Another year, another release
, version 0.7 has been released
here.
The main new feature is pretty cool (but you're going to hate me for it): the ability to include Chapter H notes in your scenarios. Based on the vehicles/ordnance you enter as each players' OB, the program will figure out what multi-applicable notes are relevant and create a snippet for them, and also one snippet for each vehicle/ordnance's Chapter H note.
Also, if you Shift-click on the "Snippet" button, an
image of the snippet will be added to the clipboard (if you're running the desktop app), instead of the raw HTML. These can be pasted into a word processor, to produce a single-page cheat sheet with all the Chapter H notes relevant to that scenario. Very handy, even if you're playing a FtF game.
Now for the bad news. Because the Chapter H content is copyrighted material, it's not included in releases, and you will have to set it up yourself. The process is described
here; there is a ZIP file that contains all the necessary files, in the correct directory structure, but the files are all empty. For the multi-applicable notes, you add in HTML for the each note, for the vehicle/ordnance notes themselves, you replace the placeholder files with a cropped scan of the appropriate Chapter H page.
So, yes, it's a bit of a job, but you don't have to do them all at once, you can add content as needed for each scenario. And it didn't take
that long to do; as a guide, it took me about 3 hours to do all the British and American vehicles and ordnance, which are, by far, the biggest sections in Chapter H. Compare that to how much time people spend clipping counters, and it doesn't seem so bad...
I should also point out that this feature works the same as the VASL counter images, and national flags - VASSAL gets them from the program when it loads the scenario, so the program needs to be running when you open VASSAL, and if you share the scenario with someone, they will also need to have the program running, with the data also set up (IOW, the images are
not embedded in the
.vsav file).
Another new feature (that will work out of the box) is the ability to include your own images in scenarios. You can add the graphic from the scenario card, a scan of a CG reinforcement chart, the wife and kids, anything goes.
Finally, support for VASL extensions has been added. Currently, only KGS is recognized, but more will be coming.