Deon
Lt. of Mordor
Thanks! Changing zoom to 5500 helped it. Now I can start working on a proper city screen interface 
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Fallout: Tame The Wastes
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Nightinggale
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This gave me an idea. We have xResolution and yResolution. This gives us access into figuring out if the user is using 4:3 or 16:9. Next step would be to make a sprite for each aspect and then let python pick the right file based on resolution. No more stretched images. It might be visible that it is upscaled, but aspect isn't stretched.
Such an aspect finding function could be useful in multiple places and multiple mods. That makes it a valid reason to write a general function for it once and for all and then rely on it everywhere the info is needed.
Yeah I think a lot of these things are done in platy, if you want to learn what the code is doing, you are better off looking there or in vanilla, cause mine is so hacked about from experimenting, that it is a bit of a mess.
The screen looks good, when we get platy working, we can figure out exactly what the images need to look like, like I said mine was just a quick experiment, and then displays gave me a headache so I didn't put any more time into it, also dotter was going to do some work on it, but he is busy with uni. So I just left it alone.
The platy lay out is different i think like for example, where the specialists are I think that 'box' you added would overlap with them. Anyway that is detail stuff, and we won't know exactly what it will look like until we get platy up and running. Platy also has transaprent panel option, I want that SO bad!!
http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d177/platyping/Civ4ScreenShot0012_zpsef4a067d.jpg
that is his city screen, so you can begin to see some of the differences pretty quick.
The screen looks good, when we get platy working, we can figure out exactly what the images need to look like, like I said mine was just a quick experiment, and then displays gave me a headache so I didn't put any more time into it, also dotter was going to do some work on it, but he is busy with uni. So I just left it alone.
The platy lay out is different i think like for example, where the specialists are I think that 'box' you added would overlap with them. Anyway that is detail stuff, and we won't know exactly what it will look like until we get platy up and running. Platy also has transaprent panel option, I want that SO bad!!
http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d177/platyping/Civ4ScreenShot0012_zpsef4a067d.jpg
that is his city screen, so you can begin to see some of the differences pretty quick.
Deon
Lt. of Mordor
That box I added is just for nothing. Ideally there would be a "screen" for every display group with fallout-style clickable buttons next to it.
yeah I don't know what is involved in changing the clickable buttons, i think that kind of art is kept in the resource folder, but most of the work I did with the resource folder didn't seem to do anything...that was another great headache of the display war...
Yeah I don't have the skills to make the ideals, so I just do what I can until i can attract someone who can do the ideals, then I start talking with them about 'The Dream' version of what is in my head, until then.. there is no point putting too much of my time and energy into one part, because it will never be more than a make do job.
Same goes for units, buttons, leaderheads, ai code, component code, etc. etc.
Fortunately now I do have some people that can do stuff in particular areas that are far superior to anything I can do.
My skills lie mostly in concept and design, I know where I want it to go, and I just patiently move along as fast as my health will allow me. When new people and skill sets come into the mix, I can focus specifically on to do lists for that skill set, but until then the only one reading them would be me! and I wouldn't be able to do half the stuff on there anyway!
Yeah I don't have the skills to make the ideals, so I just do what I can until i can attract someone who can do the ideals, then I start talking with them about 'The Dream' version of what is in my head, until then.. there is no point putting too much of my time and energy into one part, because it will never be more than a make do job.
Same goes for units, buttons, leaderheads, ai code, component code, etc. etc.
Fortunately now I do have some people that can do stuff in particular areas that are far superior to anything I can do.
My skills lie mostly in concept and design, I know where I want it to go, and I just patiently move along as fast as my health will allow me. When new people and skill sets come into the mix, I can focus specifically on to do lists for that skill set, but until then the only one reading them would be me!
and I wouldn't be able to do half the stuff on there anyway!
Nightinggale
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Clicking buttons works like this:
Whenever you click on a screen, a python function is called with the ID of the clicked widget. Because of this, the code can't tell where a widget is clicked, just that it is clicked. A button and a text next to it will have to be two widgets unless it is ok to click the text. Also widgets are defined by width and height meaning they can't be round.
The good part here is that there is no need to write code to handle clicks in the widget setup code. Just assign the widget the right ID and everything will work for that part of the code. The click handling code is also more readable as it doesn't care about setup at all, just the widget ID.
I little trick in this regard is to set SELF.button_research_plus to whatever it is assigned to. In the click handling code, compare clicked ID to SELF.button_research_plus instead of some hardcoded number. That way widget setup and click handler will never disagree on an ID for a widget.
