Author Topic: Major features I'm working on  (Read 18015 times)

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Offline Black Wolf

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Re: Major features I'm working on
I'd rather avoid using lua if at all possible

You got a problem with Lua? Well get over it, because you're not going to get anywhere with that attitude.

What the hell, bro? :wtf:

Chill out. He's probably just like me - completely unable to use Lua, and looking for a way to do things without having to invest weeks in learning an entire coding language.
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Offline JGZinv

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Re: Major features I'm working on
Frankly I'd like to know about horizontal gauges as well... I've got posts going back since the new HUD code was released that I've been
asking about doing it...

..and that's a nice start to a HUD quanto... I like it.
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Offline Quanto

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Re: Major features I'm working on
On top on being unwilling to invest weeks into a whole new scripting language, I also don't like how it tends took "tacked on" over the existing UI in many of the examples I've seen, and I'd like to avoid doing that in my TC.

I have seen great examples of LUA in other games, but the LUA implementation in FSO isn't robust enough for me to take it seriously here on this engine.

Below is an example of a beautiful UI done entirely in LUA on the SpringRTS Engine


Unless someone can say I can achieve a similar result ENTIRELY with LUA and not use the standard HUD at all, then I'd take the time, but I'm not going to use both at the same time, its all or nothing on one or the other.
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Offline Dark RevenantX

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Re: Major features I'm working on
That's not intrinsic to LUA but rather a result of a bad implementation.  LUA is a very simple programming language that can be used and abused at will.  If FS2 exposes rendering functions to you, you can make remake the whole FS2 interface art with scripting.  Using that "example" of an interface used by Spring is a very ignorant ploy because, honestly, the only thing that separates the Spring interface from something that looks good is the presence of actual art to use on and around the buttons and various widgets.  If you have the art, there's nothing that stops you from using LUA except your own stubbornness.

 

Offline zookeeper

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Re: Major features I'm working on
That's not intrinsic to LUA but rather a result of a bad implementation.  LUA is a very simple programming language that can be used and abused at will.  If FS2 exposes rendering functions to you, you can make remake the whole FS2 interface art with scripting.

That's very, very likely not true. While the scripting system can do all sorts of cool things, it comes with a lot of bugs and limitations. Sometimes some information simply isn't exposed to the scripting API, sometimes there's no function to do what you need and sometimes something just plain don't work right.

That said, it's an irreplaceable tool when you need to do complicated things, and I think it'd be utter folly to try to do for example a TC without it. Making a TC is already a massive undertaking and I don't think that having to do some reasonably light programming is really unreasonable at all. However, you must prepare to either 1) compromise or 2) try to get a coder to add new things if and when the need arises. If you need special features in your mod for which you need scripting, then you will almost inevitably run into the problem of not being able to make it look or work exactly the way you'd want using the current API.

  

Offline Dragon

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Re: Major features I'm working on
If it's minor or "general purpose" enough, you can try to convince a scripter to do it for you (though keep in mind that in the latter case, the script would most likely end up released to general public).

 

Offline Nuke

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Re: Major features I'm working on
-snip-

that kind of interface is quite doable, provided someone wants to invest the time and effort into it (as someone did there). of course were talking a lot of scripting, every type of interface widget seen there would need to be scripted (my svn has the start of such a system of widgets, which is skinable). its not like you dont have all of the graphics features, you have a full graphics library to work with, you have access to game events and game controls. there is room for improvement, but almost every major scripter, myself included, has made contributions to the c code to add features to scripting.

the tacked on look is kind of an ongoing issue. you can override the hud and remake it from scratch, or you can float new gauges on top of it. this is why i asked for better integration of scripted hud gauges so that modders can use, place, and configure scripted hud gauges in hud_gauges.tbl without ever having to touch any lua. you just drop the *-sct.tbm in your tables folder and make a gauge entry to represent that script. eventually you would have a library of hud gauges that you can choose from and can mix and match with stock gauges to create a custom hud. also since many of these gauge scripts would likely include graphics, they could be made skinable as well by redrawing the bitmaps.

that covers the hud but you still got the interface. for that you need widgets and a command interface. and while the former can be scripted from scratch (as mentioned above), the latter is needed to be able to issue commands to the game which would have been able to do with the hard coded interface. you can already hook into pretty much any screen in the game and draw graphics there, you could also override the interface screens entirely giving you a blank screen to work with. with a system of widgets you can turn these blank screens into actual interfaces. however this is not useful because there is no way to change the game settings with these interfaces. so a command system is still required for this kinda thing. but then again what good is implementing such a system if no one is willing to learn how to script to make use of it. i think a table based interface configuration would be easier to use, but would be more difficult to implement than a command interface, and im sure most coders would just tell you to skin the hard coded interface instead. of course scripting new interface screens are not that important to me right now.
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Offline Quanto

