Newby Q: alternate maps, like for Cosmic Encouter/Robin Hood

I’m brand new to VASSAL, great work everyone!

Two games in particular that I noticed were Legend of Robin Hood and Cosmic Encounter, great games with modules that have different maps than I have. That’s no problem, of course, but I wondered if having alternate maps is something “within” the existing modules or would be a new module entirely?

Cosmic Encounter has many versions and printings, as I understand, so probably there is different art in each version.

And Legend of Robin Hood’s “alternate map” was a beautiful fan map from Headless Hollow that I had printed on a poster to play on.

I was mostly curious how this worked in VASSAL with module building, I have neither a burning need nor am requesting the changes be made. Just trying to figure this out and get my head around the VASSAL system while RTFMing. Thanks! :slight_smile:

Thus spake Quadko:

I’m brand new to VASSAL, great work everyone!

Two games in particular that I noticed were Legend of Robin Hood and
Cosmic Encounter, great games with modules that have different maps than
I have. That’s no problem, of course, but I wondered if having alternate
maps is something “within” the existing modules or would be a new module
entirely?

Cosmic Encounter has many versions and printings, as I understand, so
probably there is different art in each version.

And Legend of Robin Hood’s “alternate map” was a beautiful fan map from
Headless Hollow[1] that I had printed on a poster to play on.

Are these maps with variant graphics, or do they actually change the
games?


J.

Robin Hood is definitely just an artwork update for the existing game. I assume the same for Cosmic Encounter, though they may have adjusted rules through the new printings and editions since they were official releases.

Thus spake Quadko:

Robin Hood is definitely just an artwork update for the existing game. I
assume the same for Cosmic Encounter, though they may have adjusted
rules through the new printings and editions since they were official
releases.

You might contact the maintainers of the existing modules about whether
they’d like to include the alternate artwork. It would be a shame to
fragment whatever community there is around such modules by creating
additional, competing modules.


J.

I’ll definitely do that as it comes up!

Does that mean VASSAL can indeed have artwork alternates for the same board in a module, and the players just pick which board they want to use?

(I checked out my Cosmic Encounter game, and it’s different/worse than my memory, so existing boards are way better versions of the same art. Weird - I remembered full color, but it’s all black & white. :slight_smile:)

Thus spake Quadko:

I’ll definitely do that as it comes up!

Does that mean VASSAL can indeed have artwork alternates for the same
board in a module, and the players just pick which board they want to
use?

You could do that by setting Maps to have user-selectable Boards, yes.


J.

Just wanted to let you know that I have created a separate module for the 2008 version of Cosmic Encounter, vassalengine.org/wiki/Module … nter_(2008