Biggs’ Monday is worse than your Monday.

Usual links

X-Wing guide to installing and playing: http://s93768914.onlinehome.us/xwing/

Module download page: http://www.vassalengine.org/wiki/Module:Star_Wars:_X-Wing_Miniatures_Game

Tip jar: http://s93768914.onlinehome.us/pub2/500release/index.html

Cliffsnotes- the “shut up and let me play” level of patch details

Automatic overlap detection is now a reality.. When you open up the module, you’ll see some news, whose contents are managed outside of the module. GMT timestamps is added to certain chatlog messages. 7.0.1 is mandatory because every movement has been redone in code in greater accuracy. Don’t play with old school 6.5.3 havers. Accept the lack of auto-placed template for Tallon Roll until hopefully the next update. These new cards were added: Jabba the Hutt, Unguided Rockets, Synced Turret, Havoc (title for a ship you can’t even play yet anyway),

The “ok, I can stick around for a bit” level of patch details

1. Automatic overlap detection, announcement and map visual for: ship to ship bump, ship overlapping a mine, out of bound area or obstacle. Template shape used during a move overlapping a mine or obstacle. When these events occur, the involved shapes will blink 5 times with a semi-transparent reddish hue. If you’re afk while it happens, you’ll miss it. You can still read that it happened in the chatlog, as seen in these following screencaps. Sometimes, the last blink will remain until you move the mouse or type anything with your keyboard. We can all choose to treat this like a bug, or like a feature – it serves as an emphasis to an overlap event!

2. Timestamp in the chatlog for certain events (movement, overlap, fleeing the battlefield), relative to GMT. Why not your local time? This could make it confusing if the 2 players of a game are in totally different time zones. This was requested by several people. It will be a test run.

3. News displayed upon opening the X-Wing vassal module (works both in Vassal offline and online mode). This will carry information about the last module patch notes, Vassal tournament/league signups and large ongoing Vassal tournament status.

4. Every ship (small and large ships only, not for huge) movement (not yet: barrel rolls, decloaks) has been programmed in java code instead of letting the module entries (made with the vassal editor) perform them. This was necessary for the collision detection & collision bump resolution to make sense with each other. The reason is simple – the editor uses integer values for the coordinates, while we can do our translations and rotations with real numbers (with high decimal precision) before ultimately (and forcibly) converting it back to integers for the purposes of setting a piece with some coordinates on the map.

Abandoning the old way ship movements was done is a HUGE DEAL and felt intimidating to redo in code. Fortunately, 80% of the work was done in a few hours (thanks to my collaborator’s solid foundation in the last updates), but the remaining 20% was pretty tough and took more than a week. I’m still not 100% done with it as you’ll read below.

For movements more complex than straights or k-turns (ie banks, turns, sloops, etc.), there are very slight differences (in the order of 1-2 pixels tops) in the final positions for the ships. To ensure perfect game fairness across users, this 7.0.1 update is MANDATORY.

For a little while, the only maneuver suffering from this overhaul is the Tallon Roll. You won’t see a template automatically placed besides the ship. You’ll have to spawn and place it manually. I hope to be able to program this seemingly easy task in java soon, but I’ve hit a terrible wall for reasons that escape me still. Stay tuned! Finding the solution to this will greatly help me everytime I wish to place a piece relative to another one. Ship undocking could be simplified greatly by this!

5. The new card from “Jabba the Hutt” and the ones from “Independant Operations” have been added.

Upcoming features

I’m not done yet, bro!

First on the plate: solve the problem of spawning a piece relative to another piece in java code, including rotations and translations. This will have numerous far-reaching consequences:

I’ll be able to make the templates placed for barrel rolls or decloaks self-detect if something is under them (ie obstacles) since you’re not supposed to roll over those in normal circumstances. I plan to add the ‘c’ shortcut for them to keep in theme with what it does for bumping ships. Whenever a bomb is spawned on a ship, it should also have the ‘c’ shortcut to self-detect if a ship is under it. I’ll be able to simplify the undocking mechanism and do without the clunky procedure I’ve seen no one use except me I’ll be able to add new types of spawned bombs in a breeze instead of the incredibly heavy vassal editor definition currently inside the bomb spawner. Adding new types of bombs has become a huge chore with many steps and prone to editing errors I’ll be able to replace the heavy definitions in place for the old ‘c’ behavior for ships. Until it works, there’s no way to test if the speed gain is real, but there’s a potential.

