I play a baseball board game where offensive and defensive manager choose plays at the same time. For example the offensive manager might choose, ‘steal’, and the defensive manager might choose ‘pick-off’.
Ideally, I would find a way for both managers to enter their play without the other seeing it, then have both choices revealed at the same time.
Can the Vassal engine do this? If so, is it difficult to set up?
There are lots of ways to implement this in Vassal. One way might be for each player to pick their plays from a deck of cards, and then reveal the cards to each other simultaneously. This is fairly easy to set up.
It would be a virtual deck in Vassal that you can create. Another option would be to have a action button that each player clicks that opens a Set Global Property trait. This trait would list all the possible plays and each player would pick one. In this case, the other player does not see what you are selecting and it can be revealed later in what ever manner you choose.
That’s hard to say as there really isn’t a “book” so-to-speak that leads you from start to finish on how to make a mod. The “Docs” link above will direct you to a lot of information. Your Vassal installation will have a Doc folder that contains the basics. Some people have found it quite advantageous to download a mod or two and dig into how it’s put together.
There’s also the forum here. There’s a few of us that troll the place and provide help when needed.