I wish i knew the best way / nicest solution to implement counters in a game. For terraforming mars, each of the 5 players has 12 different counters needed : money & money income ; titanium and titanium income ; plants and plants income … Thats 60 required counters !!!
In addition to the 4 global counters (Generation (or round), Lakes number, Oxygen Level, Temp level) which are easy to represent, the original board game uses colored cubes for each player counter.
[b]I wish it was possible to implement some scroll bar to adapt the income levels … from -5 to +40. How to do that graphicaly ?
Do you have a module I can get inspiration from ?[/b]
Don’t feel like you have to copy every component of the game and implement it in exactly the same way. Feel free to Vassal-ize the game. Things like money/value chits and tracks to track totals are great in a physical game but are a pain both to implement and to use when playing a game with Vassal.
For things that change in a numeric range, like your -5 to +40 income levels, Create a Global Property that will contain the income level. Then create a special counter that displays the value of the Global Property using a Text Label. If the Name of the Global Property is P1_Income_level then the text of the label should be $P1_Income_level$. Make the text of the label nice and big and centre it in the middle of the counter. Now you have a way of showing the current income level. Just place this special counter in an At-start stack anywhere convenient. If it is secret to one player, put it in a Private Window.
To change the income level, you just manipulate the P1_Income_Level global property using a Set Global Property component (to have it on the menu bar) or counter trait (to have the controls on a counter, for instance the special counter that is showing the value).
Having the Income Level stored in a Global Property also makes it easy for other game components to reference the current income level if necessary.
So, the special counter is a piece ? That’s what you called a special counter, right ?
Created it under the At-start stack menu on my player map.
It displays the value of the Global Property (created on main menu), with a nice icon I chose, and maybe some text.
Would you suggest using the same kind of object for the reserve of money ? Then at each round I can have the Income change the amount of Money ?
So far, I created an At-start stack for each of my players incomes : 6 for each. that’s 30 At-start stack .
And it’s a single Piece … It seems strange to me to consider a label with a number as a piece players could move during the game.
Should I make it impossible to move ? I can’t see how.
Plus I don’t see if it’s possible to handle the Income and the Reserve together. I will succeed, but if I could see any game implemented that way, I would download the module and check how you guys have done. (and it’s too sad not to use the nice boards from Terraforming Mars, but it’s really impossible to handle this by moving cubes).
Unless you consider that the Cube, as a basic piece, defines the Global Property value by its position ??? and vice-versa ??? Can I do that ?
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