Newbie Help: Turn Track of a year that doesn't start in Jan

I’m working on a module that starts mid-year (in August). I’m having a terrible time figuring out how to set up a counter to work properly with this. What I have in mind:

Each turn has three phases (A, B, and Both).
After all three phases are complete, it goes to the next month (Aug–>July).
At the end of the year, it rolls over to the next year.

Can anyone give me some advice on how to set this up? I’ve tried, but I haven’t had much luck with it, and I haven’t seen anything in the forums directly on point.

Thanks.

Each interval needs to be nested within the others. For example, Year 1 includes January, which then includes phases A, B, and Both. February includes A, B, Both, and so on, until December. So the phases are nested in the month, and the months are themselves nested inside each year.

In the Editor, under Turn Counter, add the first interval, Year. Right click and choose Add Counter. Set up the Year for the module, including starting date. Click OK.

In the editor, right-click on Year, and pick Add List. This will be the list of months in the calendar. In Description, call it Month. Set up your list of items, which in this case is each month of the year. (You’d start with August and work through to July.) The Turn counter will cycle through these every year in the order of the list. Click Ok.

Back in the Editor again, right click on Month, and set up another List. In Description, call it Phase. In this list, you add the list of Phases (A, B, and Both). These will be cycled every Month.

(When you’re all done, in the Editor, you’ll have the Year branched from the main Turn Counter, the Month will branch from the Year, and the Phase will branch from the Month.)

Also, in the Turn Counter properties, you may need to tweak the ‘Turn Name Format’ to correctly show Year, Month, and Phase in the Turn Counter window (This would be $level1$, $level2$ and $level3$, correspondingly).

I’ve set it up exactly as you suggested. But now, when I attempt to walk through the new game wizard, VASSAL throws the following error:

[code]20 Jun 2009 14:09:21.593 1 – Exiting
20 Jun 2009 14:09:23.375 0 – Loading module file C:\Program Files\VASSAL-3.1.6\mods\GOAv103.vmod
20 Jun 2009 14:09:23.375 0 – Loading module Guns of August
20 Jun 2009 14:09:23.390 0 C:\Program Files\Java\jre6\bin\java -Xms256M -Xmx512M -DVASSAL.id=2 -cp lib\Vengine.jar;Vengine.jar VASSAL.launch.Player
20 Jun 2009 14:09:26.687 2 – Guns of August version 1.001
20 Jun 2009 14:09:26.703 2

20 Jun 2009 14:09:32.484 2 java.lang.ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException: -1
at java.util.ArrayList.get(Unknown Source)
at VASSAL.build.module.turn.TurnComponent.getTurnLevel(TurnComponent.java:53)
at VASSAL.build.module.turn.TurnLevel.getActiveChildLevels(TurnLevel.java:164)
at VASSAL.build.module.turn.TurnTracker.getActiveChildLevels(TurnTracker.java:618)
at VASSAL.build.module.turn.TurnTracker.getTurnString(TurnTracker.java:602)
at VASSAL.build.module.turn.TurnTracker.setLaunchToolTip(TurnTracker.java:249)
at VASSAL.build.module.turn.TurnTracker.setState(TurnTracker.java:244)
at VASSAL.build.module.turn.TurnTracker$SetTurn.executeCommand(TurnTracker.java:1169)
at VASSAL.command.Command.execute(Command.java:54)
at VASSAL.command.Command.execute(Command.java:66)
at VASSAL.build.module.WizardSupport$SavedGameLoader.run(WizardSupport.java:595)
[/code]

Any idea what the problem could be?

Just a quick bump to see if anyone has suggestions on how to fix this error. Thanks.

I set it up on a Mac running 3.1.6 and it works as intended. Perhaps one of the developers can shed some light on the error?

However, the instructions are not quite correct. If you set it up as described, starting in 1914 > August, the year won’t increment again until you get through to next August. So you’ll get “December 1914”, then “January 1914.”

A better way to do this would be to set it up as described, but instead, start the ‘Month’ list in January.

Then, create a pre-set scenario where the turn counter is already clicked through to August, 1914 and save it as a pre-set. Your game will still start at the same date, but the Year and Month will be tallied properly.

Great; got it to work. The problem was with the scenario file, which wasn’t set yet. Thanks!