Adding maps during play to a map window besides "main map"

Hi y’all,

I am working on a module where a player can control more than one empire, each of which has its own units and counters. Each empire will have a play mat for storing its units, etc. which I am implementing as a map in Vassal. I would like all of these play mats to be in the same Player window, so a player can just scroll side-to-side to see his different empires, but the number of empires a player can control varies with the number of players in the game.

A simple solution would be to make enough copies of the player mats in each window for any number of players, but the number of controlled empires varies from 12 (in two players) down to 3 (in seven players) and so there would be a lot of wasted area. I was thinking implementing this by letting players build their map window with the appropriate number of play mats, like you do at startup in many modules (such as Memoir '44, for example) where you build the map you want to use. But I do not know how to implement that, and I don’t know if it is possible to do so after game start and targeting a map window besides the main map.

Any help or ideas would be appreciated.

-Bill

Afaik you can’t modify the board composition once a game has started (unless you do it on the vsav externally). How I solve this is by creating board pieces, which can be placed on the bottom layer of the map window, and can’t be moved or selected by the user. Your module can have programmed logic on when and where to place these board pieces, and/or you can use a placeholder piece that gets replaced by an immutable board piece. But your original map windows needs to be large enough to facilitate all your board pieces, so you will still have your wasted space, just blank until used.

I came up with a solution somewhat like this, where I create tiled copies of the board, the number of which will vary with the player count. Thanks for the idea.