Hello VASSAL Masters,
I’m designing a strategy game where medieval knights battle with orcs for control of a magical kingdom. The Main Board is the kingdom, set up as a Rectangular Grid. Let’s say it looks like this:
The grid is obvious. My knights and orc units can freely maneuver on the grid, looking for battle. Great fun!
The lower left-hand square contains a castle stronghold. When a player clicks on that square, I’d love it if a pop-up map could appear, an enlargement of that one square, perhaps depicting the interior of the castle:
Once the pop-up map appears, players would manually move the appropriate pieces onto the new map, and play commences.
But how to accomplish this “click on the Main Map to bring up a Pop-Up Map”? As I said, I’ve already defined my Main Board as a Rectangular Grid. I tried to create a Zone on the Main Board like this:
…where “Magic Kingdom Board” is the Main Board and “Castle Zone 1” was the special Zone I thought I could create on top of the Main Board’s square with the castle. However, when I try to save:
So a Zone on top of a Map Grid doesn’t seem feasible. Can someone recommend a way to do this? Thank you.
You can define multiple maps; from your module Add Map Window. Maps can be displayed/closed using a hotkey; the hotkey can be generated from say a key click on a piece on the main board (traits to look into: Action Button and Global Hotkey). Of course, these maps will be independent windows, not pop-ups strictly speaking.
OR
You could define the mini-map as piece. These mini-maps could be stored in a hidden map somewhere and you’d use Send To Location to move it back and forth from the main board. This method would look more like the concept that you’ve illustrated. If you need to let players move pieces around the mini-map then you should look at the Mat capability in Vassal 3.6 (currently in Beta) and see if that helps. If simply displaying icons in parts of the mini-map is enough then I suggest maybe the Layer trait and Action buttons could be used for your Mini-map functionality.
Does any of this sound like what you’re looking for?
@marktb1961 Thanks for taking the time to write, Mark, and for the brainstorming ideas. I think I like the idea of using a Piece as my “clickable square”. So let’s say I follow your suggestion. When a new game begins, the Main Board would look like this…
…where the castle is now a piece. If I’m following you correctly, I’d have to figure out how to do the following:
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Preplacement. At the start of every game, VASSAL automatically places the Castle Piece on the Main Board, always at the exact same spot.
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Immobile. No player may ever move the Castle. Its completely stationary for the entire lifetime of the game.
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Action Button. The Castle piece would have an Action Button trait, essentially a proxy control for a Key Command. Maybe the Action Button would invoke the CTRL-0 command, which in turn would active another Map Window.
I’m pretty sure I can figure out (3). To do (1), I assume I use the “Send to Location” Trait. But how to instruct VASSAL to automatically do place the piece at the top of the game? I have no idea how to do (2).
Thank you so much!
Send to Location will work to place the piece. An At Start Stack would be easier for a fixed start position.
Re (2) To make a piece immovable take a look at the Do Not Stack trait.
