Counters on lower game piece layer cannot be selected

Technical Support & Bugs
1

I have planning counters that should usually be at the bottom of a stack. If I place normal counters in the same hex, they planning counters obediently stay below. However, then they can’t be selected because their part of the stack does not expand. Can I change this behaviour so that they can be selected, and moved away, when something else is on top?

It is not a big deal, because I have a button that makes the planning markers the only ones visible, and then they can be selected, and moved.

2

Part of being in a separate Game Piece Layer that draws below other classes of pieces necessarily makes them incapable of stacking with other things, so that’s why they aren’t expanding with other stuff. If you want them to stack with other things yet always be at the bottom, I guess you could experiment with things like: make their GPL regulated by a Dynamic Property so they can temporarily draw above other things to be more easily selectable, or put them in the same GPL but apply a Down arrow keystroke every time they move so they go to the bottom of stacks.

Other than that, I don’t know how you’d keep them in a GPL drawing under other things whilst simultaneously allowing the mouse to “see through” other things above to select them beneath. Doing a band select will get everything, which doesn’t sound like what you want–but the problem is it sounds like you want behavior from 2 approaches that are basically mutually exclusive.

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3

As Joel says, Vassal does not currently have a mechanism to access pieces that are hidden by pieces above them.

Something I have seen in another system is that when you click on a stack or a counter, something like the Mouse-over view opens up showing you all the counters at that location, but allows you to interact with them - re-order, execute commands etc.

4

Thanks Joel and Brent. I understand the reasons, and I am OK with it - particularly because I created a button to show only the lower layer. Players just have to know this.

Reordering a stack would be a nice feature. Currently it can only be done by moving units out, and back in.

5

This has always existed–for one or more units selected in an expanded stack:

Left arrow: adjust positions down one
Right arrow: adjust positions up one
Up arrow: bring to top
Down arrow: send to bottom

3 Likes
6

Thanks. One lives and learns :+1: