I’m still fairly rookie-ish at creating mods for VASSAL. So far, I’ve been able to find what I need, but I was wondering if there’s a way to have the Grid (and, more specifically, the grid NUMBERING) overlayed on TOP of any counters, etc, that are placed. It may sound like a strange request, but in the module I’m designing, the board is built with various hex-tiles, but when placing these tiles, they end up covering up the numbers.
There are times in the game when I want to number location to be displayed in the report, and while the user could figure it out by looking off the tiles to the naked grid, it would be nice to simply have it show up even if a tile is placed over it.
I hope this makes sense. I’m guessing that this isn’t possible right now, but it never hurts to ask.
I haven’t worked with grids so I’m not sure about that. I know you can do that with in Irregular Grid …but then you’d have to define a center point for ever location on the board. I tend to do that as I prefer to work with Zones and Region Points more so than a regular grid but it is time consuming to create.
At the worst, couldn’t you add a trait to the counter that displays its current location so you know what hex it is in? I know the info is part of the variables for each piece, and it gets reported if you move or otherwise generate a message that lists the location.
That’s true. You could use a Text Label trait in the hex tile and set it up to display the grid location. It’d be set up something like this:
In the Main Map Window properties, you could set up a hot key for “Key Command to apply to all units ending on this map”. Let’s say CTRL 1.
On the hex tile, you would have a Dynamic Property to equal the Location and then use a Text Label to display the location. The trait list would look like this:
Basic Piece
Dynamic Property
----Name - HexLoc
----Value - (none)
----Key Commands
--------Menu Command - (blank)
--------Key Command - CTRL 1
--------Type - Set Value Directly
--------New Value - $location$
Text Label
----Text - $HexLoc$
----Menu Command - (none)
Everything else involves appearance and placement so you can set it up to suit what you want.
What happens here is when you place a hex tile on the map, the map windows throws a CTRL 1 at it. This hot key triggers a Dynamic Property called HexLoc to equal the current grid location. The Text Label will automatically display the value of HexLoc.
You can also put the Dynamic Property and Text Label traits in a Prototype and then just list the Prototype in each of the hex tiles. Also, if these hex tiles are intended to be permanent once placed, you’ll want to add a Does Not Stack trait to the tiles or the Prototype and select Movement - Never.
Something like that might work. Some of the tiles cover more than one hex (something I’m working at getting to work right on the map; for now I just am not snapping to the grid), but I think that gives me some ideas of where to start 
If nothing else, having part of it show the location would make tracking which spot much easier.
This does bring up a second, pseudo-related question. If a player moves a piece on the map on top of another piece, is there something that the “moving” piece can read a property from the “stationary” piece?