Why doesn’t it all work? I can rotate/translate the shape of a game piece without any issue – that’s how collisions are detected and how the blinking graphics are generated. However, having perfect control over the spawning of a new instance of a piece relative to another one? Stupidly difficult. One must understand MANY parts of the vassal java library before tackling on this puzzle.

Once this is done, I can start work on automatic range finding relative to a ship – it could be something like CTRL-O (for “firing Options”) and draw the shortest lines to every ship inside and outside of your arc, with a small text indicating the range band from your ship. This will be a nostalgic walk into linear algebra.

For the long term, I could try to experiment with a simple mouse based UI for some tasks and if it goes well, become the main way to interact with ships. This could potentially draw back in those who feel shortcuts are necessary but have the impression you absolutely need to use them to be efficient enough (that’s not true as most players know).

New cards:

Jabba the Hutt (crew)

Unguided Rockets (missiles)

Havoc (title)

Synced turret (turret)

Massive maneuvering system overhaul:

In order to achieve more precision, the way the ships is no longer done with integer numbers with the facilities provided in the vassal editor. They are now 100% done in custom java code in order to manipulate real numbers. The approximation is only done at the end when integer-based coordinates for moving pieces has to be used for their final location. This was necessary to enable overlap detection (and provide accuracy), especially with the shape of the movement template which is used and may pass over an obstacle or mine, or for detecting that a ship flees the battlefield.



Important note: Tallon rolls are a special problem that hasn’t been solved yet. While performing a Tallon roll will correctly detect a maneuver template overlap on an obstacle or mine, users will temporarily not be able to see the template placed on the map as before when you perform that move . This will be fixed in a later module version.

Important note #2: I really wanted to provide overlap detection for the templates which can be automatically placed for barrel rolls and decloaks, but I haven’t been able to solve a problem which is common to both my important notes #1 and #2. You can, however, manually spawn a template from the Pieces window and place it yourself to check for overlaps with the keystroke ‘c’ on the placed template, if you have the patience.

Announcements upon logging:

A message will be displayed in the chat log when you log onto the vassal server; it will contain various announcements to vassal tournaments/leagues and the latest x-wing module release post with patch notes. This message is dynamically fetched from a text file placed online. The message will be changed occasionally and won’t require a new download of the x-wing module in order for the newer ones to be displayed.

Timestamps in the chat window

Requested by several users: many (but not all) chatter announcements will feature a GMT based time stamp: for regular maneuvers performed by ships, during overlap detections, but not, for example, during dial reveals.

AutoBumping

Whenever a bump occurs: a chat log message indicates which ships bumped;

Whenever a bump occurs: the ships involved will have a short blinking animation of a transparent orange hue.

Added movement behavior:

Whenever a ship flees the battlefield, a chat log message is made and the ship get a blinking orange hue

Whenever a ship has its template shape passing over an obstacle or a mine and/or its final position overlapping such obstacle or mine, a chat log message says so and the pieces involved will have a blinking orange shape for a short duration.

New Graphics:

Finished the transition to svg (scalable vector graphics) images for target lock range finder graphics: small & large, rebel & imperial & scum and villainy

TO DO: GR-75 TL3, CR90 TL3 & TL5, Raider?

The initial core set’s six asteroids now use tighter graphics (no dead zone surrounding them)

Bugs squashed:

The selectable zone for ALL SMALL SHIPS (including all paintjobs) and ALL LARGE SHIPS was corrected to their “modern” size (since….Dec 4th 2014 for module version 5.2.0). Not doing so created inaccuracies with the collision detection

The selectable zone for all asteroids and debris was verified and corrected when needed (there were some which used the shape of entirely different obstacles instead of their own shapes). If you had the impression that clicking and dragging some obstacles felt weird, this feeling will go away.

The selectable zone for all Pieces/Movement templates (Straights, Banks and Turns) is now tighter and based on the modern images instead of the very ancient ones.

Ship movement for small and large ships is now 100% custom java code, to improve and maximize the accuracy of all movements + associated bumpings (huge write-up of code and huge gutting of vassal editor traits)

@ajmath, haslo, GuidoKessels, Ter Ter:

Custom java code:

They put up with my millions of questions on better coding practices, explain their previous code contributions to the module and whenever I hit snags. Couldn’t have done it without their guiding hands during the most difficult times

@bmf, pcgamerpirate, jtdold, vanderlegion :