New GUI for WCU (Loads of images ~3.5MB)

Discuss the Wing Commander Series and find the latest information on the Wing Commander Universe privateer mod as well as the standalone mod Wasteland Incident project.
klauss
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Post by klauss »

Huh... completely missed this post.
Sorry Matt, I didn't mean to ignore you this blatantly :oops:

I have some time scheduled for GUI scripting. I don't think the rotating thingy will be easy at all, but the rest seems doable at least.

So... I need a "Table" class, a "Dropdown List" and "List" class, a "List" class, "Gauge", "Button", "Text" and "Sprite" classes are already on their way, though without Ogre/CEGUI it will be at least hard to get variable-sized text (if anyone with GLUT/whatever experience can check that out I'd be closer to happiness, I couldn't make much out of that code - at least I didn't find a relatively easy way to fix that). Not that important, though, since most static text can be replaced by sprites, thus leaving only the "dynamic" text, which could all of it be rendered at the same size without much trouble I guess.

Oh... a "Scrollbar" class is also needed. That means I have to add lots of mouse input events. Hm...

Hm... not to mention the "rotatable 3D model" class.
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Zeog
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Post by Zeog »

klauss, what was the reason, you didn't want to use the official Ogre GUI library CEGUI? I was thinking this was supposed to be used as it provides button classes, sliders, menues etc.

matt, may I nitpick a little on your mock-ups? I'm a fan of graphical representation of data. A picture can say more than a thousand words. Those bar graphs in the ship window, however, don't tell much. So, we see a bar for "Power generation" that's -- let's say 100 px wide. Is that good? Is that much? Is it sufficient? How much is a full bar if there is such a thing? Does the bar's width increase linearly with available power? Would a scale be helpfull?
The other bars kind of suggest a comparison, e.g., "there is clearly more shields than power generation".
I know these are drafts, so don't take me too serious. ;)
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Post by klauss »

Zeog wrote:klauss, what was the reason, you didn't want to use the official Ogre GUI library CEGUI? I was thinking this was supposed to be used as it provides button classes, sliders, menues etc.
It still is going to be used.
I'm just trying to make the GUI usable before Ogre/CEGUI kicks in. The idea is to have a library of python classes that wrap around the base engine support. For now, I'm trying to implement the classes using the current engine, applying small mods to the engine when possible (that is, when they're small enough) to approximate Ogre/CEGUI functionality. Afterwards, those same classes would get reimplemented using the Ogre/CEGUI engine (possibly making them look better and/or adding functionality). The idea is that I want to be able to start migrating all current base interface to this new class framework, as a preparation for the Ogre/CEGUI port: when that's done, besides being much easier to mod (this framework would use XML layouts embedded with "PythonScript" (TM) ;) ), it will also make the transition to Ogre/CEGUI much easier because of the abstraction layer.

Plus... it lets me play around with GUI before Ogre/CEGUI is ready, which is a big plus, since it allows me to tweak the Ogre/CEGUI framework to more closely meet our needs.

About the bars... I have some ideas, some of which I implemented and tested already on that old BattleTech clone I always talk about :D and they look pretty good and intuitive (and informative). I'll try to post a screenshot of the BT thingy later, which is much clearer, but for now:

Image
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Post by mkruer »

klauss wrote:Huh... completely missed this post.
Sorry Matt, I didn't mean to ignore you this blatantly :oops:
Don’t worry about it, I’m used to it. :lol:
klauss wrote:I have some time scheduled for GUI scripting. I don't think the rotating thingy will be easy at all, but the rest seems doable at least.
The rotate and scale thing will come into play later, but for right now its just a heads up. Refreshing the GUI will be a big plus because if its anything like the Mech Warrior (which I based a large portion on) it will be fun to just configure the ship let alone play.
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Post by mkruer »

