Super-basic question - how to *not* lock down pieces

It seems like this should be one of the most basic things, and I could swear I saw a setting for it somewhere, but now that I need it I’m not seeing it, not finding it by searching the design manual, and didn’t find anything about it on a forum search (so apologies if this has been asked before and I missed it) :blush:

So I’m designing my first module using 3.2.2, and thought I had everything working, to the point where I uploaded the module and announced it’s availability on the game forum on BGG (It’s for Last Frontier: The Vesuvius Project)…
only to have a player report that although he was able to move pieces on the board, he was unable to move any of the pieces that were still in a hand/deck (which I created basically as separate storage areas for different types of pieces) they were “locked” and could not be moved.
They worked fine for me, so I asked if he was on an old version of Vassal as I’ve seen issues on other games when trying to play a newer module with an older version, but he said no, he was on 3.2.2.

So my other thought is - does it have something to do with player sides?
I seem to recall that at first I wasn’t even going to bother with player sides because it’s a solitaire game, but then I found that in doing so I for some reason couldn’t move any pieces from hands - I had to create a player side and then assign each hand to that side.

Which seemed to work fine… for me. I’m thinking what might be going on is I had the module do an “auto-setup” by having it auto-load a save file - would that auto-setup still be seeing me as the “owning” player? It seems weird that it would keep that variable when used as an auto-start file.
If so, how do I get rid of it? (it seems this would be very important when creating an auto-start file for a multiplayer game)
Even better, how do I get the pieces to not lock down in the first place?

Any help in relieving my newbie frustrations would be appreciated :slight_smile:

Are you using the Restricted Access trait on any of the pieces the person reported being unable to move? That’s what the behavior sounds like to me.

Nope, in fact I actually tried adding that trait with “Prevent non-owning players from moving” un-checked just to see what would happen… no difference (I have a “test” version of the module I’m playing with, and I tried just removing all of the player side definitions again to see what would happen… and again I can’t move anything now…)

It could be your save game that you’re using for your setup. When you save a game that you want to be used by everyone, you have to change sides to “Observer” before saving the file. Otherwise, the player sides will be locked when you save it. So, try setting it all up again, then switch to “Observer”, save it, and see if the other players are still experiencing the problem.

I think that may do it; I started 'er up, immediately said I wanted to Retire, and then immediately saved again and made that updated save file the auto-start file… it now asks which side I want to be when I start up… hopefully that’ll take care off it! Thanks!
(I still don’t get why it locks everything down if there are no player sides, but that is a puzzle to worry about at another time…)