I thought I’d report a few problems I’ve seen in the editor. I’m running the latest vassal 3.7.26 on a dell computer, windows 11. None of the problems are showstoppers.
I add a new deck of cards. I want to reposition it. In the deck component, I select “reposition stack.” I check “show other stacks/decks.” (To whoever added this checkbox, I give you an attaboy.) I now can drag the deck, but the arrow keys do nothing; they don’t work. To bypass this problem, I press OK, and then I immediately re-select “reposition stack.” Now the arrow keys work. In fact, they work from now to end of session in every deck and at-start stack. It’s the very first time that it breaks down. Note: If I don’t check “show other stacks/decks,” the arrows work. This checkbox seems to kill the arrows. Note2: It fails too in at-start stacks.
I add a discard deck, which is empty. I want to reposition it. In the deck component, I select “reposition stack.” The empty deck shows a gray ghost card, but it’s not where it’s supposed to be. If the deck is at (X,Y), it shows at (X+a,Y+b) where a and b are < the card’s width and length. IOW, the ghost card is shifted down and to the right. This also happens when I try to position other pieces/decks near the empty deck. To get around this, I must copy a dummy card into the empty deck so that I can reposition it accurately.
I’m working on an expression that has a bean shell button to the right. I press it. The bean shell expression field is light gray text on a slightly darker gray background. I can’t read it. I’m must compose my expression elsewhere.
Now two wish list items:
w1. I have a wide map in a game, and I find while playing, it’s a PITA to navigate left and right. Imagine a huge map of Europe and Russia. There’s a toolbar button labeled “Moscow.” I press it, and bam, the view is centered on Moscow. I press a “Berlin” button. Bam, I’m centered on Moscow. I’d like to be able to wire toolbar buttons to single pieces. In my example, I’d make hidden, immobile “focus” pieces in those cities.
w2. The does-not-stack trait defines if a piece can be moved and/or selected. It would save me a hell of a lot of work if I could control those fields with properties. Right now to turn those fields off or on, I have to use replace-with-other to replace the original mobile piece with a near duplicate that is immobile. I’ve considered coming out of retirement to do these myself.
This can probably be accomplished by a Move Cameria Button with explicit pixel coordinates, or by adding an invisible piece (in a low Game Piece Layers with traits Does not stack with no movement or selection, Restricted Access to make sure no one can manipulate it, and a unique name - say MoscowLocation), and a Move Cameria Button that moves to that piece.
But, you can probably achieve the same effect by a Dynamic Property that sets the property NON_MOVABLE to true when the piece cannot be moved, and to false when it can. I haven’t tried that, but as far as I can tell, it should work. Of course, you should be careful if you mix that with the Does not stack trait.
I’m not sure where you are getting NON_MOVABLE from perhaps you meant Immobile - the Vassal property set by the Does Not Stack trail? Trying to over-ride that via a Dynamic Property does change the property value returned - I tested with the DP lowest in trait order - but even this has no effect on drag & drop.
Christian, well, you got me red-faced. Any time I write to this forum, I ask myself if I’m going to look like a damned fool, and should I not submit. You have politely pointed out that my first request for being able to move the map focus around is already done. That “camera” component does everything I want and then some. I give you an attaboy. In my defense, I saw “camera” and thought it was some useless thing about taking pictures. Fooled me. Scratch my first request.
An odd thing happened during testing. I created a piece to center on. I gave it a marker property: Focus = 0. It didn’t work. When I pressed the button to go to the piece, it instead went to the top left map corner. Other options worked; the piece thing didn’t. Just as I was quitting and just for laughs, I changed the property to: flower = “rose”. That worked! So what’s with Focus? Is it some secret unspoken property? Actually, this has happened to me once before with a different word. Don’t remember what it was.
As for my other thing, I have never heard of NON_MOVABLE, and like Joel, I couldn’t get it to work. I printed it out in a report, and it was a null string, so I don’t think it exists. Please clarify for Joel and me. God, how I wish it did work, and I could give you a double attaboy.
BTW, I have a personal rule: thou shalt not write custom code. The last thing I want is 10 years from now someone crying boo-hoo-hoo, your custom code is obsolete. My response would be to go suck eggs.