Caplin wrote:Unfortunately, . . .
Challenging situations can sometimes be detours to good things. Not always, but stay positive.
Caplin wrote: . . . the test results weren't as seamless as I'd hoped.
Your feedback is helpful and important to continuous improvements.
1.
Caplin wrote:My problem is mostly of tedium.
I was running into similar tedium problems on the visual side.
I wonder what you think about this idea instead ?
In MS Excel, I can create a VBA macro that will toggle show or hide the \ / columns.
Those columns do not perform any function except to look pretty like hexes, especially for printing.
Still I would not be able to hide the _ bottom cells, since hiding those rows will hide the entire map.
Those cells also contain radian and radius information.
I will be developing macros in MS Excel 2010. I hope they will work properly in your MS Excel 2013.
You will have to let me know from more playtests. The differences between VBA 7.0 and 7.1 should be nearly unnoticeable.
This new layout with the \ / columns hidden, will also be something new to get used to.
Hex maps are not organized in a Cartesian manner.
2.
Caplin wrote:Counting hexes isn't as easy as I anticipated . . .
I was considering another idea for counting hex distances. I could make another macro that would show & hide
a distance calculator at the top left corner of the worksheet. The player could enter the two hex numbers, and
the spreadsheet would report the distance.
I have looked at every map from all the Starfire games. They all use the same hex numbering scheme.
The even numbered hex columns are offset half a hex down from the odd numbered hex columns.
This consistent regularity is helpful, so the same hex distance calculation algorithm should always give the same correct answer. I just need to figure out the necessary trigonometry formulas.
3.
Caplin wrote: . . . my program doesn't have ways to navigate to a specific cell on demand, as far as I'm aware.
In Excel, are you hitting CTRL+ F to find your ships on the map ?
I will add instructions for using the Find dialog box. Visual players will need to overcome this same problem.
4.
I have been having many ideas, and capturing them into notes so I do not forget them. Doing a little bit each day.
Because of visibility issues, and these many ideas, rebuilding the map has taken more time than anticipated.
I should not be doing the rebuilds manually.
I decided that I should use MS Excel macros to help with rebuild tasks, because any changes that I want to make
into this map game aid can become easier to implement.
I am very familiar with VBA 6.3, which is now out-of-date. Microsoft is doing things a little bit different in the new VBA 7. Some of the old VBA 6 code has been depricated.
MS Excel macros are not cross-platform compatible, so this would be only a short term temporary solution.
I will eventually correct that problem later. I have been reading the LibreOffice help files towards that goal.
Learning macro programming in LibreOffice has been on my to-do list for a while, and now I get to start.
Any design concepts that I implement for the temporary short term, should be concepts that I can eventually migrate into a cross-platform solution.