I have reached a significant milestone with SCPUI. Each screen required for general campaign playthroughs has been completed.
A checklist for what I consider SCPUI 1.0 is available here on Github.A quick video preview of the completed UIs in action.
Why SCPUI?
Well, SCPUI allows you to break out of the confines of the retail UI. You will no longer need Contemplates to generated several thousand image files for you to have a custom UI. Want to change the background? Replace the background file. Easy. While the retail UI uses a huge number of images, SCPUI currently uses just over 200 where a large majority of those are button image variations (button unpressed, button mouseover, button pressed). And those images are not flattened like the retail UI. SCPUI layers the images like a modern webpage so changing them out is truly as easy as replacing the image file.
SCPUI also breaks out of the 1024x768 resolution limitation of the retail UI as well as the retail layout. These interfaces are responsive and adapt to player screens. The whole system is built on a kind of html/css/lua setup that allows you to completely customize the experience if you desire. For example, if you'd like your Total Conversion to combine weapon and ship select into a single interface then that is now possible. Want to completely redesign the briefing UI layout and put the map at the bottom with the text on top? You can do that. The sky is the limit.
What I've done here is specifically try to rebuild the retail UI semi-faithfully inside the new UI system so that 1) all core features of the old UI are replicated and 2) you have an example to start with and/or follow to make your own.
One major upgrade is the handling of player options. Many of the graphics that require commandline settings can now be toggled in-game and a restart warning given if a restart of the game is required to activate those options. Furthermore, there is a new tab in the Options UI that can have any number of custom mod options and also includes a font-size option by default. For example, BtA has used this to make Lafiel's icons toggle-able right there in the UI along with a handful of other options that only exist in BtA.
This is a list of what I've converted so far.
- pilot select
- barracks
- options
- command briefing
- briefing
- debriefing
- campaign select
- tech room database
- tech room mission simulator
- tech room cutscene player
- tech room credits
- fiction viewer
- red alert
- loop briefing
- ship select
- weapon select
You can get the scripts and files on Knossos by clicking the link below or searching for SCPUI. You will need a pretty recent Nightly build.
This UI definitely needs testing. I do expect bugs to be found or small features missing; stuff I missed or never even thought of. Specific things to check for are missing keyboard shortcuts, missing UI sound effects, and music/voices continuing to play when they should have stopped.
Known Issues:
-You cannot click and drag the tech room model to rotate it around (This is currently a limitation to how the model is drawn. May need someone more skilled than me to fix it, probably.)
-You cannot click on the briefing map icons to get a closeup view of the ship (Similar reason as above)
-Many UI's help text is not completed yet.
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Cutscenes' visibility is reversed. There is a PR for this already submitted. Fixed in latest nightly!
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Credits UI may not play music or scroll images. There is a PR for this already submitted. Fixed in latest nightly!
If you do find a bug, please be as specific as you can about how and where you found it.
