Gettysburg, the gamebox, and 10 sided dice

[Woody8297]

Hi fellow ZT'ers,

I just finished a gamebox of Avalon Hill's 1988 edition of Gettysburg. When that edition was published it was the 125th anniversary of the battle. July 1st to 3rd of this year, 2023, will be the 160th. It was the largest battle ever fought in the Western Hemisphere yet, for the general public, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address is more remembered than the battle itself. Wargamers of course, are more interested in the battle.

And ZunTzu folks are focused on the gamebox.

So this gamebox is pretty much an honest recreation of what came in Avalon Hill's cardboard box. I scanned my personal copy of the game and cleaned up the map and counters to conform to the known errata, and that's about all I did. Well, except for the cavalry variant; I had to put that in. The map extension--the East Cavalry Field--that was included in issue Vol 25 No 5 of The General is presented in two of the scenarios. All the other components are right from the box.

I don't make gameboxes that don't include rules and this one is no exception. Here the rules are offered in two ways: as separate pdf files within the zip file download, and as tabs within each scenario in the gamebox. (The excellent "rules on tabs" approach is credited to Maaax. Thanks Massimo.) Articles from The General that offer optional rules are only in pdf.

D10 Dice...the most difficult part of the gamebox

Gettysburg needed ten sided dice so I had to replace the usual six sided definition in my xml file with the following lines:

<dice-hand type="D10">
<dice count="2" texture-file="D10 Blue.png"/>
</dice-hand>

This would give me two 10-sided dice based on the image file "D10 Blue.png."

Making that image file turned out to be a lot harder than I thought. Bill Barrett, way back on June 18, 2016 (Waterloo!), had a forum post that linked to templates for custom sided dice. http://www.zuntzu.com/forum/images/dice_texture.pdf The 10 sided layout looked great but, for some reason, the numbers came out off center when they appeared on the dice. After a lot--a whole lot--of trial and error, it came to me to alter the template from a rectangle to a square. (The template measured 1054 x 956. I "squished" it to 958 x 956.) It worked! For anyone who needs 10 sided dice, here's a link to the file that worked for me: https://www.mediafire.com/file/0y74bgn5 ... e.png/file Maybe--but I ain't promising anything--it'll save you some hair pulling.

(I also learned somewhere that the color of the first pixel in the upper left hand corner of the layout determines the color of the edges and corners of the dice. So if you want the outline of your dice to be a certain color, then put that color in the first pixel.)

I'd be interested in any comments or insights on how to make or improve these gameboxes. And any constructive criticism too.

Frank

[Chobham_1980A]

Hi ZT Folk!

Leave it to Frank Jordan to produce our FIRST ZT tutorial in ZT Box format!

See " 007 - Dice Options Tutorial." Download and learn how to handle non-standard, dice

Don't forget to open the ".ztb" for some necessary stencils: change DiceOptions.ztb to DiceOptions.zip and unzip to access all assets in Frank's box!

Regards, ZT Upload Team