I am brand new to Vassal and am trying to learn the ropes. I’ve been playing around with an existing modular and seeing how moves are recorded and logged. This is so I can play via email with friends.
After a game is set up, and a Turn 1A is played and the log file emailed to Person B, Person B has to chose to Start the Log file before it records any movements. Person B could mess with the board (intentionally or by accident), then start the log file, do some moves, end the log file, and email it back. Unless Person A is paying close attention between the game state at the End of Turn 1A and Beginning of Turn 1B, then there is no record the Person B changed the game state.
Is this correct? When I was messing around with the logs, I kept changing things on the board on accident without clicking “Begin Log” and realized that any changes done during this phase would go unsupervised.
I am brand new to Vassal and am trying to learn the ropes. I’ve been
playing around with an existing modular and seeing how moves are
recorded and logged. This is so I can play via email with friends.
… When I was messing around with the logs, I kept
changing things on the board on accident without clicking “Begin Log”
and realized that any changes done during this phase would go
unsupervised.
That is correct. It is the same as stepping out to get a drink of
water when playing face-to-face. If the board gets accidentally
bumped while you aren’t there, it can change the configuration and you
wouldn’t know it without looking closely.
Vassal is no different. The design is geared toward reproducing the
board-game experience using an on-line virtual board. It doesn’t try
to enforce the rules or prevent cheating. The latter item would be
generally impossible anyway, given an open source software
implementation, at least not with any reasonable effort and Email
interchange protocol.
You can choose to play live on-line if you want to have a direct
ability to see what is going on, but with EMail exchanges you and your
partners just have to be diligent in starting log files to record
movements. I thought more recent versions of Vassal included some
prompts to remind players, but maybe that is actually planned for a
future version.