drumple

the paper was skewed slightly, sitting at 300x472 so i ajusted it to 314x472 to bring it closer to 1.5 ratio which the paper is at, and that made the text not centered on the page, so i ran through it to ajust it all. and at the moment, im going to go with the doom3 fonts for now, just until it's almost to complettion, then add the text images after,since there's so many styles of highlights that can be done to them, we will have to decide which one is suited best for it, once thats decided upon then i can go ahead and make them all.

things are continuing, i took a break from it for about 4 days now since i threw my back out thursday morning, so ive been bed ridden for the most part. it took me an hour friday morning to finally get up in a chair.. seriously.. from the moment i decided to try to sit at the computer i had to slide around about 4 inches at a time to finally get into some position where i could make a final painful thrust to just get on all fours while waiting about 5 minutes inbetween each attempt for the pain spasms to subside. this morning though its better seeing how i was able to sit in a chair with some discomfort but much quicker. but enough about my old work injuries... the menu is coming along, im working on the loading/saving screens now. had to refit the menu paper on each screen for a proper 1 to 1.5 ratio, which means i had to redo all the text ect. napalm showed up, i was hoping to offload some of it to him, but he's afk again. i pm'd him about 3 weeks ago but never got a response but i'll pm him again and hopefully it can come alot quicker. basicly, aside from the menu itself, it's the initial splash screen thats needed, and whatever is inbetween that and the menu thats needed. startup anim, logo if applicable, movie intro..

its currently downloading right now ( going to be a while ) but i can mock up and ajust the noisemaker head while its doing that, then i can make the normals for it from the highres model, and ajust the low one as needed. i should have downloaded the files a while back, but it comes in so slow... should have did it while i was sleeping.

it is the low poly one im working on.

ok ok.. i see i see.. eye sea eye sea... <0> c <0> c... but let me attempt it anyways to see how thiefy i can get it 1st, doesnt mean we will use it. personally i would. but thats me.. there was actually 2 sounds ( well more ) for the noisemaker in thief, one was the flight sound which carried on after the arrow hit, the other(s) were when it hit. the crackling, clicking and the 'faWeeeeeeeeeeee....." sounds. then there were the sparks that the arrow emitted after it hit. im making the arrowhead for the noisemaker like the concept one, going to try to make those little gears spin while it's active.

scrap that, it works fine.. the arrow is just fast.. it's a nice effect.. very thief like. had to load up hauntcity for more room to fire it in... tweaked it a bit and it's looking good.

i have been playing with the noisemaker arrow, and for some reason i cannot add any particle trails to it, it is an idprojectile so they should work, but what happens is the particle effect stays at the point where i shot the arrow and does not spawn from the flying projectile at all... i have tried all kinds of ways to make it work in the def file, infact even copying over most of the plasma projectile def and still no go... or maybe it's just doing an initial spawn, then stops... its most peculiar.

i think i can change the angle from the original md5, could always just rotate it slightly like it is in t3, so it's not blocking the center area so much... i'll try a test and see.

i uploaded a small video ( about 6 meg ) to the ftp in the folder called VideoConcepts, the file is called arrowheads1.avi just shows how the 2 arrows look ingame. small vid dimensions, not the best quality.

yeah, i liked those concepts.. however i think it would be nice regardless of what model arrowhead is used for the fire arrow, is that when you use it, a light is bound to it so it lights you/your area up slightly... just a nice redish/yellowish light effect... not bright but noticiable that affects the light gem also. i was hoping the arrow heads would have shown up better, but i used a quick uv on them so all the facets are not showing up. in the meantime im going to add the temporary rope arrowhead which looks like this, just a grapple head but no rope on the arrow itself.

i ajusted the model for the shortbow view and added some effects plus different heads just to see what it looks like in game, the arrow head models are quick mockups with placeholder textures, and the particles need some ajustment, but it looks not to bad in game, im going to try and improve it some more and add the noismaker and rope arrow heads later on. the particle effects are to much, they should be more subtle, but it needs more tweaking obviously.

im here, was busy for a few days but im back.

oh, i didnt add that in yet.

here's the updated binds menu test

i lowered the text box for the other example i mentioned, i'll post a screen of that as soon as i clean up some text, as for the bind's area, the font scale is .24, but doom3 selects the bounding box for it, i can ajust it smaller but it works nice as it stands right now. i did manage to make space up top.

