Hi again! I’m trying to make hexagonal hit markers that snap to grid like my player pieces. They work swimmingly until I actually try to place them on top of another piece to indicate it was hit. When I do this the hit marker tries to align its bottom left corner with the bottom left corner of the piece it was placed on top of. This leads to it appearing above and to the right of the piece instead of directly on top of it. Do you guys have any tips on how to make pieces play nice when snapping to the same grid space?
Just to make sure I understand your challenge:
- You want to place a hexagon shaped marker on a piece
- That marker should be aligned with the underlying hex grid, i.e., follow the border of the hex grid.
- What you see, is that the marker is instead aligned to the piece.
If that’s the issue, then the cause is that you are placing a piece on another piece and that forms a stack of pieces. The Stacking Options element that you’ve likely added to your Map Window, dictates how stacks of pieces are drawn. Typically, each piece in a stack is offset by some fixed amount, and when you double-click the stack, with a different fixed amount.
What you can do, depends a little on how many regular pieces you want to be able to place in a single hex. If you only ever place one piece, then there are several solutions, I think. If you can have more than one piece in a stack, then there are probably fewer ways to do it.
Suppose you can only have one piece in a hex. Then you could do
- Make the hit-marker a Layer trait on your piece (prototype). Layers are aligned with the piece, and since the piece is aligned with the hex, the “hit” marker will also be aligned with the hex. This also has the benefit that your piece will now be flagged as “hit”.
Suppose you can have one or more pieces in a hex. The second piece will be added to the stack, offset by the parameters of the Stacking Options element of the Map Window. If you then use a Layer trait to mark that piece as “hit”, then that layer will also be offset relative to the hex.
I think another option is to put the “hit” markers on a different Game Piece Layer. That is, regular pieces live on one layer, while “hit” markers (and others like them) are on a different layer. As far as I remember - but you should check that - pieces on different layers stack independtly. This option will also allows the user to toggle on and off the hit markers.
You may also want to see if the Does not stack trait can help you out. The “hit” marker would have that trait. That also has the benefit that you can prevent the marker from being moved if that makes sense - e.g., if it is the hex that has been hit rather than the piece.
You can probably also use a combination of the above techniques. And there may also be other techniques which could be used, such as the Place Marker trait. And also check Properties if there’s something there that can help you out,.
Yours,
Christian
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This is correct, pieces classified as belonging to Game Piece Layers will only stack with their class of GPL and not others.
Thank you so much! All I had to do was set my hit markers to not stack and now I can place them over my pieces.
I just wanted to add that when I have markers like this (hits, etc.), I never use separate pieces like you’re doing. The trouble with them is they easily get separated from whatever they are attached to. What’s this hit marker doing here? Who does it belong to? And so on.
I find it’s better to make the hit marker a layer trait on the main piece. You right click the piece and pick “hit,” and bingo, the hit image is there on the piece exactly where you want it to go. Move the piece? The hit goes with it. In fact, you can’t separate the hit marker even if you wanted to. This is much less disaster prone.