I’ve been tinkering with VASSAL for a little while and find it very interesting. I play VASL and thought to take a peek at it, and see how it does things.
Just wondering, is there such a thing as too many counters? Or maps that can be loaded?
I’m working on the counter artwork (using the VASSAL counter creation tools) for Total War (remake of Fire in the East, the monster Europa System). But before I get too deep, is there a limit to the map size that VASSAL can display? Or coutner art it can hold? Not sure if I’m asking this correctly…
I’ve been tinkering with VASSAL for a little while and find it very interesting. I play VASL and thought to take a peek at it, and see how it does things.
Just wondering, is there such a thing as too many counters? Or maps that can be loaded?
I’m working on the counter artwork (using the VASSAL counter creation tools) for Total War (remake of Fire in the East, the monster Europa System). But before I get too deep, is there a limit to the map size that VASSAL can display? Or coutner art it can hold? Not sure if I’m asking this correctly…
I think it would be pretty difficult to have too many counters. It’s
possible to create maps that are cumbersome for 3.1, but that should
improve dramatically with 3.2.
What I’d like to do though, is have an outline of the whole region at the startup-map selection screen, and have the user “check” each map tile they wish to use. One, to adress memory issues, and two, if one is playing in North Afrika, then one does need europe etc.
Graphics for the maps are what I’d call substandard for the day and age we live in, but that may well be a good thing for the size of it. The newer TW map area of the Moskau region looks alot better though.
What do you do with the part of the map along the Red Sea?
It’s going to take you a while to create all of the maps. You won’t finish
this module before we release 3.2, and at that point map size will be less
of an issue.
Yes, I’m still working on the map concept and how best to approach it. In the meantime I’m entering the countersheets bit by bit. I’m drawing each of the dozens of nato symbols (there are ALOT) and use them as images, and the rest of the counters are text. The HMS/GRD website has some nice preview shots of the counters they will publish with Total War. And to be sure that its ok, I’m speaking with the folks and educating them about VASSAL and what it can do. If I could get the artwork in digital form from the folks at HMS that would save countless hours of work. But if not, then scanning & CAD tracing will have to do. (I’m somewhat of an expert at Autocad - been drafting for 23 years now.)
But right now I’m keeping it simple. After a few initial starts and stops, I think I figured out a decent naming convention and format for the counters. Making 3 color copies of the nato symbology is a chore, but I have near 3/4 of the total icons done.
I looked at the symbols that were available and decided that is was probably easier to start from scratch. Both to learn the very basics of GIMP and to see what I needed to do. There are alot of strange symbols on their list.
Now, to get the flip-side of a counter to show up when one Flips it, one uses the “Layer” property, right? I can see where this can get very confusing to keep track off. Any strategies that you may have, to make that process easier? Pre-made excel files with the units or something? Trying to figure that out as I’m working on counters.
Another decision I will need to make is to show the counter front and back as they are in the game, or show them as they ought to be. Meaning, alot of counters do not have a back side per se, meaning a reduced cadre/remnant side. But due to counter space, they print a bunch of opional and or other counter upgrades on the reverse side. Trying to figure out whch is which will take time. But that seems to make sens, to have the counter show nothing (blank) so that the user knows that it cannot be step reduced and is eliminated instead. Choices…choices…choices…
I suggest using SVG for making a library of symbols, and then writing
some scripts in your favorite scripting language to construct the counters
from them.
You can show the user that a counter has no further steps by simply not
giving it a back. There’s no need to give it a blank back.
Well, one other strategy that may be worthwhile is to design the basic
image items in Gimp and then use ImageMagick to combine them, add
text, etc. to build the counters. Using ImageMagick has the advantage
that (since it is a command-line application) it can be fairly easily
scripted. So you can create a work-flow that takes information from
some structured source and creates a script that will build the units
out of the parts.
I would pick ought-to-be. This can even be extended (if needed) to
combine counters. Some games have counters with more than two
“steps”, which used to require using additional substitute counters
for the lower step levels, since you only get two sides with a
physical counter (four with blocks). But with virtual counters you
can have as many “sides” as you wish.
Many thanks for your great suggestions! I really need to take a look at this scripting you speak off. I do plenty of that in Autocad (anything requiring more than 2 steps is either macroed or scripted in some fashion). So I understand that concept quite well.
Could you point me in the proper direction? I’m not a programer per say, just know some Basic and CAD of course.
I input 10 of the 12 posted counter sheets so far. The nice thing about VASSAL is that it catches duplicate counters while I input them. Some counters found their way to other sheets, and I caught a bunch of duplicate counters also - speaking to the folks at HMS right now about it.
Ohh, I educated them a bit about VASSAL and what it potentially could do for the new Grand Europa Series they are working on. I’m not even sure I’m the best person for doing this at all, having no background in graphic design other than Architectural & Enginnering drafting/design for 23 years, and no VASSAL experience, other than testing it here or there…its a bit daunting, but I finished those counters faster than I thought I would. They look great too.
I do have this one text based item I added, that keeps on tweaking out on me. It always reverts back to the “Default” font, instead of the named and set font I created. No idea why it keeps on doing that. Its agrivating. All the other parameters work fine, just that one gets weired out.
Well, what I do (since I use Mac OS X, which is at heart a Unix system) is write a Unix shell script to do the work. I will often use some other tools to generate the shell script, typically either Emacs or a short Lisp program. But you could use anything you are used to. I imagine some people would like to do this with perl.
If you are on Windows, then you would write a .bat file to do the scripting.
Essentially, you just have a file that has the commands that you want to call up on the command line.
For a very simple unix example, here is a C-Shell script that will use ImageMagick to create 10 simple counters with text, starting with blank infantry and armor counters made with another drawing program (like photoshop, gimp, illustrator, etc.)