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Re: Major features I'm working on
Nuke, that actually sounds pretty exciting, I would love if someone could actually include all of the game settings commands into the lua system so a full LUA UI (game briefing, menus, HUD, etc, all) may be possible. I do like LUA as a scripting language and I've always been lua curious, its just that programming has never been fun for me (I took C++ and Pascal in Highschool back in 2000-2001), and I find scripting only moderately more tolerable.

Art and content creation has always been my strength, its just unfortunate that I haven't been able to attract any motivated contributors to my project. Some simply have other projects themselves, and still others have only been slightly interested in SAFSO enough add one thing here or there, I've shouldered 80% of the work pretty much (with Andy being the other major contributor who has created the tables for the game, but given up on mission design.) It's mentally exhausting and I just don't know how I can fit learning a robust language like LUA into my workflow at the moment.
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Offline Aardwolf

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Re: Major features I'm working on
What the hell, bro? :wtf:

Chill out. He's probably just like me - completely unable to use Lua, and looking for a way to do things without having to invest weeks in learning an entire coding language.

Eh... I've just seen a lot of "I don't want to use scripting for <problem which could most easily be solved using scripting>" comments... Quanto just had the luck of being the one I blew up at.

 

Offline AndrewofDoom

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Re: Major features I'm working on
For a while, there was someone that was actually working on a scripted hud, but it was dropped. Why? Because autoaim doesn't work with a scripted hud. So, unless there's a way to force autoaim to work with scripted huds, I think making a hud through scripting is not an option for SAFSO.

edit: Oh gee I even have a very, very old video showing it
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20:08:19   AndrewofDoom: Though I find it mildly disturbing that a loli is giggling to mass destruction.
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20:10:15   Spoon: sound like my kind of loli
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Offline CaptJosh

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Re: Major features I'm working on
Um, I don't think you mean auto-aim. I think you mean the target lead indicator doesn't work. I also didn't see any missile lock-on indicator, but the missiles used in that vid may have been FaF types.
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Offline Commander Zane

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Re: Major features I'm working on
The lead indicator obviously worked, look more carefully.

 

Offline CaptJosh

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Re: Major features I'm working on
All I saw were target brackets. Not a lead indicator. The video is quite low resolution though.
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Offline Commander Zane

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Re: Major features I'm working on
It's not that difficult to spot even with the low resolution, the ships move extremely fast so the indicator has wide spacing.


Discussion over lead indicator done now.
« Last Edit: October 17, 2011, 09:04:48 am by Commander Zane »

 

Offline Something

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Re: Major features I'm working on
Someone's a questionable content fan XD (I am too)
Done voice work for :
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Offline Quanto

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Re: Major features I'm working on
So what about getting autoaim to work in a LUA based HUD?
00:41:58 <DarthGeek>: I might do it, I need to build a reputation of someone who doesn't suffer fools
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Offline Swifty

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Re: Major features I'm working on
Wtf, Really guys? Take this crap out of this thread.

 

Offline Nuke

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Re: Major features I'm working on
ive done a few from scratch hud gauges as part of the cockpit script. ive got a weapon gauge, lead indicators, target information floaters, radars, etc, and they dont affect auto-aim at all. granted i didnt +override: the hud, i just disabled rendering with hu.HUDDrawn = false.
I can no longer sit back and allow communist infiltration, communist indoctrination, communist subversion, and the international communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.

Nuke's Scripting SVN

 

Offline Valathil

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Re: Major features I'm working on
Wtf, Really guys? Take this crap out of this thread.

So Swifty can u maek soft shados? U make soft particle right its not that different?
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Offline CaptJosh

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Re: Major features I'm working on
It's not that difficult to spot even with the low resolution, the ships move extremely fast so the indicator has wide spacing.


It was actually impossible to spot until I put the video in full screen mode. I don't usually watch flash video in fullscreen. The artifacting from the extreme compressions usually used is impossible to stand at my screen resolution. In any case, I'm curious as to why an all scripted HUD would affect auto-aim.
CaptJosh

There are only 10 kinds of people in the world;
those who understand binary and those who don't.