Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Scripting Workshop => Topic started by: Goober5000 on June 20, 2017, 01:33:28 pm
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This would be a nice addition to a Scroll of Atankharzim mission I'm working on. (Yes, Scroll is still alive. Yes, the end is in sight. Don't tell anyone, but I expect a release of Act I this summer.)
What I envision is a combination "loading bar" and targeting window, appearing midway between the existing targeting window and the center radar. The script should be configurable with a list of filenames of pictures (which would be things like asteroids, planets, and maybe a capship or two) and the total duration for the entire effect.
When the script runs, the loading bar should begin progressing and the custom window should cycle rapidly through the list of pictures. The picture cycling should start off rapidly but get slower and slower as the bar reaches the end. Think of a slot machine wheel that rapidly cycles through images before landing on a final image. At the end of the alloted duration, both the window and the loading bar should disappear.
An intermediate feature that would be useful would be to prematurely abort the calculation and hide the window/loading bar, for instance if the player's ship happened to be hit by an EMP.
An advanced feature would be to add an optional parameter for a number of "backtracks". This would be when the loading bar has to instantly jump back to an earlier, less full state, perhaps because the computer made some incorrect assumptions about the system and has to revert some of its calculations. Imagine a well-explored system using 0 backtracks and an unexplored system full of planets and asteroids using many backtracks. The script designer would still have to ensure that a) the image cycling slowdown remains appropriate for the state of the loading bar, and b) the overall effect, incorporating all backtracks, still finishes at the expected duration.
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I can only imagine this with the Mario kart power up noise now.
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I could take a crack at it.
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Thanks. :yes:
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To follow up on this, xenocartographer completed his script. It is used in two missions of Scroll of Atankharzim: Part I (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=93943.0). :)