Covering sections of the map

I use Vassal instead of minis and battlemaps for roleplaying by connecting my laptop to a large LCD that all the players can see. I’m sure other people use it for the same thing. I am currently using the Star Wars mod for thw Star Wars Saga Edition RPG.

The problem is that I can’t hide anything - the entire map is viewable by all the players. So unless I take the time to add the enemies one by one each time the players open a door (which ruins the feel of them rushing around trying to complete their objective), I can’t really surprise them with anything.

All I really need is one square of an opaque “unit” that I can use to cover over any minis that are in that room, or the entire room itself, and I can delete those black squares once the door opens to reveal what’s in it.

Does this make sense to anyone? Has anyone figured out how to do this?

Thus spake “aubaine”:

Can’t you just make a piece which has a solid black image and use that?


J.


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Why don’t you just add a black square as a game piece, on a different layer than the figures? Then the enemies would always be under the black square and when the players open a door, you can simply remove it. If you want you can also add more black pieces with different forms and sizes, so that it’s easier to cover a room.

A black square is such a give away - Players will know before even entering
the room that something is there and how many (guesstimate).

What he really needs is for all the pieces to have the invisible trait and
toggle it on/off

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Thus spake “Tim McCaron”:

Put a black square over every room, regardless of contents. The players
should be able to see parts of the map they haven’t explored yet, anyhow.

That would work too.


J.


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Thus spake Joel Uckelman:

shouldn’t

J.


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So how do I add a large black “unit”? Right now I’m just using the stock units for the mod.

Make a black image in your graphics program and save it as jpg, gif or png. Then open Vassal, click on edit module and choose the SW module. Click on placeables, markers or tiles and add a single piece (right click on markers or tiles). Double click on basic piece, enter a name and choose the black square as the basic piece image. I’d give the piece the clone, delete and the can rotate trait. That’s all.

Thus spake “Skorpio”:

Don’t save it as a JPEG. JPEG is a terrible format for images with few colors.
You might end up with some odd artefacts in the image if you save a single-
color image as a JPEG.


J.


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Ok, I think I’ve got the hang of it now. However, I still have two questions.

First, how do I measure the images that I’m creating with respect to the squares on the map? Is there a simple way to do this rather than trial and error?

Secondly, is there a way to import maps into my imaging program? That way I can design pieces that fit perfectly over rooms in that map. The images seem to be embedded in the extension map packs that I downloaded and I’m not sure where to find them.

Thanks again for everyone’s help!