OK, this is a different problem than most. The Game is SPI’s old “NATO Division Commander”, Yes I know it can’t be posted without permission and I’m working on that or will use it as a private module. In the game the player has a chart with several blocks that he uses to track numeric levels of points for each HQ. So he’d have a series of Boxes assigned to his, lets say 6 HQ’s. The counters are used to track Combat Support Points(CSP) for Arty, Signal, Engineering and Air points for that HQ. So far so good.
I wanted to eliminate these counter sheets and I came up with a different idea. I’m using the basic VASSAL unit image utilities to create the NATO symbol based units anyway, scanning the countersheet produced ugly units, so I thought "How about making a 200 x 200 pixel ‘unit’ for each of the HQ’s. Then using Labels and text boxes and commands I would let the player change these values as needed. That way each value for each HQ would be all together and easy to see. I like using Vassal to provide an easier gaming experience over the physical Wargame.
After designing the image I then set about creating the first HQ counter. Each line needed 3 text labels, 3 Dynamic Properties and 1 calculated Property to function. First two worked great. So I decided to move the definitions to Prototypes and continue. A total of 6 lines were needed.
Near the end, in module edit mode, I noticed that it took a long time to open the unit in order to work on it. Then when I fired up the module in play mode I noticed that when I clicked on the tab that contained the one HQ unit it took maybe 2 minutes to appear in the unit selection window. Now once it is built or brought into existence everything is fine, no speed problems at all. It is just this very long ‘creation’ time that is troubling especially as I would have about 20 of them eventually.
I’ve tried changing the order that things are defined in the Prototypes but no changed.
Maybe the idea is just a bad one and will not work. But I’d like to throw it out here in the forum to see if anyone has any ideas.
John