I’ve been using Vassal for a long, long time and think it is by far the best and most flexible game assistance program available. However, I recently tried out a “new” program called ZunTzu just to see what it had to offer and I was surprised to find some basic features that blew my socks off.
The zoom in/out, map scroll and counter rotation features of ZunTzu are extremely more efficient than those available in Vassal. To zoom in and out of a map, you merely hold down a mouse button and move the mouse up or down and the rendering is sharp and clear. To scroll a map you just hold down a mouse button and slide the map whichever direction you want. To rotate counters you highlight the counter and move the mouse wheel to easily rotate the counter with very little distortion of the image.
Other than these three features ZunTzu is no where near as functional and customizable as Vassal. Vassal is by far the superior program, and I have no intention of using ZunTzu over Vassal. But I was wondering if the zoom, scroll and counter rotation aspects of ZunTzu might be incorporated into Vassal? Anyone interested is trying out ZunTzu can go to this website and see for themselves: zuntzu.com
The short answer is yes. This looks like it’s going to be a major project for the next version.
The long answer is we have already been working on demos based on the functionality you see in ZunTzu and they hold at least some promise. I can’t give you an estimate as to when this will be incorporated into VASSAL.
In addition, there are plans to expand the VASSAL importer to include ZunTzu modules. This means that you will have the same functionality for native VASSAL modules as well as imported ADC2 and ZunTzu modules.
I should also add that, because VASSAL can be run on all computers that support Java, you will be able to run all of these modules on PC, Mac, and Linux.
M.
2008/10/17 Michael Kiefte <mkiefte@dal.ca (mkiefte@dal.ca)>