klauss wrote:
Zeog wrote:klauss, what was the reason, you didn't want to use the official Ogre GUI library CEGUI? I was thinking this was supposed to be used as it provides button classes, sliders, menues etc.
It still is going to be used.
I'm just trying to make the GUI usable before Ogre/CEGUI kicks in. The idea is to have a library of python classes that wrap around the base engine support. For now, I'm trying to implement the classes using the current engine, applying small mods to the engine when possible (that is, when they're small enough) to approximate Ogre/CEGUI functionality. Afterwards, those same classes would get reimplemented using the Ogre/CEGUI engine (possibly making them look better and/or adding functionality). The idea is that I want to be able to start migrating all current base interface to this new class framework, as a preparation for the Ogre/CEGUI port: when that's done, besides being much easier to mod (this framework would use XML layouts embedded with "PythonScript" (TM) ;) ), it will also make the transition to Ogre/CEGUI much easier because of the abstraction layer.

Plus... it lets me play around with GUI before Ogre/CEGUI is ready, which is a big plus, since it allows me to tweak the Ogre/CEGUI framework to more closely meet our needs.

About the bars... I have some ideas, some of which I implemented and tested already on that old BattleTech clone I always talk about :D and they look pretty good and intuitive (and informative). I'll try to post a screenshot of the BT thingy later, which is much clearer, but for now:

Image
Strangely enough the bars are more of a “aint that coolâ€
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klauss
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Post by klauss »

Makes sense. It could be added to the "Sustainable damage output" schemmatic of mine, a color-coded superimposed bar marking the "maximum design potential".

The idea is that, besides cool, they could be informative. Knowing they're somewhat informative, IMHO, makes them even cooler.
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Post by mkruer »

Well we ARE making the game, there’s no reason not to include that option. I even though in advanced by including the option to turn on and off the stats.

Oh BTW want to make sure I clarify the differences between Stats and Details.

Stats on/off are what’s listed in the ship window e.g. bars, mass, etc…
Details have not been listed yet, but the Idea of the details is when doing a mouse over an item, after a few seconds a popup window appears giving the details of that item.

We might want to make this an always on default now that I think about it. We can use the details button to change the way the information is displayed in the fleet command window.
Maybe?
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Zeog
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Post by Zeog »

That rating is cool. Hoever, I see a spoiler there. Making 100% the maximum design potential contains the subtle hint of not yet having the best setup available. Once you have it you know you're there since you reached the 100% mark.
Firstly, this leaves the problem of figuring out the best design to us. This is not desireable in my opinion. It's something for the players. You know, discussing the best options, trade-offs, strategies, ...
Secondly, it tells the player that he/she found the ultimate setup instead of leaving him searching for a yet better secret weapon or whatever gadget. And takes us the option to add secret gadgets later on without spoiling the surprise of finding it.
Would it be better to make the factory setup 100%? Of course, this leaves us with the problem of having to draw a bar >100% without knowing the maximum possible size. A logarithmic scaling, however, could push the screen limit value high enough to never reach it with any ship. This could also help in fighter-capship comparisons, since, fighter stats don't loke like a tiny dash when compared to a the capship ones. The loss of details is counteracted by provinding explicit numbers in the details.

klauss, those bar graphs are perfectly suited for in-cockpit display!

----
To make it interesting leave the numbers away and put the 100% line somewhere reasonable.
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klauss
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Post by klauss »

Zeog wrote:Would it be better to make the factory setup 100%?
Sure, and
Zeog wrote:A logarithmic scaling, however, could push the screen limit value high enough to never reach it with any ship.
sure.

It's rather easy, it's controlled by python. Bah - it will.
Zeog wrote:klauss, those bar graphs are perfectly suited for in-cockpit display!
I Know. I was thinking just that :D
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Post by mkruer »

Works for me :wink:

We will still have to see it in action to see if the idea really works though, but its still a good idea.
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Moe479
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Post by Moe479 »

i would like to see a windowbased gui like eve got it ... with a slightly bigger font of cause ;)
it would be also cool to display html-pages within the gui, that would desricriptions and including images brake down to well known format.

evryone could do them using the editor of his choice, even loading pages from a web-server is thinkable ... think on news on stations that will be updated by the playerfactions of an mmostyle vs-server ... that would be great!
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