DUNGEON TWISTER

First of all… sorry for the awesome BIG delay in releasing the Dungeon Twister module… I let it die on November 2006 and until now I didn’t put my hands on it again (and the craziest thing to do with it, the board rotation, was solved then, so I have no excuse).

Prior releasing the module (hopefully this week) I’ll keep here a report of the solution I took for the “board problem” as it could be used almost for every similar system (anyway It doesn’t help as is with the drakkar counters for “Viking raiders” of the “Cry Havoc!”, there could be a way but not so clean).

Well, going to the point, to get the boards rotating with all the counters over it the main board must be a multizoned grid, I defined 8 zones (one for every board… but it could work for different layouts according to later add ons of the game… right now I’m only doing the basic DT but this sistem could work with as many zones as you want, so any scenario could be easyly done).

The idea is that when I rotate a board I launch a “global key command” for the pieces in that zone… depending on the position on the grid (ie: CurrentZone=$CurrentZone$ && LocationName=0101) the piece executes a different “move fixed distance” traits.

My boards are 500x500px (5x5 100px wide squares) so a piece in the top left square (0101) will go to the top right square (0105) when rotating the board clockwise… that is “move fixed distance” of 400px right. A piece in the second square (0102) will go to the rightmost square of the second row (0205)… that is “move a fixed distance” of 300px right and 100px down.

To do that, the board launches a “global key command” for every position in its zone, for example when board rotates (ctrl-2) it launches alt-ctrl-Q for the pieces that complies the condition “CurrentZone=$CurrentZone$ && LocationName=0101”… then the piece has a alt-ctrl-Q trait to “move a fixed distance” to go from 0101 to 0105 (a rotation clockwise of the board below).
It actually works PERFECT, it is complicated at definition point as you got a “move fixed distance” trait for every one of the 25 different positions in the board for characters and items and 40 positions for doors (you need actually 50 different key commands for characters and 80 different for doors… keep in mind that it can move clockwise and anticlockwise).
For the doors I have different positions (as the grid is not a 5x5 square area but the intersections between squares)… but is more or less the same.

All this sounds complicated but in fact is quite simple and achieved with pure VASSAL without imported classes (I went waster once conceptualiced text-editing the xml instead of working with vassal)

So, that is the “magic trick”.

Anyway, as I said before, the module will be out in days so you’ll be able to have a deep look inside and see how damn well it works :smiley:

The module will be damn friendly to play with as much things will be done automatically, for example the random rotation and placement of boards, the 100% implemented board rotation, automatic commands to move counters to different fixed positions… anyway… if you don’t like it… I’ll bring your money back! XD

Now I can say the module is done (and ready for a hard playtest, but it seems everything works pretty well).

Here you got an screenshot of the interface:

You can notice the actual size of the counters in the “mouse-over” with the warrior and sword stack.

And as you’d probably noticed… YES, THE MODULE IS IN SPANISH!!! :laughing:
In fact I own the spanish edition of the game (and I’m spanish) so I done it that languaje… anyway going from there to a full english version is very easy. I’m planning to work on further expansions, probably I’ll leave this 1.1 spanish version as is, and go for the 2.0 full set completely in english.

Hope you like it! Don’t forget to make any comment (even prior to its release).

Hi TOPO,

Are you aware of the Module translation facility within Vassal? You can add an English Translation to the module without having to change anything within the module itself.

I am not aware of many modules that actually use translation facility, I am interested to know how well it works.

B.


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I’ve had a look at it and the translation module interface is damn easy to use! In about 5 minutes I’ve translated all the texts in the game!

:slight_smile:

I’ll let the translation in the module and (as soon as I upload the first version) I’ll hope you’ll make some comments about it.

I’m opening another post about two questions of the translation option in the technical forum.

--------------------- EDIT ----------------------

After playing a little bit after inserting the translation module… I’m getting a strange issue… The game is made in spanish and has a “english” translation. Now every time I play it uses the english translation ONLY (and my regional settings are ok, that is, in spanish) :s

There is something wrong there!