I'm talking about vanilla behavior as I don't know if or what platy changed.
Whenever you click on a screen, a python function is called with the ID of the clicked widget. Because of this, the code can't tell where a widget is clicked, just that it is clicked. A button and a text next to it will have to be two widgets unless it is ok to click the text. Also widgets are defined by width and height meaning they can't be round.
The good part here is that there is no need to write code to handle clicks in the widget setup code. Just assign the widget the right ID and everything will work for that part of the code. The click handling code is also more readable as it doesn't care about setup at all, just the widget ID.
I little trick in this regard is to set SELF.button_research_plus to whatever it is assigned to. In the click handling code, compare clicked ID to SELF.button_research_plus instead of some hardcoded number. That way widget setup and click handler will never disagree on an ID for a widget.
I'm talking about vanilla behavior as I don't know if or what platy changed.
Nightinggale
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I wasn't proposing changing the behavior (or maybe I was 
). The goal was to explain why a button is the entire widget and not just the red pixels.
). The goal was to explain why a button is the entire widget and not just the red pixels.
Deon
Lt. of Mordor
I think that existing specialist icons while cool (since they are perk images) are way too downscaled and tiny to recognize (it's hard to understand what's on them unless you strain your eyes too hard). Making an easily distinguishable specialist icon for each type sounds like a good idea, so a person would not think twice what kind of specs he is running at the moment.
I went ahead and made "vault boy" style heads for each specialist which are easily discerned by their color:
Spy, engineer, merchant, scientist, protector (we are replacing culture with influence, right?), priest, citizen. The merchant may look a bit too dark, but the icon looks bright when he is active, so don't worry.
Let me know what you think.
P.S. Boy, it is hard to make them good-looking in the city screen. The way civ engine scales them down breaks most of the lines, so a lot of good 64x64 icons I've made looked like total shite, so I had to remake them a dozen of times until I've got this pretty clear vault boy look.
I went ahead and made "vault boy" style heads for each specialist which are easily discerned by their color:
Spy, engineer, merchant, scientist, protector (we are replacing culture with influence, right?), priest, citizen. The merchant may look a bit too dark, but the icon looks bright when he is active, so don't worry.
Let me know what you think.
P.S. Boy, it is hard to make them good-looking in the city screen. The way civ engine scales them down breaks most of the lines, so a lot of good 64x64 icons I've made looked like total shite, so I had to remake them a dozen of times until I've got this pretty clear vault boy look.
They look cool, the only things are:
1: Although they are different one from the other, they have no real 'representation' of who they are or what they do..which sort of reduces there utility in the argument of you can't see what you are looking at..
2: With all the different colours it reduces the look and feel of the 'fallout computer sreen display look' (that is a technical term you understand
)
3: I really love the perk images...
I find that once you know what you are looking at image wise (which you can learn from the larger pedia images) it is much easier to tell what you are looking at on the city screen.
I do fully agree that they need work and polishing (again they were quick experimental 'make dos') and they would really benefit from some real love and attention to get them as sharp as your heads.
I can't remember if I put them in or not at the moment, but I also had some happy, mad, health sick faces for those city icons too, they were also in need of some scaling love and attention.
One thing I wonder about, is I think platy's version comes with a scroll bar for 'unlimited specialists' I wonder if once that is incorporated, we could find and change the size of the icons, so they are larger and more recognisable... I think that would be pretty awesome, but I don't hold my breath for it.
As I look at those heads, I really want to find a use for that concept, I just don't like it for specialists. Something like opponent moods would be cool, with a hair scale from green to red and getting progressively angrier!
Again I think platy added some custom images for mood (they are like blue and purple with scary looking 'eyes') I have yet to figure out what role they actually fill or what they represent, but if Platy has put a custom image then it shouldn't be too difficult to change it.
My last point is before you I don't think I have had a single post saying 'the specialist icons are useless'(not that that was your post either) so I am inclined to go with 'if ain't broke don't fix it, just polish it some more!'
Also welcome to the group! I added a new thread for GUI stuff, so we can continue the discussion there
1: Although they are different one from the other, they have no real 'representation' of who they are or what they do..which sort of reduces there utility in the argument of you can't see what you are looking at..
2: With all the different colours it reduces the look and feel of the 'fallout computer sreen display look' (that is a technical term you understand
)3: I really love the perk images...
I find that once you know what you are looking at image wise (which you can learn from the larger pedia images) it is much easier to tell what you are looking at on the city screen.
I do fully agree that they need work and polishing (again they were quick experimental 'make dos') and they would really benefit from some real love and attention to get them as sharp as your heads.
