How to let Players Write on the Board?

Module Design
1

Hello VASSAL Wizards,

I have an idea for a board game, where four competing players would “sit” at opposite corners of the Main Game Board. A blank white space would be on the board directly in front of them.

The game begins when a fifth player, a neutral dealer, deals a series of cards onto the center of the board for everyone to see. The four competitors would observe the dealt cards, then write/type a simple word on their blank white space. After all players have written their word, the game continues. The players may erase or overwrite their word at any time.

This would be simple to do in the real world; just give each player a little notepad or Post-It, any scrap of paper where they can write something.

But how to do this in VASSAL? The blank white space could be a Piece, I guess, but it could not move. It should remain completely stationary and allow its player to type text on it. All other players may observe this text. …any ideas?

Thank you!

2

The simplest method would be to give each player a large piece with a Does Not Stack trait with the appropriate options to prevent it moving, a Dynamic Property with a Menu Command and Key Command to prompt for a new value, and a text label that displays the value of that Dynamic Property.

The main drawback of this approach is that changing the text requires activating the prompt, and any changes won’t appear to other players until the changes are accepted.

1 Like
3

@jrwatts Hmm, thanks JR. I’ll give it a go…

1 Like
4

Isn’t this function just the text label attribute?