Hi,

It’s just because the default language is ENGLISH … then if the main language was made first in Spanish … it was for the ENGLISH default language …

Then (as far as I tested) you CANNOT build a module in other languaje than english and hope to translate it later… I tryed creating two translations (one in english and another one in spanish even having just the same text as the original) and the system still uses the english translation :S

That’s an anglocentrist way of seeing the gaming world :smiley:

In fact spanish is not the problem (as the spanish gaming production is almost ZERO apart from some good miniature wargames like INFINITY) but look for example at the german games… there are many games NOT YET TRANSLATED there :slight_smile:

Then you must be testing wrongly ;)

What language do you run your PC in?

What language do you have selected in the VASSAL language preference when you are trying to run a translated module?

Can I have a look at the module please so I can debug what is going wrong?

Regards,
Brent.


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Hey! thank you very much! You can get the module here:

FILE ON MEGAUPLOAD

I want to ask you for some help with it as I have some issues I’m not able to solve:

  1. At some point I’ve lost the capability of having the main board in the same window as the interface… if I remove the “button” to show it, the map doesn’t appears in the main window below… I get a “null pointer exception” instead :frowning:

  2. My computer is in “spanish (spain)” regional option, the vassal interface is in english as there isn’t “spanish” option in the drop down menu and adding languajes makes the module to run in english.

  3. Even having it in english there are things that remains in the original spanish languaje… for example the “wounded” (“herido” in spanish) layer of the characters.

  4. Trying to make a p2p game in the room for the games playing it appears as my name, and the game crashes (the chat objetc exception) as soon as I try to chat or start a game. I think that error is endemic to version 3.0 but I’m not sure if it has something to do with the first of my issues.

I’m running VASSAL 3.0.17.

Thank you very much, I hope you can have a look at it and help me with that. Ah! have a detailed look at the room turning solution… it works pretty well indeed :slight_smile:

Hi,

To have the main board : do not select the Include toolbar button to show/hide

Do you have asked permission to Christophe Boelinger for the Game Module diffusion ?

If not, i can try to see with you (i’m french and i know where i can found him…)

Contact me by PM if you want my SKYPE … (i speak few spanish words too)

Regards,

Grégory

Yes, I (obviously) know… the problem as I said is that at some point, if I remove the toolbar button I get a “null pointer exception” when I create a new game… probably I erased something (and couldn’t find what) that still has a pointer somewhere :s
Apart from creating a whole new module I tryed almost everything to solve that with no luck.

I didn’t asked. Back in 2006 I thought about asking permission and even give the module “for free” to Christophe Boelinger if he wants to publish as a game “add on” in the site… but to be honest (and after my vassal bussiness experience with Dan Verssen) I really don’t care much about it… for Thunderbolt Apache Leader I included the legal stuff that GMT uses for its official vassal modules, that is, “you can play only if at least one of the players owns the game

Anyway, It is better to make the things WELL, so if you can contact Christophe that could be a good thing :slight_smile:

Thus spake “TOPO”:

Please try 3.1.0-beta8 and check whether this happens there. We’re only
a few days away from releasing 3.1.0, so if this is still a problem, we’d
like to fix it.

sourceforge.net/project/showfile … _id=260612


J.


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Ok, that explains a lot.

There was no Spanish Translation in Vassal 3.0 and there where problems running a non-english module if your primary language was not one of main translations. Try Vassal 3.1 as Joel suggested and see what problems you still have.

Regards,
B.


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With 3.1.0 beta 8 I still get the same error, here it is the result:

[code]1235124343616 1305236808 – Starting
1235124343616 1305236808 – OS Windows XP
1235124343616 1305236808 – Java version 1.6.0_03
1235124343616 1305236808 – VASSAL version 3.1.0-beta8
1235124343616 1305236808 – Manager
1235124353991 1305236808 – Loading module file C:\Documents and Settings\man20.DOMMAN\Escritorio\virtual tabletop\Vassal\DungeonTwister\DungeonTwister.1.1.rar
1235124354007 1305236808 – Loading module Dungeon Twister (spanish)
1235124354007 1305236808 C:\Archivos de programa\Java\jre1.6.0_03\bin\java -Xms256M -Xmx512M -cp lib/Vengine.jar VASSAL.launch.Editor
1235124354148 841623338 – Starting
1235124354148 841623338 – OS Windows XP
1235124354148 841623338 – Java version 1.6.0_03
1235124354148 841623338 – VASSAL version 3.1.0-beta8
1235124354148 841623338 – Editor
1235124356101 841623338 – Dungeon Twister (spanish) versión 1.1
1235124356101 841623338