I can't remember if I put them in or not at the moment, but I also had some happy, mad, health sick faces for those city icons too, they were also in need of some scaling love and attention.
One thing I wonder about, is I think platy's version comes with a scroll bar for 'unlimited specialists' I wonder if once that is incorporated, we could find and change the size of the icons, so they are larger and more recognisable... I think that would be pretty awesome, but I don't hold my breath for it.
As I look at those heads, I really want to find a use for that concept, I just don't like it for specialists. Something like opponent moods would be cool, with a hair scale from green to red and getting progressively angrier!
Again I think platy added some custom images for mood (they are like blue and purple with scary looking 'eyes') I have yet to figure out what role they actually fill or what they represent, but if Platy has put a custom image then it shouldn't be too difficult to change it.
My last point is before you I don't think I have had a single post saying 'the specialist icons are useless'(not that that was your post either) so I am inclined to go with 'if ain't broke don't fix it, just polish it some more!'
Also welcome to the group! I added a new thread for GUI stuff, so we can continue the discussion there
Nightinggale
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I fully agree. I have no idea what the hair colours have to do with professions. Besides I don't recall seeing blue hair in Fallout.
It shouldn't be too difficult to make if platy haven't made it yet. Vanilla colo has import/export lists with scrollbars and yield icons and each is generated with something like 5 lines of code. Adding clickable buttons is a little more work, but shouldn't be unreasonably difficult.One thing I wonder about, is I think platy's version comes with a scroll bar for 'unlimited specialists' I wonder if once that is incorporated, we could find and change the size of the icons, so they are larger and more recognisable... I think that would be pretty awesome, but I don't hold my breath for it.
Deon
Lt. of Mordor
The only real reason why I made the "hair color" version is because it took ages to make that face look properly with Civ 4 scaling. It's just my "citizen" icon and it was initially green for the "screen", however I don't have time to make every other icon like that for now, so yeah... Had to go for hair colors for now. If we can rescale icons, then perk images (still manually fixed) would be better, but right now I will be playing with heads, since I cannot see perk images on my 17'' screen . As I said, ideally it would be a soldier head for protector, a welding mask for engineer/mechanic (we do plan to change specialist names to be more fallout-styled, right?), a ninja head for spy etc.
I've started to make some icons for resources:
Bighorner and geckos are painted over, tin can and iguana are pixel art
.
. As I said, ideally it would be a soldier head for protector, a welding mask for engineer/mechanic (we do plan to change specialist names to be more fallout-styled, right?), a ninja head for spy etc.I've started to make some icons for resources:
Bighorner and geckos are painted over, tin can and iguana are pixel art
.
platyping
Sleeping Dragon
Somebody did it months ago, same for all advisor screens and WB
One thing I wonder about, is I think platy's version comes with a scroll bar for 'unlimited specialists' I wonder if once that is incorporated, we could find and change the size of the icons, so they are larger and more recognisable... I think that would be pretty awesome, but I don't hold my breath for it.
Again I think platy added some custom images for mood (they are like blue and purple with scary looking 'eyes') I have yet to figure out what role they actually fill or what they represent, but if Platy has put a custom image then it shouldn't be too difficult to change it.
Specialists can be essentially unlimited, since you can adjust as many columns as you like.
Those icons are for attitude, used instead of those in BUG, because BUG ones are done in gamefont, while I prefer to use buttons, since it is harder to merge gamefont to existing ones.
Ah! It's a platy HIDE!!!
Yes, I thought I remembered you had done auto scaling, there are a bunh of things in your UUUUUUUUUUU Pack that I want, it is right now just the unenviable task of jumping from BUG to Platy
Yeah I thought those pictures were for attitude, at first I thought they were something just for the espionage screen, but then I saw them popping up all over your screen shots I also second that buttons aremuch nicer to work with than game font
Yeah I thought I read somewhere that you had added a scroll bar to the specialists as well, it seemed like you were adding scroll bars to everything! My wonderance (technical term) was related to how possible or easy it would be to change the scale of icons, there are actually a lot of icons that I think would benefit from up-scaling in this mod, just because there is so much cool fallout art that would work in larger scale, that was just not even remotely a priority or need for Civ.
Yeah, perk 'heads' would be cool. Essentially what they would be is just the heads of the current perk art, (or custom art resembling such things) and that would be as cool as full body images. Just as you said, this is one of those tasks that takes a lot of time, time that at this stage would be better spent on game core elements rather than cosmetics (at least for my time and skill) Pretty much everything artwise (even if not perfect) is in there to entice the best artists to come and make them perfect. Most of it is doing the best we can with what skills we have.
