I am implementing the official module for Tom Lehmann’s New Frontier.
In this game there is a track where the player’s colored pawns are lined up to indicate player order:
e.g.
Red - Green - Blue - Purple - Yellow
When a player is up, the pawn will move forward in the track.
There are in game action that can change the order, so Yellow might play an action that makes it first in a turn, or exchange places with Purple.
I would like to implement some automation logic where after green has moved, the pawn can move UP, then print an alert to stare it is now Blue player’s turn.
Any general (or specific advise) on how to do this will be welcome…
I am guessing the initial turn order is entirely random. You can look at how I did the latest Tigris and Euphrates for that. But to summarise I did a deck of player initiative tokens. Each time you draw one it is sent to a location based on a number and the index increases. I believe that is the current state of the art and I did nothing original there.
I usually have the initiative track as part of an irregular grid, but guess there are other approaches.
The alert stuff is here. That could probably be condensed down. The problem is that it won’t really go to another player.
You’re going to have to work out who you are bumping when you take your turn. That’s doable I think and can be stored in a Global property.
So I think the biggest question is what do you mean by an “alert”? Because that could be the sticky part.Something that will attract the user’s attention. But then everyone knows this is how it works. So surely a text label saying who’s go is next should be sufficient.
Sorry if this sounds rambling but I have been thinking through your question from several angles as I type.
One of the frequent complaint in our multiplayer VASSAL games is “who’s turn is it now?” for some games I implemented a “ready” button for people to push when they are done with their turn, then a message will be generated on who’s next. Of course now the biggest complaint is that people forget to push the button ;/
My thought is for some actions, the mod knows when something is done, if so can it send an “alert”? (at the basic level a message in the log, but we can thinking about adding a sound chime, now i we can actually FLASH the next person that’ll be ideal but like you said, that gets complicated).
BTW, thanks for updating the E&T game. One of my (and wife’s) All time fav. I need to play more since she is regularly kicking my ass now. Need to introduce her to ziggurat and all that to confuse her a bit…