Hi all,
me again. Sorry if this has been asked before, but for all questions I could think of, the forum replied “too common search words”.
My map my have up to 3 boards: western (optional), main (mandatory), eastern (optional); the optional/mandatory is real-life logic, not a logic to be applied within VASSAL (just curious: could it be?). I want to check which of the optional boards are in the game, with the aim of automatically adding certain overlays.
I think I could place at-start-stacks on the optional boards, each with a “dummy” piece that has the “set global property” trait; they would set global properties I can access elsewhere (for example to calculate which overlays show, if I implement the overlays as at-start pieces with a (calculated) layer trait). However, this solution needs a command sent to the pieces, or they will do nothing.
Is there a way to get the information without issuing a command? Or, second best, a way to issue a command automatically when opening the module (or a certain window)?
Other things I considered: Placing at-start pieces with certain global properties on the optional maps; unfortunately I found no way to access these zone-level global properties from a level “above” (e. g. module level). Other ideas foundered because it seems that VASSAL stops evaluating expressions when it encounters an error (?), such using for a global property that has not been defined (tests seem to indicate that it does not simply send back nothing, but stops evaluating, but I am by no means sure about that).