This appears to be an unresolved bug that has affected the Campaign Game scenario since 2022 - as reported by users in the BGG page for this game. The same thing has now happened in a current Campaign, while attempting to form the 1755-56 decks after completion of Winter Quarters for 1755.
I am surprised that no-one has appeared to have reported this bug on this Forum.
As reported in BGG, pressing the ‘Return Cards to Decks’ button seems to behave as expected, returning cards to the Unused Cards decks for each side, along with the Indian Deck. However, pressing the ‘Form Decks 1755-56’ button does not produce the correct result. In the case of this game, while the French Buildup and Campaign Decks seem to form normally, no British cards are transferred to their respective spaces at all.
Issues reported in BGG indicated that it was the French deck that did not behave correctly.
My gaming partner and I don’t think that the problem has anything to do with the version of Vassal or version of the module being used. It’s a problem that also appears to have been present in earlier versions of the B&T module, and both of us experience this problem.
Our game got off to a terrific start, so disappointed to now have this obstacle. At present, it appears the only thing we can do is to load Scenario 2 and then manually configure the game state to mirror our current game.
No that doesn’t surprise me at all. Many otherwise intelligent people seem to assume that we Vassal developers spend all of our available time monitoring every single forum on the internet, waiting for someone to report a Vassal bug so we can jump on it, and then get progressively more irate when we don’t.
My gaming partner and I don’t think that the problem has anything to do with the version of Vassal or version of the module being used. It’s a problem that also appears to have been present in earlier versions of the B&T module, and both of us experience this problem.
To have any hope of investigating and reproducing this sort of problem, we need the problem to be reproducible. We need a log file showing it happening, or a set if instructions that are guaranteed to cause the problem (i.e. do this, it works, then do this and it stops working). Ideally, the demonstration of the issue is in a simplified version of the module. With that, we can start looking at Vassal and/or module versions and try and narrow it down.
There are a couple of potential causes.
Version 3 has structural design limitations that allow 2 players to start executing the same process simultaneously, with unpredictable results. This could be an issue if there is any part of the process in your game where 2 players might be trying to do the same thing at the same time.
There where been a couple issues fixed that affected Decks where Vassal was clearly doing the wrong thing, but modules had been built that depended on that ‘wrong’ thing and started to fail on the new version. This tended to be a hard-failure though, rather than intermittent. There was discussion in the forums, but I haven’t been able to find them,
It is not unknown for there to be long-standing bugs in complex modules causing apparently odd, random behavior when certain things happen in combination.
It is also not unknown for their to be bugs in Vassal
Hi Brent,
My initial comment was on the issue being reported, not solved
This issue has occurred during a game that is being run using logged play.
As a result, if anyone would like to examine the log, I would be happy to send it.
Have fixed the problem by changing the Mask trait on the card decks to ‘any side’. Have contacted the original module owner to notify of the fix before uploading the updated module.
I think I’ve properly fixed it now by moving the Mask trait on the card prototype definitions up above the card action traits. As per the reference manual, the trait order does matter. I think previously the mask trait was interfering with the card actions such as deck building.
Hats off to Rigor for this fantastic result. He happens to also be my opponent in the game that led to the appearance of the bug, and it triggered interest in making his first foray into tinkering with Vassal’s innards.
