Author Topic: Interface Art "Themes"  (Read 2266 times)

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Offline Galemp

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Interface Art "Themes"
Feature request here. May be useful for FOTG and campaigns that have branches or loops.

We can change the Main Hall in the middle of the campaign as a retail feature, and we can specify mission loading screens. We also have control over music and HUDs. But could we implement changing the interface as a whole, too? For example, you have a campaign where the player defects to the NTF halfway through, and moves from a Hecate to an Orion. Switch the interface from green and gold with GTVA logos to blue and gold with NTF logos, and use FS1-style briefing icons. The swap could specify a new default ship-select/weapon-select animation style if it's not already set by the tables.

Maybe have alternate versions of interface elements with a suffix, like 2_briefing-ntf, in a similar way to how we swap ship textures. Set the interface in the campaign file in the same way we change main halls, and it uses the alternate if present or the original if not.

I know there's not a lot of love for the interface code, but how doable is this, roughly? Both Vasudan Imperium and Scroll of Atankharzim would hugely benefit.
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Offline AdmiralRalwood

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Re: Interface Art "Themes"
...Ooof. I can imagine some spots where code can be reused, but my gut instinct is that this would be a lot of effort. Maybe someone with more experience with that part of the codebase will correct me, though.
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Offline niffiwan

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Re: Interface Art "Themes"
The closest I can think that we have at the moment is per-mission briefing screens, but that won't change the interface, just the background. From what I've seen of trying to create custom interfaces (thousands of little pics) it seems like this would be a lot of work.  There's not much re-use of interface screen elements in FSO which means lots and lots of places to add code to allow switching of the thousands of different elements.

Still, I think that Yarn probably knows the most about the interface code, so his opinion would be the best one to have.
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Offline Galemp

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Re: Interface Art "Themes"
The idea would be that there is already a completely new set of interface graphics that could be used in place of the existing ones. They don't necessarily need to be all listed in a table; but the engine is directed to replace INTERFACE_FILENAME with INTERFACE_FILENAME-MOD if present, ELSE use FILENAME.
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Offline mjn.mixael

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Re: Interface Art "Themes"
I know The_E was once working on something like this on a per campaign basis... perhaps see what he has finished?
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Offline The E

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Re: Interface Art "Themes"
Not much. Haven't had much mental energy left to spend on this these past few weeks, unfortunately.
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Offline zookeeper

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Re: Interface Art "Themes"
Maybe have alternate versions of interface elements with a suffix, like 2_briefing-ntf, in a similar way to how we swap ship textures. Set the interface in the campaign file in the same way we change main halls, and it uses the alternate if present or the original if not.

Just for the record, I think the alternates should really really really be in a different directory altogether; for example either interface/ntf/2_briefing or interface-ntf/2_briefing. Stuffing them all in the same interface directory would be madness that can easily be avoided.

P.S. PR #449 does something reasonably similar. Maybe helpful, maybe not.

 

Offline The E

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Re: Interface Art "Themes"
Yeah, the way I planned on doing it was with a separate directory that all interface files would be loaded from.
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Offline Galemp

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Re: Interface Art "Themes"
That sounds much better!
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Offline Bryan See

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Re: Interface Art "Themes"
What about interface with differing aspect ratios? What about resizing or scaling?
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Offline The E

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Re: Interface Art "Themes"
Feel free to come up with a design for them.
If I'm just aching this can't go on
I came from chasing dreams to feel alone
There must be changes, miss to feel strong
I really need lifе to touch me
--Evergrey, Where August Mourns