A how-to guide for getting going with VASSAL PBEM
Sign up for a free Dropbox account. It's safe, and the free account will give you plenty of space for your VASSAL logs. What Dropbox does is create a directory on your computer's harddrive. It syncs the contents of that directory to its owner cloud servers. If you were to also install dropbox on another computer, it would also sync to that computer. So anything you added or deleted in the directory on the first computer would be added or deleted from the second computer. So far so good. You can also create subfolders in your dropbox directory- everything you do will be synced to wherever you have dropbox installed.
Where it gets interesting and useful for PBEM is this. If you and I both have dropbox installed, I can create a folder in my dropbox and share it with you. When you accept that inviation to share, you will then get a copy of that same folder in your dropbox. Anything either of us adds, changes, or deletes in that folder will be reflected in the other person's folder. So when I create a vlog in VASSAL and save it to the folder, you will have it almost instantly. You can load it from that folder, then start your own vlog and save it to that folder. Then I will have your vlog. Back and forth it goes, no need to email, no need to put attachments in discord servers. Very clean.
If you don't have dropbox yet, you can create an account HERE.
Let's go a little farther with this system. I really hate emailing or otherwise notifying my partner when i've posted a new vlog. It's an unnecessary extra step. Here's how I do things.
I have my dropbox directores set up like this:
Dropbox top level
Alex-Grant
Gordon-Grant
Chuck-Grant
David-Grant
where those lower folders are all subfolders off the toplevel dropbox directory.
I have a shortcut to dropbox on my desktop. The key thing is that I have set this folder to sort itself by DATE MODIFIED. This means that the folders or files with the most recently modified contents will sort to the top (or bottom if you prefer). So when I sit down to do some VASSAL PBEM, I open the folder and all the folders with new vlogs will be at the top of the list.
This is even more important inside the individual folders. Sort the folder contents by date modified and it won't matter if a file gets misnamed, the latest one will always be at the top.
That said, here's some tips for filenaming.
- There is no need to describe the phase or the turn number or anything like that in the filename. All we need is the sequence of logs
- Putting a number on the logs is useful if only because we are so accustomed to sorting that way. Even if the sorting of the folder is done by DATE MODIFIED, it's still comforting to see the filenumbers crawling upwards.
- At the the end of the filename (before the .vlog extension) append your initials. This is key. That way, when you open our folder and look at the most recent file, you'll see at a glance if it's a new one from me or simply the last one you yourself posted.
- I favour simple filenames such as "001-gamenameorscenarioname-gl.vlog" but the key parts are the number and the initials.
So a series of vlogs back and forth between me and my opponent Rob Jameson would look like this:
001-therussiancampaign-gl.vlog
002-therussiancampaign-rj.vlog
003-therussiancampaign-gl.vlog
004-therussiancampaign-rj.vlog
005-therussiancampaign-gl.vlog
and so on
Making the whole thing run even more smoothly is the fact that you can launch VASSAL with the correct module simply from double-clicking on the file in the dropbox folder (this only works once you've installed the proper module and started the game- the first launches will have to be done manually).
Here's a short video showing VASSAL and DROPBOX in action:
