How to create a hidden OOB

How would you go about creating a hidden OOB (campaign setup sheet) that is only visible to the owning side?

Specifically what I’m trying to accomplish is to have the entire sheet not viewable until the player chooses a side. It is then that they will get to see the available playing pieces. I’ve already created the OOB .PNG for both sides and already know how add scenarios to the module, but the part I haven’t yet figured out is how to may it truly hidden until you have joined a side.

First of all, I don’t know what an OOB is. You mentioned you have an OOB.PNG. Is this for a game piece? …a map window?

If it’s for a game piece, you can put a Restrict Access trait on it so that only a specific player side can access it.

If it’s a map window, you can make it a private map window set to a specific player side.

In both cases, a player would not be able to access it until that pick a player side.

OOB = order of battle

OOB = Order of Battle or, for the non-wargaming crowd, the list of playing pieces available to one/both/all sides in a game, not including various game markers.

Create a Player Hand for the owning player and add the OOB image as the Map Board.

I’m trying to implement a double-blind game that has no judge/referee, so this precludes using separate maps. Therefore, on a single map I want all the pieces hidden, including the campaign setup sheet that will contain the playing pieces (i.e. the OOB). So how does one create a hidden setup sheet that gets revealed only after you have chosen a side?

Brian, after giving this some thought I’m wondering if this would work. Create a private OOB map for each players pieces and bind it to that player and do not include the observer. This way the sheet shouldn’t be visible to anyone except the player. If I have to work on the module, I could edit as that player, then resign and become observer and then save it. This sounds like it would accomplish all my objectives. Does this approach seem feasible, or am I missing anything?

Sounds good to me :slight_smile:

Good Luck

Yes luck does seem like it would need to be part of the solution. It appears that the Private Window only appears at the Module level and there appears no means of creating a Private Windows within a Chart Map Window. This would be a useful feature because it would allow you to only see the setup pieces once you select a side (while eliminating the omni-presence ability to your opponents setup pieces). This is very frustrating trying to figure this out, when all I want to do is bind the Map to a player side.

So when I created the Private Window and specified my OOB Map an interesting side-effect occurred. When I launched the module and selected a side, the OOB Map appeared with my Main Map beneath it, but when I closed the OOB Map the Main Map also closed. This lead me to believe that the Private Window - Maps are only really used as Main Maps (meaning an identical map for each player) instead of being generic to any Map. So in the end… sad to say… no luck.

Brian I tried your suggestion to add a Player Hand, which worked, but it had the same side-effect as a Private Window in that it closes the Main Map window as well.

How do you create Player Hands that can have the dialog box minimized or closed and then reopened? I must be doing something wrong, because something as basic as this ought to work. I assume lots of games with card play allow you to put the cards away or down and then pop them up again when needed.

Paul,

Sorry to hear that you are having trouble with your module.

My latest module, Title Bout, has Player Hands that only one side can see. You can download it here:

vassalengine.org/wiki/Module:Title_Bout

There is one thing that I do when creating a module that few others do.
I make the Main Map of the game only accessible from the Toolbar. It does not show up automatically upon start of the game. Then you can open and close your Player Hand window without closing the Main Map.

I do not know if this would help your module or not.

Once again,

Good Luck :slight_smile:

Hi Brian, I downloaded TitleBout and modeled my OOB sheet after your Player Hand. This works well, but I have one odd problem with it, in that I can’t get the counters to stack properly. I have the same settings in the Stacking menu as my non-hidden OOB Map Window but they just don’t stack. They appear next to each other instead of on top of each other. I’m wondering if there is a bug in Player Hand menu as compared to the Map Window menu.

Paul,

This is a well known flaw of the Player Hand component that has never been fixed.

Here is the solution.

Postby Ikarus » Wed Jan 09, 2008 9:01 am
From what I experienced, cards in a player’s hand can’t be stacked as usual (i.e. one card behind the other) but they
always appear next to each other. Is there an option that I could have overlooked to enable normal stacking in player’s
hands?

Also it would be cool to be able to assign a stacking trait that controls how a specific card stacks, e. g. to have one
card stick out of a stack of cards. Or might it be possible to have two (or more) cards on the same level stacked upon
another card?

You can do this.

  1. Delete the Stacking Options component in the Player Hand.

  2. Right-click on the Player Hand and choose “Add Imported Class”
    Enter " VASSAL.build.module.map.StackMetrics" This will add
    default stacking behavior to the Player Hand.

3 Then, open the buildFile of your module and add the line
“<VASSAL.build.module.map.StackExpander/>” below the
StackMetrics line for the player hand.

Make a backup of the module file before working on it.
I use Winzip to get to the buildFile. (rename the .vmod file to .zip) and then run Winzip.
Extract the buildFile to edit it.
Be very careful when you edit the buildFile of the module.
Please note that the buildFile file does not not have a 3 letter extension to it.
Remember to rename the .zip file back to .vmod once you have replaced the buildFile.

You can find an example of this method in the Title Bout module.

Good luck,

Brian

Does anyone know if the same stacking problem exists in the Private Window? I suspect I could make a hidden OOB sheet using either method.

Brian, a gave this a try and I suspect that the Macbook Pro compression for ZIP files doesn’t produce the same ZIP format as a Windows-based system would create. When I try to open the module I get the infamous “Invalid Module” error message.

The good news is that I can get them to stack now, simply by using the " VASSAL.build.module.map.StackMetrics" Imported Class, but with the “<VASSAL.build.module.map.StackExpander/>” the stack can’t be expanded to operate on individual counters. So 50% successful. I’ll see if I can get my co-developer to make the change on his Winders machine.

Thus spake PaulC via messages:

Brian, a gave this a try and I suspect that the Macbook Pro compression
for ZIP files doesn’t produce the same ZIP format as a Windows-based
system would create. When I try to open the module I get the infamous
“Invalid Module” error message.

You’re likely introducing an extra directory into the root of the
archive when you compress. That’s the typical problem. Check whether
the buildFile and images directory are in the root of your module.


J.

Brian, we implemented your recommendation and it works perfectly. Awesome job! Thanks so much for being helpful. This module is starting to look very good.

Glad to be of service :slight_smile:

Good Luck