Working on a Vassal module

I was told already a few years ago to have a Vassal module for the game… About a year ago I took a look at it and quickly left – it just looked like too much at the time. So, here I am again, taking another shot at it and now it’s kind of moving forward. Vassal isn’t the easiest thing to get into, but I am slowly getting the hang of it.

A draft of the module with some counters thrown into the July 8th battle.

The first objective is to facilitate testing of the still unfinished game, and the second one, is obviously to have a Vassal module for the game.

My first problem was really to get the counters imported into the module, but that turned out to be a fairly straightforward task – I asked ChatGPT to write me a couple of scripts to make individual image files out of the large files I get from my artist. A few python scripts and some tweaks later, I had them. Not perfect, but good enough to use in Vassal.

There are many more advanced functions I still struggle with but ultimately, I hope to have a digital helper – and not the full game.

Adding some logic, like taking step losses took some time to figure out. I ended up doing most of this manually as importing a data file looked like a messy option.

I am also adding some of the necessary components into the module. However, I still need to find a way to add some counters to these minimaps.

It’s been a lot of work to add all game counters with their traits.

Once I have the main components in the game, I’ll start testing myself and perhaps with a small circle of “testers”. Obviously, I’ll need less desk space and can also save the game, “put it away” for a while, and continue later. This is always an issue with kids, dogs and a spouse in the house…