Overall for cosmetics, names, art work, etc etc etc. you can pretty much take it as there are a million and one cosmetic alterations to make, but as they are just purely cosmetic, they are more of less overall priority zero unless someone volunteers takes it on, then I can write the ever illustrious 'TO DO LIST!!!' for it But yeah Fallout Fallout Fallout all the way!
Dotter was doing it, (particularly button art) but then RL enlarged itself and he had to step down in the short term, so it remains collecting dust until his much anticipated return.
Loving the resource icons, I think we had just scratched the surface of getting fallout art for resources (I think we were deciding on which mock up looked best for ammo) when dotter had to go on leave. Aren't fire geckoes red not pink?... now I want to add in a pink gecko.. imagine the fashion possibilities!! The other thing we were trying to work on and understand were the game font icons for resources as well, which were proving to be a pain, as in game you see much more of the game font icons for resources than you do the buttons. Which again is a shame because there is so much fallout art that would look nice at button scale but is almost worthless at game font scale...
The list of resources will grow in the future as well.
As to hair in Fallout, I remember in Tactics, you could have hair that was all sorts of colours (including blue, green and purple)
Oh I forgot to mention before, Culture = Safety/Security, like in Fury Road.
Yes, I thought I remembered you had done auto scaling, there are a bunh of things in your UUUUUUUUUUU Pack that I want, it is right now just the unenviable task of jumping from BUG to Platy
Yeah I thought those pictures were for attitude, at first I thought they were something just for the espionage screen, but then I saw them popping up all over your screen shots
I also second that buttons aremuch nicer to work with than game font Yeah I thought I read somewhere that you had added a scroll bar to the specialists as well, it seemed like you were adding scroll bars to everything!
My wonderance (technical term) was related to how possible or easy it would be to change the scale of icons, there are actually a lot of icons that I think would benefit from up-scaling in this mod, just because there is so much cool fallout art that would work in larger scale, that was just not even remotely a priority or need for Civ.Yeah, perk 'heads' would be cool. Essentially what they would be is just the heads of the current perk art, (or custom art resembling such things) and that would be as cool as full body images. Just as you said, this is one of those tasks that takes a lot of time, time that at this stage would be better spent on game core elements rather than cosmetics (at least for my time and skill) Pretty much everything artwise (even if not perfect) is in there to entice the best artists to come and make them perfect. Most of it is doing the best we can with what skills we have.
Overall for cosmetics, names, art work, etc etc etc. you can pretty much take it as there are a million and one cosmetic alterations to make, but as they are just purely cosmetic, they are more of less overall priority zero
unless someone volunteers takes it on, then I can write the ever illustrious 'TO DO LIST!!!' for it But yeah Fallout Fallout Fallout all the way!Dotter was doing it, (particularly button art) but then RL enlarged itself and he had to step down in the short term, so it remains collecting dust until his much anticipated return.
Loving the resource icons, I think we had just scratched the surface of getting fallout art for resources (I think we were deciding on which mock up looked best for ammo) when dotter had to go on leave. Aren't fire geckoes red not pink?... now I want to add in a pink gecko.. imagine the fashion possibilities!! The other thing we were trying to work on and understand were the game font icons for resources as well, which were proving to be a pain, as in game you see much more of the game font icons for resources than you do the buttons. Which again is a shame because there is so much fallout art that would look nice at button scale but is almost worthless at game font scale...
The list of resources will grow in the future as well.
As to hair in Fallout, I remember in Tactics, you could have hair that was all sorts of colours (including blue, green and purple)
Oh I forgot to mention before, Culture = Safety/Security, like in Fury Road.
Deon
Lt. of Mordor
Fire geckos are purple with different tints.
Nightinggale
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I have a feeling I should stop doing anything in python until I have studied Platypedia.
I have been looking at the DLL code to implement invention restrictions on improvement upgrades. I have come to a design decision. What should happen if the tech is missing?
#1: upgrade prevented when plot is worked long enough.
#2: worked turns counter is stuck on 0
The difference is that once the player gets the needed invention, the improvement will upgrade this or next turn with #1 while #2 will have to wait 10 turns (or whatever it is set to in XML). There is no real coding or performance difference. It is purely a gameplay design question, which is why I bring it up here.
Sadly I missed one part of the planning for this, which is the GUI. It might take more code to display this feature to the player than it takes to actually implement it in the game core.
It also looks like I should clean up CvPlot::doImprovementUpgrade() a bit. Super forts introduced some code duplication, and it happens to be precisely the code I'm going to modify, which is duplicated. I will make it reuse code rather than write the same code multiple times.
