Trevor (Thereisnotry) has been updating it for years. I think it's a huge amount of work to update everything. Since Vassal has been a virtual ghost town (hah, literally virtual), it's a matter of weighing the not insubstantial amount of work vs the possibility that it almost never gets used.

Again - this is just my understanding of it. I have no specific inside knowledge.


Regardless, love to play you on vassal sometime. As we did in the Vassal regional, we can just continue to make proxies for the newer pieces. That is after all what we've been doing in the regular game for years!

To back this up, look at http://www.vassalengine.org/status.php?when=month and find the SWM Skirmish Game mod. As of me typing this, 16 unique people have logged in total in the past month, and only 3 games were played at most, one being a V13 playtest.

I do all my playtesting on Vassal, but its been hard to get my schedule to allign with other playtesters lately. it is unfortunate that the mod hasn't been updated for some time, but its a minor inconvenience. the one i'd like to see updated first in bloomilk. We still don't have V12 up yet in squad building and when I am playtesting for V13 i'd rather have the tools available to make calling up stats a lot easier rather than sifting through the design pages for v12.

I'm down like 4 flat tires for all of this.

I would love to play some themed or custom games ie, Melee only, No Act control, Epic, Only Shooters, Faction v. Faction or some of the other custom rules that are being suggested right now. The League Idea also sounds awesome as well!!

I don't have much exp with setting this kind of stuff up but I think it would be a lot of fun!!

an interesting thread,
and there's a lot of great questions!

VASSAL has it's utility...
though, for some, it has been more hassle than fun to configure.
installation guides are 'not idiot-proof', and in an era where hand-holding walkthrough guides
are common place on Youtube, the lack of said walkthroughs for VASSAL
puts a blip on folks 'sus-dar'.
"no walkthroughs? no play-footage? mustn't have been worth the effort' is what a lot of folks deduce,
when I've tried encouraging locals to try playing VASSAL or other options.
some nice how-to's would probably go a long way to guiding folks through the installation and maintenance process.


it is a tired interface, for the next wave of 'I maybe kinda wanna sorta play tabletop games..."
style of players, if any of the locals are anything to go by hehehe
they want more features than what VASSAL offers.

Yet, VASSAL is, as SWMinis can be, 'simplistic charm' once it is up and running.
it has a lot of utility in testing other games and can even be used as part of a UI with widgets,
as a great way to visualize distance/correspondence roleplaying settings.
Sargon of Akkad demonstrated some systems, and in the past has played other games on VASSAL.

"How do we get more interested folks to find their way to VASSAL or SWMinis?"
this is the Fermi-Paradox level of 'what the?!" question I ask constantly -
if folks google for their hobbies, and search for what they're looking for,
then why don't they stumble across SWMinis?
is it a lack of back of envelope folks searching to begin with,
or is it something to do with returned results...?
are we putting ourselves out there in languages other than english, looking for Star Wars fans from around the globe?
Star Wars minis is catching on in places like - brazil, montenegro, philippines, russia, japan, sudan etc...
if there are regionalizations and translations, maybe more folks will arrive?
ie, they're searching but, we're not being returned as a page 1 or page 2 result?
VASSAL is a subset of SWMinis players -
a lack of translation from SWMinis to the specialized VASSAL subgroup means a lack of regular SWMinis players hehe.

its a function of folks seeing other folks gaming
and wanting to have that fun too etc...
so, we need more Youtube vids and more community awareness of VASSAL,
and SWMinis more broadly.
One cameo appearance in Robot Chicken that one year, is probably not enough advertising.
A lot of folks are getting bored with Imperial Assault, so I guess they'll then start looking for SWMinis etc.
though, we need more gamers who share battle reports or live-stream, to promote the game.

Lets also look at other context -
saturated market - there's a lot of other competition for games and hobbies,
why play a virtual game of a tabletop boardgame, when there is
SW:Battlefront, SW:JK:JA, SW:Empire at War, SW:Galactic Battlegrounds, Arma 3 SWMod, SWArmada 3 (a sins of a solar empire mod at moddb)...
why play a game based on 'board games'... board games? bore-ing is what a lot of folks think,
because they've never played boardgames of any kind.
why would you, when RTS's and 'moving things, shooty sounds' etc,
don't require imagination at all...
what if you don't have time or monies for boardgames - that's where VASSAL has a strength -
a virtual collection, no packing up time wasted etc... and very low cost.

I hope there was some perspective which was of some use.
it's the least I can do to give back for the awesome which is Bloomilk and SWMinis

While I do not play VASSAL much if at all, I do enjoy playing VASSAL intermittently,
and believe VASSAL is a powerful tool for correspondence gameplay or RPGing.
VASSAL, skype (or some other VOIP system), and away you go. You can game!
I also share people's interest in seeing SWMinis survive, because it's just a great game

---

Have folks tried SWMplay's swminis game?
would people see a webapplet like that being an alternative for VASSAL,
or a format and style VASSAL can realistically pivot toward?
I'd like to still be able to see the detail on the figures in a gallery or something,
and the statcards too.

what features would people want?
being able to print out your squad, that'd be awesome.
a standard for squad notation, analogous to Chess Compositions, would be extra great,
and allow for a hexadecimal or similar unique code per squad,
that loads it for you.

Decent AGI for the computer would be great -
what about if, no-one in the timezone I'm in wants to game?
I can still game against the computer!

Playing VASSAL oughta be regarded as the best of both worlds,
its like the fun of an RPGgame session , meets correspondence SWMinis, in real time!
Its fun, up to 10 people can play at once,
so you can sit back, and with a beverage of your choosing, play SWMinis.

much like the awesome thread -
"Extreme places SWMinis has been played" -
where has SWMinis been played simultaneously?

I will go ahead and say that I see no reason in trying to expand anything until there is a little interet. looks like there are four of us that might like a play night, so in the near future we need to set a few things up and it will grow.

Just wanted to point out that getting the new sets in Vassal doesn't take a big name or big technical skills. It just takes time. All of the documentation for how to do it is out there. Not saying it's easy, but it doesn't require a degree in computer science or anything like that. I'd guess anyone who is really dedicated could understand what needs to be done in 3-5 hours of reading. Trevor (thereisnotry) could probably point you to the exact documents. Then actually entering the data and creating the next module would be another X hours of work. No idea on that one.

Trevor told me that starting with set 11 he was going to begin a new module anyway instead of adding on to the existing module. If someone else wants to pick up the mantle and get that work done, go for it.

I have a little experience with Vassal, For we created Vassal pieces for Legends. theultrastar did most of them. Things are still pretty hectic for me right now, but I would not mind doing some of that stuff in the future (getting newer v-sets in vassal)

I've been reading the thread, and just wanted to add my name as someone also interested in scheduling Vassal nights.