Rotating maps 1/4 turn?

[Philippe D.]

Hi all,

If there is an option in VASL to rotate maps a quarter-turn, I have missed it so far, and none of the people I have played with seemed to know of it. Most scenario cards show the map with the north at the top; this is not a major concern since the VASL maps can be annotated enough to show directions and such, but on many scenarios, it would be nice to be able to pick the "horizontal" direction - I suppose most of us have screens that are significantly wider than high, for instance.

So, unless there is a hidden option, it looks like this does not exist, and I don't believe I can be the first to think it would be useful, so I suppose there's a good reason for this. Is it really a hard thing to change? (maybe it would mean redoing many things in VASL, since, for instance, some counter orientations have to align with hexspines, and rotating 1/4 turn would mess with these)

 

[witchbottles]

this would be a nice addition, IMO - being able to rotate maps 90 degrees at a time in setup rather than only 180 degrees.

 

[Michael R]

I am pretty sure VASL cannot do what you are asking. You are not the first to bring it up.

 

[jrv]

I am guessing that much of the math that vasl does to calculate where hex centerpoints are for movement and LOS and how to put down overlays assumes that the map is laid out with the columns going up-and-down. When you rotate 90 degrees, the rows go side to side. I suspect that the code for these calculations would have to change. While it's not technically difficult, it probably includes finding a fair number of places that make this assumption. If you were going to make this change, you would probably make a generic change instead so that everything is put down on the map in a canonical way, then rotate the image. That way you could rotate any arbitrary amount, not just 90 degrees. And once you have done all this you could allow the players to rotate their views dynamically. It would be a fairly big project, I should think, and it might have performance issues to solve in addition to the technical issues.

JR

 

[Sully]

The map orientation is part of the VASSAL mothership. It would be too hard to change in a module like VASL.

Hopefully the ability to change the map orientation will be included in VASSAL 4.0.

 

[uckelman]

The map orientation is part of the VASSAL mothership. It would be too hard to change in a module like VASL.

Hopefully the ability to change the map orientation will be included in VASSAL 4.0.

It will be.