yeah, i see what your saying. i dont think there will be enough room to get all the options like that on a single menu layout personally...

the slider button doesnt suit the idea, but that can be ajusted. thats what i mentioned in the previous post, there will be sub-menu buttons to get around to what binds, as for the other menus, what im hoping is that ppl will see it's very easy and not complicated to get around.. hopefully anyways, im going to put together a working test gui for this menu ( without the slider button yet ) and see how ppl feel about it once they see it working. in the meantime im running though the other menu gui since it needs a pile of repair's i noticed.. things are not scaled right, i have to ajust it all. so far.. the gui is about 70k, and should be over 100k in a day or so... so i need to get the small things corrected now before it gets to large and becomes a headache later on. im actually hoping to have a working gui template that ppl can replace the doom3 main one in the darkmod folder in a week or so.. and from there we can discuss/ajust and tweak it. the transitions i have in mind will probably be another 100k by themselves... but i dont want to add those until its more or less finalized. right now i'll try and get this menu gui test up'd to the ftp once i have it together.

basicly what i have in mind is this, your concept from above, where it has the sub controls sections like weapons/movement/look-attack/other which take you to the area in the binds, but the whole bind area scrolls regardless if you select one or not, they just make it easier to get to a specific area, and you can scroll out of that area just as easily. then we have arrows of some kind for the scrolling, but we also have a slider that controls the scrolling... here is a concept of sorts ( it's and in-game shot that actually works, the scrolling slider doesnt at the moment ) but the arrow butttons do scroll the binds area. also, i added headers to each bind area that scroll with it also, so you can see which area your in. i didnt add the control buttons to get you to an area quickly yet. but you can see what i mean, some kind of slider button to slide the whole scrolling area up or down quickly. EDIT: i changed the pic, since i didnt like that slider button, this one is more of a gemstone type of dealy

im thinking here that it may be very possible to actually have a slider in addition to the scroll area for binds. im checking it out now, but it may be possible with some minor code addition and a new cvar. basicly the code would update a hud variable when changed.

i think basicly all the exstinguishables should have the same layout where possible, a particle emitter can be used for the flame and that same emiiter for the smoke when it's skin is changed. i never liked the look of the flickering light the candles use.. im not shure why they decided to go that route ( doom3 ) where an emitter could have had a better effect.

yeah, im not to shure whats the right way to go with the text highlighting at the moment, a simple yellow faded background doesnt seem to do much with the color of the paper.. red helps make it 'pop' a bit. that background movement can be changed, and ajusted to make it more in your face, but maybe a more subtle way is the best way.. something that ppl wont notice right away.. just a little depth. but im not really to happy with the way it looks at the moment. as for making the carleton more prominent, i think there may be a way to do that.. at least i had a test gui somewhere that showed it more bold like.. but it was by accident with one of the backcolor or matcolor settings. i'll look into that again, but thats why i prefer to make the text headers/sub text with images instead of the ingame fonts, because for the carleton.. it just doesnt show it with enough detail. i'll play around with it some more and see what i can come up with. for now i have the menu's flying off the desktop just to add some more movement in the gui but that can be played with also.

i uploaded a menu test to the ftp in the folder guis, called menu14.gui to test it, type testgui guis/menu14.gui

yeah, using images for the text instead of the text system. the text in the doom3 menu's have some nice transitions, but it's the border's and the background's that make them that way. the only real transitions that doom3 does for text is to make it brighter/change color/ fade.. ect. i'll put together a pak file of a previous menu i made and post it so you can see how i have it layed out at the moment.

no, you can use any font you want and it will display it, what i mean is that you can't do impressive looking text for those choicedef's or binddef's. basicly the text will look rather plain. however.. it may be possible to completely ignore the choicedef's and fake in our own.. where they can use better text display's. im looking into that now.

well, thats basicly what i was saying, having it defined at least. keep in mind though that you cant really do any thing much in the way of enhancing the overall look of the text that the binds use or settings that change state, since they use the built in text system. basicly they will always look rather plain. but the options for visual/audio/controls/gameplay ect.. can be made to look more spectacular overall. since those menu items basicly control which menu/items will be up for changing. i dont know if im wrong on this, but has the idea of changing from the bluish flourishes changed to a more burnt or paperish look? im going by the concepts that i have been going by, and basicly the ones presented to me.