Cards & Player Hand Window

Hi there. First of all i have to say that Vassal is just amazing. I discovered it just few days ago and i’m already tring to build my first simple module. As you can imagin, i’m here because i dont really understund a couple of think.

The module i’m trying to create (Blue Moon City) as a deck on the main board from where all the players draw some card that they have to keep hidden from the other players.
So i created a Player Hand Map Window for each player. Now you will think: so, wich is the problem? The problem is that all the players can see those card also if they are placed in the Player Hand of another player.
I try to explain better:
I have created the deck with the options Content Are Face Down? Always and Draw Card Face Up unselected, then i putted a mask for all the card with the peek command because sometime during the game the active player as to draw some cards and put on the main board without look at them, then after doing other thinks in the game he is finally allought to add those cards in his hand and look at them.
So using just the peek command the module do what he is suppose to do, but when the player unmask the cards in is Player Hand Map Window anybody can look at them.
Another think is that also if i drag the card on the main bord or even in the Player Hand Map Window, the others players can still right click on it and active the commands of the card like peek, mask, discard ecc.
What looks like to me is that the module dont recognize the owner of the cards.
I have to keep all the Player Hand Map window with the Visible To All activated because the opponent player should know how many cards you have in your hand but of course they should not know wich one you have.

I hope that you can understund what i mean. Tnx to all!!!

Grettings, cronod, welcome to the VASSAL forums.

So, if I understand your problem correctly, you’ve created Map Windows to act as player hands in your mod. What you’ll need to do is replace those Map Windows with … get ready … Player Hands. That’s actually a type of window you can add to VASSAL mods. To make them to where only a player can see their own hand, you’ll have to restrict access to the specific player, which in turn means you will have to define player sides.

At the risk of self-advertising, I suggest you crack open the Kerbal Card Program mod I wrote (download it and edit module) to see how its built. It’s also a card game, and there are private player hands in it.

Good luck with your mod.

Hi capi3101, tnx for the reply. As i imagined my english is orrible and i cant explane my self very well.

Anyway, i already did all you sas, i have 4 different Player Hands and of course i created the relative Player Side. And that’s what is driving me crazy, apparentaly i did all well, but still the other players can see all the different card…

Okay…check any one of your Player Hand windows. Look for the box “Visible to Other Players”. Is that box unchecked? Uncheck it if is checked, then try again (use that particular player) and see if that helps any. Only other thing I can think to try off the top of my head is to make sure the sides you’re using for your players matches the ones you’ve defined.

If someone will like to give a look to what i did you can download the module here: docs.google.com/file/d/0B3cLWxM … sp=sharing

The “Visible to Other Players” is checked because if i uncheck i cant open the others “Player Hand” windows wich i need to do, just i should see the back of their card and not the image.
Also the names of “Player Side” match with the “Player Hand” name.

I’ll go ahead and check out your mod when I get a chance; I’m at work at the moment so it may be a while. I’ll admit that I’ve never played Blue Moon City, so I may try to familiarize myself with it as well.

The reason why the hands are visible to every body is because the “Visible to Other Players” boxes are checked. If you want to keep the contents of a player’s hand sacrosanct and visible only to them, you’ll have to uncheck those boxes. I don’t know of any way around this.

If it’s a matter of being able to tell how many cards are in a player’s hand or having certain rules that require players to draw cards from another player’s hand, you might consider adding indicators to your main playing area (something that says “Player X has YYY cards in his hand”) and implementing a rules tweak where a player simply takes the cards from his hand, flips them over and then lays them out on the board for their opponent to draw.

If it’s a matter of “I need to be able to play more than one hand at once for testing purposes”, though, what you can do is use the Retire button - VASSAL will give you the option to “Play as Another Side”. So when you’re done with one player’s turn, you just Retire and select the next player in turn.

Like I said, I’ll familiarize myself with the rules of the game and see if I can offer up any other suggestions.

Hi again capi3101, tnx to reply again.
You are right, probably i want do somethink that i dont really need for the game but will be very cool for the module. So i unchecked the “Visible to Other Players” for all the “Player Hand” and i will leave in this way for the moment.

I’m glad that you will give a look to the module when you will have time, i will like to know what do you think about it. I just uploaded another version that should be very close to the final one, here is the link: drive.google.com/folderview?id= … sp=sharing

Tnx again for your help, i will wait for your feedback.

Have GG.