Hello Everyone,

First of all, I am aware that there is already an excellent resource available within the site for aspiring board designers through the help menu as seen here: http://www.wargear.net/help/display/Getting Started, but I was also thinking that it might be useful to start a thread whereby if someone accomplishes something that might be useful to others (that is not in the Designing boards - help menu) then they could post a description of why it is useful and how to do it here in this thread.  This thread would not be a place to ask questions on how to do things, but rather a place where tutorials for successful implementation of ideas can be taught.  A text book of sorts where designers who have thought of or stumbled upon a trick can share their knowledge and where aspiring designers can peruse to see if it can spark a innovative idea on how to use or expand upon the concept!

So here goes.

Subject - Making an off-screen sandbox (term coined by M57)

Background (from my perspective)

While making my first board, WWII Scouts and Spies, as seen here: http://www.wargear.net/boards/view/5120, I came across the problem of requiring off-screen territory/factories.  A cumulative effort between myself, Cramchackle, M57, Ozyman, Yertle, Edward Nygma, amongst others, resulted in a concept of how to create an off-screen "sand box" for working with territory factories off-screen in the designer that would end up NOT being visible to game play!  Cramchackle, and probably others, had already utilized this concept on other boards, so it is not an original idea, but I think that it is an important one for aspiring designers to come to terms with because it is quite useful!

Why it's useful

As boards become more complicated/sophisticated it often becomes important to implement "behind the scenes" functions to them, yet not having them visible during game play.  This has been accomplished in a variety of ways.  1) they can be hidden in a board layer that matches the players' text colours, in which event all players need to be assigned colours with matching text colours.  2) they can be pushed off screen using the xml, but this loses the ability to easily edit them in the designer. 3) If the territory will retain neutrality throughout the game, and the game is always played with fog, then it would be possible to put it under a solid part of the board layer and it should never show through because it's never seen.  Or 4) The creation of a "sand box" which would maintain the ability of the designer to organize his/her work in a highly editable fashion in the designer and then obscure those territories from game play once finished, yet bring them back into visibility in the designer if the need arises!

How it's done

To create a sandbox for your board which can be added/removed at will in the designer, you will create two fill images for your board.  One, for actual game play that matches the pixel dimensions of your board layer, and the second for expanding the view of your board in the designer which is larger.  The extra space should be added to the right hand side of your board, or to the bottom, (or both) so that the board layer will still sit on top of and align with the fill layer while you design your board's functions.  The extra space should either be a clearly visible colour that differentiates where the board's actual fill area ends, or it can be transparent once off the playable area with some solid colour that marks its furthest boundary so that the designer detects and displays it.  It should extend BEYOND a couple hundred pixels from your playable fill area.  After uploading the expanded fill and having it in place, design your board with it's off-screen territories by placing them into the expanded space to the right or bottom of your board, this being your sandbox!  Now, when utilizing your sandbox, still DO NOT place your off-screen territories within a couple hundred pixels of the board or else those territory's in-game numbers will still be visible around the edge of your playable board surface.  Place them beyond that range.  Once you are happy with your creation and want to do some development games then upload the fill area for game play which is not expanded for sandbox visibility.  This will slide those territories out of the designer and will no longer be visible during game play.  If a problem occurs during your development games then re-upload the expanded fill image to make the appropriate revisions to those off-screen attributes, then re-upload the fill area for game play to obscure them again, etc, until you are completely satisfied with the mechanisms of your board.

Good luck and have fun!

If you have a design tutorial that you'd like to share, then please post it here!

Thanks,

Erick