Selectable GUI backgrounds [SOLVED]
Posted: Wed Jan 02, 2008 12:29 am
I'm on a feature requesting roll... Guess I'm feeling lucky
A couple of years ago, I made some GUI backgrounds for WCU; --basically,
I put like trasparent, colored glass panels where the VS GUI puts the text,
on top of the original backgrounds...
...which Spiritplumber managed to use, --for a while anyways, until she
decided for a different solution.
Now something similar has become the consensus of the PU team. But
when I offered those backgrounds for the other guys to test them
in-game, it turns out that there's only one "basecomputer.png" texture in
the /textures folder, and no obvious way for the various gui screens to
selet different backgrounds.
I went back to this old WCU installation and did a search of all files by
contents, expecting that some Python file somewhere would be naming
these backgrounds' file names... Surprise! No file mentions them at all!
It seems to me that Spiritplumber must have hacked and compiled
something, and had those files explicitly called from code.
I'm working now on a new set of backgrounds that will work a little
different from those. Namely...
Commodities:
When you click on the commodities, you first see this screen:
And you can click on the computer screen.
When you do, you see something sort of like this:
IOW, the GUI display, on top of a background that includes ghosted
reflections, plus a tiny bit of diffuse illumination; which are delivered
via this background:
Missions:
When you click on the missions computer, you first see this screen:
And you can click on the hand scanner.
When you do, you see something sort of like this:
Here's the background:
Upgrades:
When you click on the door to the upgrades room, you first see this screen:
And you can click on the screen.
When you do, you see something sort of like this:
Here's the background:
But the problem that we don't know how to select the background
textures for the computer screens, remains. Obviously, I could ask
Spiritplumber for the source; but I was thinking that perhaps that's not
the best solution; that perhaps there should be a way for modders to
specify backgrounds without having to compile a forked vegastrike.exe.
A couple of years ago, I made some GUI backgrounds for WCU; --basically,
I put like trasparent, colored glass panels where the VS GUI puts the text,
on top of the original backgrounds...
...which Spiritplumber managed to use, --for a while anyways, until she
decided for a different solution.
Now something similar has become the consensus of the PU team. But
when I offered those backgrounds for the other guys to test them
in-game, it turns out that there's only one "basecomputer.png" texture in
the /textures folder, and no obvious way for the various gui screens to
selet different backgrounds.
I went back to this old WCU installation and did a search of all files by
contents, expecting that some Python file somewhere would be naming
these backgrounds' file names... Surprise! No file mentions them at all!
It seems to me that Spiritplumber must have hacked and compiled
something, and had those files explicitly called from code.
I'm working now on a new set of backgrounds that will work a little
different from those. Namely...
Commodities:
When you click on the commodities, you first see this screen:
And you can click on the computer screen.
When you do, you see something sort of like this:
IOW, the GUI display, on top of a background that includes ghosted
reflections, plus a tiny bit of diffuse illumination; which are delivered
via this background:
Missions:
When you click on the missions computer, you first see this screen:
And you can click on the hand scanner.
When you do, you see something sort of like this:
Here's the background:
Upgrades:
When you click on the door to the upgrades room, you first see this screen:
And you can click on the screen.
When you do, you see something sort of like this:
Here's the background:
But the problem that we don't know how to select the background
textures for the computer screens, remains. Obviously, I could ask
Spiritplumber for the source; but I was thinking that perhaps that's not
the best solution; that perhaps there should be a way for modders to
specify backgrounds without having to compile a forked vegastrike.exe.