Several invisibile-traits in one piece

Hi.

As I had no luck getting an answer in the module design-section, I’ll try my luck here too. After all, the problem I’ll describe seems quite “bugish” to me.

I have soon finished building a module for Victory Games “5th Fleet” game. I wanted to facilitate playing double blind with a moderator and that was when the problem occurred.

Apart from “observer”, “moderator” and “solitaire”, there are five possible player options in the module:
• Unites States
• US-Allied
• Soviet Union
• Soviet-Allied
• Indian
To facilitate double-blind, I’ve made three basic “invisible” traits:
• Invisible US & Allied (used by players: United States and US-Allied)
• Invisible Soviet & Allied (used by players: Soviet Union and Soviet-Allied)
• Invisible Indian (used by player: Indian)
In addition all are of course useable by the moderator.

However, several nations in the game play on different sides from scenario to scenario. To make it possible to play double-blind, I then had to equip pieces from the “turncoat” nations with several of the invisible traits. When a friend and I then tried to play-test the module we discovered the following problem:

When one player used an invisible-trait NOT on top of the piece-menu, everything seemed OK until a concealment-counter (or any other visible counter) was placed on top of the invisible piece. When that happened, the concealment-counter did show up on the opponent’s screen, but the counter sat on the hexside and not in the middle of the hex. And once the player with the invisible piece made it visible again, the piece showed up normally on the opponent’s screen and the concealment-counter now snapped back into the middle of the hex, sitting on top of the now visible piece.

So I am wondering what I have done wrong? Or is this an actual bug in Vassal that does this when using several “Invisible”-traits on the same piece. The issue seems to be with the order of the traits on the menu, but all invisible-traits DO work except, as explained, that the ones not on the top of the piece-menu throws off the position of a visible piece placed on top of the invisible piece, -and then only on the opponet’s screen.

The module in its current state can be downloaded from here: mediafire.com/stroar
I have also created a logfile that clearly demonstrates the problem. It’s downloadable from the same place as the module. What you’ll have to do is make sure to log on as the INDIAN player and then pay good attention to my comments in the chat-window as you go along.

Vassal Engine Version: 3.1.14
Java Version: 1.6.0_20

I have not included my computer specs as I have several PCs with both different specs and different Windows OS and the problem occurs on all of them.

Hope somebody can help me solve this.

Best Regards

Roar Stensrud

Sounds like an interesting problem!

I will take a look.

Question for Joel: if this turns out to be a bug in 3.1, and I am able to fix the bug, are we in a position to release a minor bugfix version of the VASSAL engine on the 3.1 branch?

Thus spake fil512:

Sounds like an interesting problem!

I will take a look.

Question for Joel: if this turns out to be a bug in 3.1, and I am able
to fix the bug, are we in a position to release a minor bugfix version
of the VASSAL engine on the 3.1 branch?

Yes. I already have one thing queued up for 3.1.15. I could do a release
pretty much any time. (However, if you’re planning to fix anything else
in the next week or two, then I’d rather do one release than two.)


J.

Thus spake fil512:

Sounds like an interesting problem!

I will take a look.

Any news on this?


J.

Thanks for reminding me. The day I was going to look at it, the server was down and then I forgot. Grabbing it now.

Filed as bug http://www.vassalengine.org/tracker/show_bug.cgi?id=2921

Thaks a lot, guys! This was good news.

Hope my “problem demonstration” was helpful.

Does the bug appear easy to fix, or is it something we might have to live with for a while?

Roar

I am working on it. I am new to VASSAL, so it will be a while before I narrow the bug down. This morning I was able to walk through the bug in a debugger which was an important step in finding the problem.

Your log is extremely helpful.

-K

FYI we’ve been discussing this bug further over here:

https://forum.vassalengine.org/t/question-about-piece-movement/3257/1

Thanks.

I posted a note for Tim there.

Roar