EDIT: just realised the easiest solution from a coding perspective, which is to just return from CvPlot::doImprovementUpgrade() before any other checks. This is the simplest solution as it completely avoids cleaning up code I didn't write myself (reduced bug risk) and it also improves performance as no other checks are performed. Super forts loops though all units in the plot to detect fortified units as the counter only increase if there is at least one. If the counter should be blocked anyway due to a missing invention, then the units doesn't matter, in which case we can skip wasting time looking at them.
I have been looking at the DLL code to implement invention restrictions on improvement upgrades. I have come to a design decision. What should happen if the tech is missing?
#1: upgrade prevented when plot is worked long enough.
#2: worked turns counter is stuck on 0
The difference is that once the player gets the needed invention, the improvement will upgrade this or next turn with #1 while #2 will have to wait 10 turns (or whatever it is set to in XML). There is no real coding or performance difference. It is purely a gameplay design question, which is why I bring it up here.
Sadly I missed one part of the planning for this, which is the GUI. It might take more code to display this feature to the player than it takes to actually implement it in the game core.
It also looks like I should clean up CvPlot::doImprovementUpgrade() a bit. Super forts introduced some code duplication, and it happens to be precisely the code I'm going to modify, which is duplicated. I will make it reuse code rather than write the same code multiple times.
EDIT: just realised the easiest solution from a coding perspective, which is to just return from CvPlot::doImprovementUpgrade() before any other checks. This is the simplest solution as it completely avoids cleaning up code I didn't write myself (reduced bug risk) and it also improves performance as no other checks are performed. Super forts loops though all units in the plot to detect fortified units as the counter only increase if there is at least one. If the counter should be blocked anyway due to a missing invention, then the units doesn't matter, in which case we can skip wasting time looking at them.
The duplication could be entirely my fault as the merger, rather than by design of super forts.. But I don't know I DON'T KNOW DAMN IT!!!!!!
your design point is a very good question though and I honestly don't know which is the better option... from a purely 'story' concept you have the 2 directions.
1) The 'Improvement Company' in question has accrued the necessary finances or other resources necessary to expansion, purely through running it's business (Working the plot)
2) The 'Improvement Company' in question has no understanding of the need to accrue these resources as it has no knowledge of the potential for improvement, thus it only begins accruing the necessary resources once the knowledge has been acquired...
I THINK I am leaning towards option 2... with relatively short upgrades... maybe 12 turns (3 months) that seems like a reasonable thing, as it represents the work being undertaken, you can't build something that hasn't been researched yet, for it to then ping into existence when it has...Yes Option 2 is the better I feel..
Fire Geckos: yes you are right, on research, they are a dark pastel purple, your current one is too luminous hot pink, but I am a fan of luminosity (more technical jargon) I want to release a whole range of fashionably coloured geckoes!!
Edit: Yes I like things not wasting time
I DON'T KNOW DAMN IT!!!!!! your design point is a very good question though and I honestly don't know which is the better option... from a purely 'story' concept you have the 2 directions.
1) The 'Improvement Company' in question has accrued the necessary finances or other resources necessary to expansion, purely through running it's business (Working the plot)
2) The 'Improvement Company' in question has no understanding of the need to accrue these resources as it has no knowledge of the potential for improvement, thus it only begins accruing the necessary resources once the knowledge has been acquired...
I THINK I am leaning towards option 2... with relatively short upgrades... maybe 12 turns (3 months) that seems like a reasonable thing, as it represents the work being undertaken, you can't build something that hasn't been researched yet, for it to then ping into existence when it has...Yes Option 2 is the better I feel..
Fire Geckos: yes you are right, on research, they are a dark pastel purple, your current one is too luminous hot pink, but I am a fan of luminosity (more technical jargon) I want to release a whole range of fashionably coloured geckoes!!
Edit: Yes I like things not wasting time
Nightinggale
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Ok option 2 it is. That would work just fine with the concept in the edit from my last post as it is stuck on the starting value 0. The only time it makes a difference is if you conquer land/city from another player, then it will remember how far the other player was in improving the improvement (unless the conquer code resets it. Not sure). It doesn't matter as you can't improve it further until you gain the invention in question anyway. It just mean once you figure out how to do it, you go "oh, he made that part already and left it behind. I can use that to finish earlier than expected".
Yes, whatever happens with the 'conquest variable' of code I don't mind, if it retains the info great, if it resets no biggie. Both are just as plausible and acceptable, they either break it in their coquest and ignorance, or they don't!
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