A Gest of Robin Hood

Module Discussion
1

Version 1.0.2, Help: Quick Start fails with “File not found: VASSAL could not find the file ‘Intro.html’”. Any idea why?

2

Typically, the Quick Start entry in the Help menu refers to the general quick start guide of Vassal, and is not module specific. Of course, a module could have replaced the content with something else. That is, you are not really missing something that you need for the module use. The author @BoardGameBloke , of the A Gest of Robin Hood module should of course fix it.

Yours,
Christian

3

AGORH module creator here. Something odd is happening. That may not be caused by me….

Other modules (including those not created by me) also display the same error “VASSAL could not find the file ‘Intro.html’” when accessing the Help | Quick Start menu item

Other modules include: Empire of the Sun 6.0.2. and Indian Ocean Region 1.0

The Intro.html file menu item is included in a new, blank module. When I create a new, empty module (with just a map); the error message does not appear when I access the Help | Quick Start. But it does appear on these other modules

The Intro.html file itself is not included in a module file, even a module that displays Intro.html correctly, it must be stored elsewhere???

4

I’ve just scoured my entire computer and there is no intro.html file anywhere, not even one not belonging to Vassal.

Maybe the simplest solution is to remove that menu entry? A lot of modules don’t have it already.

5

It seems like Vassal no longer looks for the file in the right place …

… which is inside the Vengine.jar JAR file - e.g.,

$ unzip -l Vengine.jar | grep Intro.html 
     4477  2025-12-30 16:57   help/Intro.html

Another option is to add the file to the module(s). First, extract it from the JAR, and then add it to the module

$ unzip Vengine.jar help/Intro.html 
$ mv help/Intro.html .
$ zip -u A_Gest_of_Robin_Hood_1.02.vmod Intro.html

Do you have an example of a module that does display the file? Would be interesting to see the difference.

Yours,
Christian

6

I created a new module, with just a map added, where the Help | Quick Start menu works as expected.

Link to shared Box folder

7

Great, thanks.

OK, so here’s the relevant section of the buildFile.xml in the above linked IntroHTMLtest.vmod - which works as intended

<VASSAL.build.module.Documentation>
  <VASSAL.build.module.documentation.AboutScreen fileName="/images/Splash.png" title="About Module"/>
  <VASSAL.build.module.documentation.HelpFile fileName="/help/Intro.html" fileType="resource" title="Vassal Quick Start" vassalDoc="vassal"/>
</VASSAL.build.module.Documentation>

And here’s the same section in the A Gest of Robin Hood module module - which does not work as intended

<VASSAL.build.module.Documentation>
  <VASSAL.build.module.documentation.AboutScreen fileName="Box front 480h A.jpg" title="About Module"/>
  <VASSAL.build.module.documentation.HelpFile fileName="Intro.html" fileType="archive" title="Quick Start" vassalDoc="vassal"/>
  <VASSAL.build.module.documentation.BrowserPDFFile pdfFile="AGORH TLDR Vassal.pdf" title="The TL:DR on how to use this module"/>
</VASSAL.build.module.Documentation>

As you can see,

  • In the working case, the Intro.html file is referenced as /help/Intro.html, and the type is set to resource.
  • In the non-working case, the Intro.html is referenced as Intro.html, and the type is set to archive.

Unfortunately, the Vassal editor does not allow you to enter a path like /help/Intro.html - it is automatically changed to Intro.html - for a VASSAL.build.module.documentation.HelpFile, nor change the type. Thus, the only way - as far as I can tell - to fix it for existing modules, is to edit the embedded buildFile.xml by hand. That is, the line

  <VASSAL.build.module.documentation.HelpFile fileName="Intro.html" fileType="archive" title="Quick Start" vassalDoc="vassal"/>

should be changed to

  <VASSAL.build.module.documentation.HelpFile fileName="/help/Intro.html" fileType="resource" title="Quick Start" vassalDoc="vassal"/>

Depending on your Zip tool, editing the buildFile.xml can sometimes be done directly in the Zip file. For example, file-roller on Linux allows that

  1. file-roller A_Gest_of_Robin_Hood_1.02.vmod
  2. Right click buildFile.xml and select Open with ... and select your favorite text editor
  3. Edit the relevant line, and save your changes
  4. Select Update in the pop-up dialog
  5. Close the editor and file-roller

Another option is to extract the buildFile.xml from the module, edit it, and then put it back in

  1. unzip A_Gest_of_Robin_Hood_1.02.vmod buildFile.xml
  2. Open buildFile.xml in your favorite text editor
  3. Edit the relevant line, and save your changes.
  4. zip -u A_Gest_of_Robin_Hood_1.02.vmod buildFile.xml

Off-hand, I cannot pin-point when the behaviour changed in the Vassal code base, but it seems to have happened quite a while ago.

Yours,
Christian

1 Like