Team Speak...

I’m afraid this Vassel engine is too technical for me to navigate correctly for loading modules and playing on the server; does anyone have “TeamSpeak2” to communicate with me for help…?

I don’t have Teamspeak. But I have a Ventrilo server. If you want to do that, drop me a note and we’ll arrange a meet.

Rgr that, Sir…yes that will do, TY : ) O, and by the way, I recognize your SiG, the Cat…lol I saw it on WWIIOnline Forums : )

PM sent.

Could you describe in more detail what exactly you find “too technical”?
At what points were you confused? What would have helped? We developers
have been having a running debate filled with speculation about what
users might find confusing, but we have very little data on what actual
users do find confusing. If you have some time to answer our questions,
you could help us improve the interface.

Well, Sir…yes, I would be glad to describe what I find too technical. I have: TeamSpeak2, Skype or Ventrilo… choose one and I’ll explain.

Thus spake “ffff”:

I have none of those. Would you mind typing up a description and posting
it here, or emailing it to me?


J.


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We’ve got it worked out …I think.

What it boiled down to was the fact that ffff was attracted to Vassal because he found that one could play Squad Leader mod. Since he had no familiarity with the Vassal engine, he was having trouble figuring it all out. In fact, when I saw all the files for VASL and the installation procedure, I was a little confused and I’ve been using the engine since July of last year. Between the two of us, and his local computer guru, I think we’re getting it worked out.

Beside, we’ve really connected on a social level and we’ll be play testing “To Be King” so communicating directly worked out quite well for both of us.

This does bring up two questions I have on installing Vassal and mods set up to be self-installed using using “Create Module Installer” feature.

  1. When installing the engine or a self-installing module, why is the default installation directory buried so deep within the directory structure? Wouldn’t it be easier (especially for the novice) to just have

C:\Vassal

as a default directory rather than forcing someone to hunt down the .jnlp file through layers of folders?

  1. Why doesn’t the engine or a self-installing module create an icon to the .jnlp file rather than forcing the end user to go find it.

I’m a computer tech so finding my way around a computer is no problem. But I know first hand how difficult it is for some people to have to deal with a program that doesn’t just install and run. If you throw any extra steps in there, they’re lost and, quite often, they won’t bother.

Using the web-start installer will provide a desktop icon/shortcut, won’t it?

We have a fire-and-forget installer in the next release (VASSAL 3.1). It installs into C:\Program Files\VASSAL. Thanks Joel!

The gripes you have listed are all well-known, so the guys are working hard to get them sorted. We would be very interested to hear how your first steps into learning the GUI go.

I hope I didn’t sound like I was complaining, I am just very excited about the opportunity to play Squad Leader online with an actual opponent…but was frustrated a little in not being able to figure it out. So I’ll wait for 3.1 and see what happens.

Thus spake “ffff”:

No, you don’t sound like you’re complaining.

in knowing what aspects of VASSAL users find unintuitive—this is
information we simply can’t collect ourselves, because our own
intuitions about how things should work are all ruined.


J.


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YES!!! A very patient gentleman from Germany, tag name; Frischling, helped me figure it out; VASL isn’t VASSEL…lol; more of a wording/discriptive clarification than anything. Anyway, he helped me by using Skype; very helpful communication tool. :smiley: