[Anaz]

Well, I was silly enough to think I could figure out the FS2 GUI schtuff, and for the most part, I have.

Launcher command line flags annoy me to death. So I decided to do something about it. The result: This. This adds a tab in the main hall options screen titled "SCP". At the moment, it only has Spec and Glow mapping on/off options, and they do work. It doesn't save them from session to session (yet). The pcxs go into /interface (and yes, you do need all of them), the exe goes in your root FS2 directory. It's built on 3.6.5 basecode. Yes, it looks ugly as all hell, because I just copied and pasted bits of the image to get them to the right places. If you don't like it, make a new one, I would appreciate that greatly. I think that about covers everything.

[taylor]

Dude, I've been working on this for the past month.

We can't add an option screen that requires new graphics though, the game will crash if they are missing.  What I'm working on is conditional so if the images aren't there then you just get the old screen.  That's one of the holdups so far.  The other is that using the Windows registry is going to be dumped in favor of a simple ini file.  I needed to get that done before finishing the code to save the options.

[Anaz]

ah. Inquis told me to post it.

How far along are you on your conditional?

[WMCoolmon]

Actually, it doesn't crash. There's just some text that says "SCP" that floats to the right of the details icon.

It's not supposed to actually work, right?

Anyway...it looks nice and it's much better than the Launcher system. But, ehm, apparently taylor's doing a noncompatible version.

If you still feel like doing some interface art, you could always work on some for the ingame joining stuffs (Which will hopefully be implemented sometime).

[Anaz]

it does actually work...I re-did the interface pcx's so that there'd be button spaces and such like...I can give you a screen of what it ought to do if that would help...

EDIT: what res are you running at? I neglected to re-do the 640x480 interface art and buttons...

[WMCoolmon]

No, I meant it doesn't crash if you don't have the art installed.

I intalled the art and got the screen working, but changing the options doesn't seem to do anythng.

[Anaz]

Hmm. Worked on mine with a kinda old mv_zpack and the arcadia's glowmaps in the tech room.

It ought to crash if you don't have the art installed as there's an ASSERT(mask != -1) or some such in the init code...

[taylor]

Originally posted by Anaz
ah. Inquis told me to post it.

How far along are you on your conditional?

I haven't been all that vocal about working on it anyway.  I think that probably only Goober5000 knows what I have planned.  Sorry for the duplication of effort.  I pretty much stopped half way through coding trying to get 3.6.5 ready and all of the bug fixes that went with it.  I need to finish testing the ini code for Windows before getting back to the interface stuff though.

Options I've got in so far: glow, spec, env, ambient factor, resolution/bit-depth list, jpgtga, dualscanlines, ship shoice 3d, targetinfo, 3dwarp, decals & fps counter.  Resolution switching requires restart.  All of these options will override those specified on the cmdline.  I'm not putting any troubleshooting, or devtool options on the screen.

I've been going back and forth about whether or not to make some of these pilot specific but decided against it.  Being in an ini file though the settings can be mod specific.

[Anaz]

well, good thing I posted it in its infancy then.

Inquis said that SCP was looking for someone to make an IRC lobby, so I'll leave this, and put my efforts towards that next.

Your options list looks exactly like mine, except for the resolution/bit depth thing. Hadn't thought of that.

Also the interface irks me greatly. The whole "hotspot" system really isn't utilized to anywhere near its potential as all the detection regions are square, and it'd be easier to use a rect to define them. The hand-crafted interface screens also drive me up the wall.  In Anaz's perfect word, the whole thing would be at least slightly more modular with controls defining their hotspots based on an x,y position and specified w,h. Also the little "bars" that the controls were on wouldn't be part of the interface file, and all of the interface backgrounds would be a blank background. Ah well, I can dream, can't I?

EDIT: As far as the abient factor goes, IMO that really should be a mission-specific option (that overrides ini and command line options), as the ambient can be dependant on mission specific things, and can also add a lot of flavor to missions.

[taylor]

Originally posted by Anaz
EDIT: As far as the abient factor goes, IMO that really should be a mission-specific option (that overrides ini and command line options), as the ambient can be dependant on mission specific things, and can also add a lot of flavor to missions.

The proper values for ambient factor are rather hardware dependant though.  I've got a ViewSonic P815 and a Sony GDM-F500 (main monitor).  With the Sony I can get away with a much lower ambient factor.  With the same setting on the ViewSonic it's too dark to be playable.  Both monitors are calibrated for my environment but others with the same hardware might need different settings.

IRC lobby: Oooh, that's deffinitely a good thing to work on.  Everybody keeps passing on it, including me.

I'm with you on the hotspot thing.  I know that there has been talk about making all of the interface be specified in a table and my two cents on that is too ditch the mask files completely and define the hotspots in the table.  It would make the whole thing a lot less complicated and easier to make new/custom interface graphics.  Assuming there is going to be a good discussion about that you might want to voice your opinions there as well.

[Lightspeed]

Originally posted by Anaz
well, good thing I posted it in its infancy then.

Inquis said that SCP was looking for someone to make an IRC lobby, so I'll leave this, and put my efforts towards that next.
 

If you manage to code the lobby in, you will have my eternal gratitude.

If you code in an option for client based keepalives, for example by something like this, speaking in IRC scripting terms,

Code: [Select]

int main()
 {
 
add_timer(1, 0, 30, send_message);
 }
 void send_message(void)
 {
 
parse_command("/ctcp ChanServ version \n");
 }

you shall be forever known as God.

[mrduckman]

you could use a ping, actually.
In IRC terms, /raw ping
The server should reply with a pong (No, this is not a joke)

[Anaz]

nifty.

Switching to a table-based system rears backwards comptability's ugly head again, so the existing values would have to be hard-coded unless a "required" vp was to be made. Fortunately x,y coords are already in there, it's just that it only uses frame 1 (mouseover) and frame 2(active), and never uses the frame 0 (inactive) for anything. I imagine it's because the devs noticed that the pixels don't always match up and look pretty with frame0, and it's less noticable for mouseover and click.

Yeah, you can see the ping/pong thing in the server window of mIRC.

Now I just need to figure out where to start on the lobby. Might not get around to it for a few weeks, as end of semester is in two weeks, and i have 2 big projects + finals.

[WMCoolmon]

Whoever codes the lobby in, PLEASE make the list of servers at least partially visibile from it.