Heavy Rotation

Well, I’ve made the physical copy of my game, and now it’s time to do the Vassal module. My prior module was (mostly) pretty simple, but I’m getting into scary new territory here and I wonder if you guys could help me out. For starters, here’s a picture of my game’s physical board:

If you look over on the left there, you’ll see a deck laying on its side (let’s call it Draw Deck 1). When drawn into your hand, I’d like the cards to be standing upright. So, I think I need to tell the hand to send a Rotate command to all pieces brought into the hand. Am I good so far?

Now, check out those rectangular Locations on the board - some are ‘portrait’ oriented, some are ‘landscape’. When cards are played into the Locations, I’d like to have them automatically rotate to fit the spaces nicely. So, I think I need to make each Location into a Zone, and have each horizontal Zone tell all pieces entering it (but not the players’ playing pieces!) to rotate. So far, so good… I think.

Now things get a little weirder. On the right, there’s another deck (let’s call it Draw Deck 2) which is oriented in the opposite direction of Draw Deck 1. These cards are never brought into the hand, but they are played to the Locations and I’d like to have them orient the same way (i.e., sideways cards would all have their titles on the left).

Finally, I’d like to be able to select a bunch of cards on the board all at once and discard them, and have them all line up nicely within the discard box (just North of Draw Deck 1 in the photo), with all their titles on the left. Then, when shuffled back into Draw Deck 1, have them rotate again, so that they are facing the proper direction (or would they already?).

So, I think what I have to do (and I’m getting into things I know nothing about, here) is give each card a ‘state’ related to its orientation - like, 12 o’clock, 3 o’clock, 6, and 9. Then have each Zone send a command to incoming cards saying something like ‘if orientation state = x, then rotate = y, if orientation state = a, then rotate = b’, or something like that. Is this possible?

And finally, should I rotate my initial card art so that all the cards in Draw Deck 1 are already lying on one side, and Draw Deck 2 on the other?

Sorry for the big read, guys, but I could use some expert advice before I start gumming up the works. :slight_smile:

Actually, I’d like to avoid that, since the ‘show pieces in unrotated state’ trait of the Mouseover Viewer seems pretty necessary here.