I’ve got a tiny annoyance I cannot figure. How do I mask three specific counters so only the owning side can see them. They can choose only ONE of them from an At Start Stack, then must place that one counter into a holding box, still sight unseen by the opponent. At the end of the game both players must reveal what that “Strategic Choice” counter was (that’s what the single counter represents for both sides, each must choose a strategy to pursue and cannot change it throughout the game and must be revealed at the end to insure they followed that plan).
Problem I’m having is that the entire stack of strategic options (3 counters) must remain masked when one side or the other makes their choices from their respective stacks, and the one chosen from the stack must then remain masked, though in sight in the holding box on the map until the end of play. Presently I cannot get them to be visible only to their respective sides.
I’m not doing something right. Cannot figure what it is.
Baffled. If there are only three strategy chits and each side is to CHOSE one from the same stack, I presume, wouldn’t it be so that the side choosing as second would know exactly which counter the other side selected?
No, there are 2 stacks (6 counters). One Japanese stack, the other American. In each stack there are 3 strategy counters. Each player chooses one from their own stack and places it in the holding box for their side. The counter is held in the holding box and not revealed until the end of the game. At that point, the end of the game, the players count their victory points according to the strategy chosen. Then, of course, who ever has the greater number of VPs wins.
I’m going to make an assumption that there are 2 player sides (Japan and USA) that you are alternating between for the purpose of testing the counter drawing and mask ability.
Are you saying that you draw a counter as the USA side, place it somewhere, and then switch over to the Japanese side and find that you can still unmask it when you are expecting not to be able to? Can you post a picture of the Mask settings you’ve configured for these pieces?
I can’t say for certain if this is what you’re running into, but in some circumstances when you mask/unmask (I really hate this terminology the software uses, but that’s for another day) a piece, you become its “owner” by virtue of your personal module password. Unless you have the Mask settings right, if you merely switch player sides without changing your personal module password, you’ll still be able to mask/unmask this piece! So to really test properly, you would need to both switch player sides AND change your personal module password between saving and reloading.
“A piece with the Mask trait is “owned” by the player who masks it. If unmasked and masked again by a different player, the second player becomes the owner. Menu commands of traits hidden by a masked piece are not available to non-owning players. A setting in the Global Options determines whether or not non-owning players can unmask pieces.”
Well, I’ve been unable to accomplish the task. Everything else is done. It’s an easy module for a simple game save for this one little trick, the three Strategic Choice Cards/Counters that I’ve placed in an At Start Stack. I just can’t get them to be masked from the opponent.
So, gents, what I’m doing is asking for a hand. Below is a link to the module in my DropBox. Might some kindly and enterprising person make this thing work for those six counters/cards (2 at start stacks) work the way described above?
I’ve altered only the 3 Japanese counters for demonstration purposes. You had both a Layer and a Mask trait, which is over-complicated for what you are trying to do. This approach has only a Mask trait, but the functionality (revealing/hiding) is given the term “Flip”, as I’ve always thought it’s much more intuitive. You also have a “Peek” ability so that once counters are masked/flipped–showing only the back side to the opponent–the owning side can take a quick glance at it without revealing it to all.
This does have all 3 pieces begin face-up, so the Japanese player would select them all and choose “Flip” to hide them BEFORE making a selection and moving to the holding box. But once they are all face-down, the Allied player cannot flip them back over, which you can confirm by flipping them over as the Japanese player, saving and closing the game, changing your personal module password, then loading up the game and occupying the Allied player side.
I’ve duplicated your effort for the Allied side. I hope anyway. This looks like it works correctly. I’d like to see if a couple of the players here can get the same results with the Allied side. Again, stored in my DropBox
In case you didn’t know you can run two instances of your game to test it. Pick online play to test, then pick side. Now fire up another copy of the game. This time before you enter the game room. Change you password assigned to your player name. You could also change your player name to Name2 if that helps. But its the password that needs to be different. Now enter the room you created and select the other team to test out this game just like as if you had another player testing with you.
Not sure if you have successfully resolved this issue.
Joel’s solution of starting with the pieces face up is a good one, but If you want counters to be masked to a particular Side at game start, then I don’t believe you can use an At-Start stack to generate the game counters directly.
Firstly, make sure your Mask on the pieces is by ‘Any Side’, not by ‘Any Player’. ‘Any Player’ means the masking is locked to the user password of the player who masked the piece, regardless of which side they have. ‘Any Side’ means the masking is locked to the side of a player, regardless of what their password is.
[Aside:Nearly all masking in most games should be done as ‘Any side’, NOT ‘Any Player’ so that an incoming player after a retirement gets access to the pieces masked to that side]
Next, after creating a new game, take side A and mask the pieces in the At-start Stack, then retire from that side, Now save the game and used that save game as a pre-defined setup. Any player starting a game from that pre-defined setup and taking side A will now have access to those pieces, which will be masked to any player taking side B.