Whoa! The 'Ghost likes ? You know you've hit the big-time when
ASLInRealTime starts making videos about your work
I know some people much prefer video tutorials rather than the printed word, so this is an amazingly useful contribution. Thanks. I'll update the help to point to these.
To address some of the points you raised:
(*) While the basic functionality will work if you don't configure where Java lives, or a webdriver, some of the more advanced features need these. In particular, it's possible to get
vasl-templates to automatically create all the labels for you. It's maybe not a bad idea to start off creating labels manually and pasting in snippets (as you show in the video), so that you get an understanding of how things work, but this gets very old very quickly, so in the program menu (in the top-right of the window), there is an
Update VASL scenario option that will do everything automatically for you, which is a huge time-saver.
(*) It's not in the version you demo'ed, but the latest beta version recently released integrates with the ASL Scenario Archive, and when you import a scenario from there, it
will import things lke the scenario date and location.
(*) The data for the National Capabilities snippets is taken from the divider chart, so hopefully it's complete, but as you suggested, correct is another question
There's a huge amount of data embedded in the program, and there are surely some misteaks lurking in there, so yes, please check the generated labels and report any errors you might find.
(*) The feature to generate snippets as an image is to make the program useful even if you're playing a FtF game. You can take the snippet images with the vehicle/ordnance info, paste them into a Word document, and print it out, to get a cheat-sheet for the scenario you're playing.
(*) Why doesn't the "analyze VASL scenario" feature automatically set the player nationalities based on what it finds? Because it's complicated
For example, which nationality goes first? The user might not agree with the choice, so I now have to add a feature that swaps the player nationalities, and all their OB and notes. What if there are counters from 3 nationalities in the save file (e.g. Germans vs. Americans, who have borrowed a few British tanks)? There are a few other corner cases as well, so I just said "sod it, people can configure the nationalities first, then analyze"
(*) To keep track of how many PF are left, there is a template in the
Extras tab called
"Count remaining" that has been designed for this. I like to put it on top of a PF counter, like this:
The snippet is designed so that, when you go to edit it in VASSAL, if you press the right-arrow key, the cursor will be at the correct place for you to edit the number, making it easy to change during the course of a game.
vasl-templates also gives you a hint on how to calculate how many PF (and THH) should be available (based on the date):
