VASL 6.4

GeorgeBates

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Can we make the, "When I turn the Phase Marker it breaks the last unit I touched" problem go away? I find that VASL has a real problem "letting go" of the last counter/stack touched, so that I'm always moving or marking the last counter/stack I manipulated around the board together with the new counter/stack that I have just clicked on. For example, last week I lost a squad, LMG and leader stack that I had inspected when I unknowingly dragged it off the board together with an Acq counter that I removed in my next activity. When a new item on the board is clicked on, VASL needs to "forget" the last item touched unless the Shift key is employed, right?

Another constant frustration is that right-click>Move>CX creates a CX counter on top of the counter that was right-clicked, but does not "latch" the two together, so that when clicking and dragging the moving unit to a new hex, strangely only the CX (top) counter comes along.

Thanks for soliciting requests. Appreciate the work all VASL developers do. You guys make our hobby much more fun!
 

zgrose

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Maybe it's a Windows thing, but when I right-click the turn marker, the selection box goes away from the counter and onto to Phase Tracker (I can see the black border disappear from one and go to the other). You're seeing the black border stay on the counter AND go onto the Phase Tracker when you right-click the Phase Tracker?
 

bprobst

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It's a George thing. On his PC, as he says, VASL doesn't seem to like "letting go" of pieces he has already selected. I do not have that problem on my PC. I also have no problem selecting a unit, right-clicking to make it CX, and then dragging both to a new location. I think there's something weird going on with George's mouse, but I'm not sure what it could be, especially if he doesn't have similar problems outside of VASL.
 

zgrose

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Might want to triple check any Accessibility control panels. But I am interested to know what exactly the black box is doing.
 

GeorgeBates

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Maybe it's a Windows thing, but when I right-click the turn marker, the selection box goes away from the counter and onto to Phase Tracker (I can see the black border disappear from one and go to the other). You're seeing the black border stay on the counter AND go onto the Phase Tracker when you right-click the Phase Tracker?
Honestly, I am never watching what happens to the black border on the last object I was working with because I am focused on the new item I just left-clicked on, so that I never seem to realize that the previous one is still selected. I can say with certainty that the Shift key is not involved. Usually, before I do a right-click operation, I select the next object I want to manipulate with a left click. That should be enough to de-select the previous item, shouldn't it?
 

zgrose

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It should be, yes. And it is for the rest of us. That's why I want you to do what you normally do except this time note what happens to the box.

You can take any map, place the Phase Tracker and any counter next to each other and see what happens. If that's not enough to get it to happen, then there is something else at work.
 

BigAl737

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Draggable overlays. It is an election year afterall. I can dream.
 

Sully

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The tricky part is obtaining consensus on how this should work; we've kind of backed into "design by committee." I think most players like to see the counters underneath. On the flip side it does provide some free recon.

I think the simplest "fix" for this would be to reduce the vertical offset on the stacks.
upload_2016-10-10_17-0-25.png

David and others,

it seems the information-bleeding-from-counters-in-a-stack bug will not fixed in 6.4. Could David or someone working with VASL comment on this?

You can read more about the bug in here:

http://www.gamesquad.com/forums/index.php?threads/bug-information-bleeding-from-counters-in-a-stack.128388/

Thanks.
 
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Sully

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Draggable overlays. It is an election year afterall. I can dream.
Someone's obviously not following the election that closely. :D

I'd love to see this as well. The first step would be to mock up an overlay as a counter ala draggable overlays, where each orientation is a different layer. Do you know anyone who's good with counters??? Hint. Hint.
 

von Marwitz

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The tricky part is obtaining consensus on how this should work; we've kind of backed into "design by committee." I think most players like to see the counters underneath. On the flip side it does provide some free recon.

I think the simplest "fix" for this would be to reduce the vertical offset on the stacks.
View attachment 241
Probably you are right about the simplest fix being the reduction of the vertical offset.

Of course, by all means, seeing the counters underneath with regard to their mere number (i.e. the height of the stack) without mouse-over or expanding the stack is absolutely necessary. Reducing the offset might make it a bit more difficult to determine the number of counters, but that is still better than the current "information-leak".

The one thing I do not understand, though, is why it used to work with the wider (i.e. current) offset without information-leak in previous VASL versions.

von Marwitz
 

bprobst

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The tricky part is obtaining consensus on how this should work
Something wrong with the idea of "undo the change that made it happen"? The problem came out of the blue in the last release. Send it back to the blue.

Or to put it another way: what was this change intended to fix, any way? Was it successful in that goal? If not, why would we want to keep it?

No need for debates.
 

BigAl737

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Someone's obviously not following the election that closely. :D

I'd love to see this as well. The first step would be to mock up an overlay as a counter ala draggable overlays, where each orientation is a different layer. Do you know anyone who's good with counters??? Hint. Hint.
I don't have a clue about vasl counters but I did stay at a Holiday Inn last night :)

I think I can whip up a prototype pretty quick. And I'm off this week...
 

Will Fleming

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That counter offset looks like it would work for me.

I would still like to see a message "<so and so> is inspecting hex <whatever>" when they mouse over or expand stacks owned by me. For those who would not like that message, maybe an option to turn it off the text messages, but not an option for your opponent to turn it off when he inspects your stacks.

I suspect there are some of "Free" stack inspections when the stack is out of LOS. I certainly have done it, mostly by mistake or error thinking a stack is in LOS when it wasn't. We have a similar text message for LOS checks.
 

veron

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That counter offset looks like it would work for me.
It works in a sense that you cannot see the information from the counters anymore, but then it's really hard to see the size of the stacks anymore, which lowers the usability of VASL quite a bit. You have to hover around the stacks to see how big they are, and of course, if you don't have a LOS to an enemy stack, you would have to ask your opponent how big the stack is (unless it is concealed, of course).
 

SFiedler

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It works in a sense that you cannot see the information from the counters anymore, but then it's really hard to see the size of the stacks anymore, which lowers the usability of VASL quite a bit. You have to hover around the stacks to see how big they are, and of course, if you don't have a LOS to an enemy stack, you would have to ask your opponent how big the stack is (unless it is concealed, of course).
Concur. I like the possibility to see stack sizes and I think the info gain by the current setup is overblown. Perhaps add this function but as an option for those concerned?
 

veron

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Concur. I like the possibility to see stack sizes and I think the info gain by the current setup is overblown. Perhaps add this function but as an option for those concerned?
Sorry, which option? If you mean counter offset, you can do it already by editing the VASL module. Just open VASSAL and then right-click on the VASL module, and from there:

Edit Module > Map Window > Stacking Options (right click) > Properties

For me, to not see the information from the counters, I had to set:

Horizontal separation when not expended: 3
Vertical separation when not expanded: 1

But as said, this is a very poor fix, because then seeing the stack sizes is very difficult.
 
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