1235124382180 841623338 java.lang.NullPointerException
at VASSAL.build.module.Map.setup(Map.java:1821)
at VASSAL.build.module.GameState.setup(GameState.java:269)
at VASSAL.build.module.GameState$3.actionPerformed(GameState.java:126)
at javax.swing.AbstractButton.fireActionPerformed(Unknown Source)
at javax.swing.AbstractButton$Handler.actionPerformed(Unknown Source)
at javax.swing.DefaultButtonModel.fireActionPerformed(Unknown Source)
at javax.swing.DefaultButtonModel.setPressed(Unknown Source)
at javax.swing.AbstractButton.doClick(Unknown Source)
at javax.swing.plaf.basic.BasicMenuItemUI.doClick(Unknown Source)
at javax.swing.plaf.basic.BasicMenuItemUI$Handler.mouseReleased(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.Component.processMouseEvent(Unknown Source)
at javax.swing.JComponent.processMouseEvent(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.Component.processEvent(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.Container.processEvent(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.Component.dispatchEventImpl(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.Container.dispatchEventImpl(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.Component.dispatchEvent(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.LightweightDispatcher.retargetMouseEvent(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.LightweightDispatcher.processMouseEvent(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.LightweightDispatcher.dispatchEvent(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.Container.dispatchEventImpl(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.Window.dispatchEventImpl(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.Component.dispatchEvent(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.EventQueue.dispatchEvent(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpOneEventForFilters(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEventsForFilter(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEventsForHierarchy(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEvents(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEvents(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.run(Unknown Source)
[/code]

The good news are that LANGUAJE PROBLEMS SEEMS TO BE SOLVED :slight_smile: And the overall speed of graphic presentation seems really improved… I’m liking this beta :slight_smile:

That’s good to hear.

The limitation on translations is that though a module can be translated into any language, it can only run on Vassal in English or in the same language.

Vassal’s base Language is English and has 6 Primary translations - German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, French and Japanense.

So unless a module is translated into one of those 6 languages, it will only run with Vassal in English. It is not possible to run, say, an Italian (or Icelandic) version of a module on a French Vassal.

B.


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I found a curious issue with the languaje support… I created a game in spanish in one computer and connected in another computer running the game in english… everything goes perfect but for the “client” in english the teams are “Blue and Yellow” instead of “Azul and Amarillo”, so I join to a non-existing faction forcing me to turn vassal off… change my preferences and play te game in the same languaje the other player is playing.

As sometimes you play vassal with foreigners this could be a problem (if languaje support starts to popularize). Many times there will be no problem not translating the side names “US” or “CCCP” seems to be somehow international for everyone… but side colors in Dungeon Twister (for example) is a must have.

Certain things in a module should not be translated. I have turned off most of these. Player sides is one of those if the side names are used internally in Vassal expressions.

B.


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This is a bug. Some texts in a module that should be translatable are not. I am working on a fix.

Thanks,
Brent.


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Indeed, DG will be soon available … for an electronic version :

gamerbytes.com/2009/02/more_ … way_du.php

Then i think that an agreement should be at least the best courtesy … except if you want to get annoyed by the author …

I can be the link between Chris and you, but i will not substitute from you … it’s your module not mine … and if you think that is useless to ask permission in such case … you are on the wrong way …

Give me by PM your Email an the text (i can translate it in french for you) …
After this … it’s your business …

Yes, you are completely right! :slight_smile: I hope I didn’t sound like a selfish baztrd who doesn’t cares for the authors work… I consider DT a very well developed game, it’s like the chess of the dungeon crawlers… no dice and all fun :slight_smile:

As soon as I get some time I’ll write you the presentation letter of the module.

Thank you very much for your effort and care :slight_smile:

[size=200]Unbelievable stupid feature in version 1.2 of the module[/size]

It is silly but… in the next update of the module I’m putting a very stupid feature… that is… you can move selected counters/stacks using ASDW keys… just like in regular FPS computer games :smiley:

Playing with the module… it turned out to be very handy in addition to usual drag and drop… the movement increment are 50px instead of the 100px that should be so two clicks move the counter to the new position, the other player sees an incremental movement with footsptep sounds… very cool indeed, much better than just dragging the counter to the new final position.