Is it possible to watch a game being played as a lurker, perhaps to how to play the game? I assume with the player consent obviously. How do I go about asking for permission and logging in? Thanks!
You can join the online game in progress, ideally as Observer or some other side which sounds safest. The set of player sides, and the capabilities given to those sides vary by module, so don’t assume Observer is harmless.
You may want to ask permission in the Chat window. To avoid disrupting the game, I think you should not select any unit or stack, since that might cause everyone’s map to shift to put that spot in view. If they had a unit selected at the time the map shifted, it could cause an unintended unit movement.
However, unless the players are communicating via the chat window, you might not learn much.
Cheers,
Jim Hunter.
It would be great if there were a way to have a truly ‘view only’ option as one of the join side options.
For example.
Four players decide to play monopoly. They all log in as players 1, 2, 3, and 4.
One of the players then locks the game from further players, except for ‘view only’ status
Someone then wanting to view the game could join, view the game and chat, but have no other controls.
I know there are ways to limit what a side can do, but it would be great for there to be a default safe side available that has no specific side capabilities. I’m guessing there might be some complications with whether the viewer could open other map boards, charts, and other menu button options, and whether they would have godlike ability to view player sides and such.
True story (I’m sure this has happened to other people as well). A few years ago, during a Vassal session our group had someone pop up in chat and ask if they could join our game to learn how to play (I think it was Circus Maximus). He joined in and seemed to be playing along, then suddenly, he randomly just started scrambling all of the counter positions, made a snide remark in the chat, then left the game. Hard to imagine of all the larceny possible in the world why someone would choose to do so in a Vassal setting, but, there you go. We restarted and locked the game after that.