Usual links

X-Wing guide to installing and playing: xwvassal.info/guide

Module alternate download (fast) page: https://github.com/Mu0n/XWVassal/releases/

Module download page (1-2 day delay): http://www.vassalengine.org/wiki/Module:Star_Wars:_X-Wing_Miniatures_Game

X-Wing Vassal league (currently off season between season 6 and 7) hub: xwvassal.info

Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/mu0n

Paypal Tip jar: http://paypal.me/mu0n

CliffsNotes (the TL;DR version)

The launch time of the module reduced from several minutes to a few seconds; the content self-check is much smarter now.

Autospawning now accepts URL squads from both the official FFG squad builder and from Yet Another Squad Builder 2.0 as well

A new “say set” button in all player windows; chat messages when ships reposition, change stats

Dial mask gfx are back to make it less awkward to play

Many bug fixes or features that were in 1.0 and brought back to 2.0

Much faster launch time

Player Tsukuda_Joe (and a few others) reported that the module was taking a long time to load whenever you launched it. This was for every launch, not just for the first time you open your module after a fresh download and you get this image tiling process for every art asset in the module. It got as bad as taking a full five minutes on some occasions. This has been completely been brought down to mere seconds this time around. Arguably, this is the most complex change brought to the module for this release. If you’re curious, read the rest of this section. If you’re merely happy about it and want to read the other features, feel free to skip to the next section.

Why it happened: Upon loading, the module went into a forced integrity self-check for its art assets. It would look at both the community’s xwing-data2 repository, figure out the official list of ships, pilots and upgrades and check if the module carried every single card graphic + ship base graphic + dial graphic, etc. It would also in parallel look at another depot (which I personally manage) to find out about 2-state ship graphics (such as the T-65 X-wing, U-Wing, etc.) and check for the presence of those files as well inside the module. It would stop at the first occurence of a missing item, and then let the user know something was missing through flashing the ‘Content Checker’ button in the main window. Upon downloading those new things on the fly and adding them to the module, the alert that something new was available would then stop.

Therefore, a player was punished (timewise) for having everything inside the module already, since it would let the self-check run through the whole list, inducing hundreds of web requests, which can quickly become problematic in some parts of the world.

How was this fixed: Instead of checking every item that needs to exist in the module, it only checks the version number of the xwing-data2 repository and compares it to a local file in the module and knows when to flash the content checker button to indicate that something new must be acquired. The same goes for the over-the-air repository that I manage.

Warning: for the time being, the first launch of this module version will nervously ask everyone to go through the content checker and verify if something new is available. It’s anyhow probably a good idea these days since at the time of writing this, we’re at the end of November 2018 and about to receive wave 2 of the 2nd edition with tons of new cards and many more playable ships for 2 separate factions. After this initial checkup is done, it will only bother you when there’s actual new content to get (touch on wood).

New Autospawner method – squad URLs

The killer feature from the 1.0 era (early 2107 to summer of 2018) in the vassal module is back. The official squad builder is also supported (though some weird squads might not work, we haven’t tested it much), but most players use YASB2 in conjunction with the vassal module from what I’ve seen. Here’s the new look of the autospawn window:

New ‘Say Set’ button

This addition is pretty straightforward, who knows if it’ll catch on and be massively adopted by players, old or new. You can find it in the player windows.

Complete list of changes:





@Mu0n:

New features:

‘Say “set”’ button in the player window that outputs “set” to chat with a timestamp, player name and player number

add reported text for when hull, shield, force and charge are changed on a ship. Concerns about even more slowdowns here.

3rd autospawn method: interpret shared URLs from the official FFG builder and YASB2 url work

Cleanup and Optimizations:

Launching the module could take anything between 30 seconds to 5 minutes, since every element (pilot and upgrade card, ships, dials, etc) were verified against the online depots I have set up online. It would stop the scan whenever the first missing element in the list was found. Therefore, a player having everything was punished by having the scan run the whole length. A massive overhaul of this system was remade and local files are kept on hand whenever feasible and a simple version number is compared online to a local copy. The launching time is cut down to mere seconds instead. This was pretty hard to do with the vassal engine limitations and OS write permissions. 2 local files will be created in the same folder as your module. Make sure you have writing permissions in that folder (it should be automatic, since you did put your module in that place…)

The Pieces window no longer carries 1.0 ships. Those pieces were not used directly by the 1.0 Squad Spawn anyway, they were deprecated relics.

All epic 1.0 ships have been regrouped in the Pieces/Epic 1.0 tab

Clicking on another player’s ‘2.0 Spawn’ button will no longer cause a delay (related to fetching the remote data) before telling you you can’t spawn for another player.

Autospawn Bugs Squashed:

Dial Mask images are back. A new type of dial will arrive in the module at some point, but for now, old school dials will be used. When hidden, the dials (for most ships) will no longer disappear and only display the dial text tag. This is just a quick, hackjob patch and wave 2-3 ships won’t have proper dials if we ever get to being able to play with them without the next dial type in place.

A ship type can now make tokens appear during autospawn (e.g. quadrijet transfer spacetug all requiring a tractor token)

Obstacles (asteroids and debris) now spawn with your list if your XWS has them listed (not available with the official builder, but YASB2.0 supports it)

The text appearing on upgrade cards (the card title) only shows up if it’s a placeholder card

Locks (from squad spawn 2.0) now carry the pilot’s name again in their tags

Charge tokens no longer spawn in stacks of n tokens deep, where n = up to the number of pilots used in your squad.

Squad Spawn 2.0 didn’t know what to do with a hardpoint upgrade (it only specifies one of three upgrade slots that’s made available on the ship but isn’t an upgrade itself) since it expected cards of that new type. This is now ignored by the module while it fetches the pieces for your list.

Shortened name tags are now used (as they were in 1.0) on small ship bases, as well as on their corresponding lock tokens

The first upgrade card is no longer weirdly under the pilot card, too far to the left

Ship Pieces Bugs Squashed:

The bank barrel rolls are now visible right click menu options (they worked nevertheless in the last 8.2.0 version, but they just weren’t visible).

The hull value is now able to go up to 13 (deci + hull upg) for Ahri Kim

Ship tokens are now hull and shield adjusted in case there’s the +1 hull or +1 shield upgrade card

Cargo Drop functionality is back for small, medium and large (CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-C)

Barrel rolls and decloaks now report “This *pilot name* has repositioned” in the chat window

Misc Bugs Squashed:

Structural damage is not supposed to be repairable. The card is now fixed (new version provided by Ablazoned, who made the 2.0 deck art images)

Both Loose Stabilizer critical cards used the Hull Breach art instead. This has been rectified.

Autorange bug uncovered by evcameron: front or back autorange could sometimes miss a better shortest line depending on a specific combination of attacker and defender size. The problem was the criterium which was used to determine the “closest attacker arc edges” and the “closest defender corners”. More lines were added to the pool of lines up for consideration and the function which calculates the best (shortest) distance now picks the correct choice.

@MrMurph:

Tool:

Made a standalone tool for adjusting the file images used for pilots and upgrades and destined for the over-the-air content auto-updater; this tool also detects missing files, mismatched entries between the community’s xwing-data2 data repo (managed by Guido Kessels), the module and the over-the-air repo, etc. Really useful for adding new content to the module and making the auto-updater shine even more than ever as well as reduce the stress of making mistakes while processing new content.

Bug Squash Help:

Helped locate the bug about missing the pilot tag on the target lock tokens.