new owner. >For planets, I went the 'separate layer' route. I made the graphics >take up the entire hex, so that it peeks out from under the counters. >You can hover over it and see the current status, and you click on it, >but it's clunky. I don't think that is clunky at all, this is exactly how I would approach the planets option! Again, you have the actual status marker (color, symbol, whatever) visible to the side of the main stack of ship counters. Perhaps all you need is a minor redesign of some of your marker counters? I find this is often necessary to get a clean VASSAL implementation - Don't feel too constrained to reproduce everything from the cardboard game 100%. >For provinces, I was kind of thinking of solving the problem by having >the marker live on the borders of hexes. It could get obscured by >other counters, but would still be reasonably obvious. But, I don't >see a way of letting some counters do that, without letting them all >do that (which would be more irritating than helpful here). I can't >assign any properties to a layer, so I can't make it use a different grid. I had the same problem in the last module I created, so added the new feature 'Zone Highlighters'. If you create a multi-zone grid and draw a zone for each province, then you can create 'Zone Highlighters' that will shade the Zones in. Highlighters can be an image, or a color (solid, stripes, checks, color, transparency) and can shade the whole zone, or just a border around the edge. Selection of the current highlight is based on a Global Property, typically a Zone Property attached to each province zone. To change the highlight, you add a 'Set Global property' to the counters to change the value of the property in the current zone. >A lot of problems would go away if I had a 'reveal map' button that >would still show certain classes of counters. If you want to go this route, then you have a couple of things to play with: 1. You can add buttons to the Game Piece Layers component to turn all the counters in a layer on or off. You can add a multi-action button to hide more than one layer at a single press. 2. You can use a Global Key Command to Activate/Deactivate the display layers in different classes of counters. Cheers, Brent. >Anyhow, just various points that I seem to be stuck on.... ____________________________________________________________ Brent Easton Analyst/Programmer University of Western Sydney Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
