drumple

the idea i was trying to convey is to make the area defined, a top flourish and a bottom one to seperate it from the overall look of the menu, or bars.. ect.. it doesnt need to have a dark background which is basicly the 'box', but it does make the text 'pop' for the binds. and there's basicly 3 different type of menu options, a menu item that does something immediately, such as close and open a new menu, a menu item that changes the state of a value/cvar or similar and a menu item that prompts you for some kind of input such as binds/save game ect.. but overall i really think this area for bind should be defined in some manner from the overall look of the menu. anyone else have opinions on this?

a key binding area is unique, i cant think of any game where key's get bound in a list thats not seperate, it just doesnt make sense to do it that way, it would look odd like something is missing when you think about it. plus it's a scrolling area. the total amount of keys that are to be added to the game is not decided upon yet, so it makes sense to have whatever amount added to a scrolling area. having an item scroll off without some defined space for it to sit in would look out of place, like there's an error somewhere in the menu. my opinion of course. basicly it's akin to a popup window, where things are ajusted in that window alone, since its on one menu page that interacts with the other selections not related to actuall binding, it looks better overall.

ok, i have ajusted it a bit, and im going to try it with seperate menu areas instead of one long one, there will still be scrolling, but now you can get to which area you want to bind quicker. it will be something like that, better text for the menu selection highlights once i make them. plus i shortened the box area up a bit and i may use the existing arrow type pointers it has already in the center of the box top/bottom... add some highlights to it when mouse-over'd. i'll try this for now and see how it works ingame.

the box area is only intended for the key bindings menu, since as spar mentioned it's hard to see the text, but also it would look odd if the key binds were present with no bounding or defined area. the other menu's will not have any box area.

ok.... how about something like this then... just whipped up that overlay in psp8, still havent figured out where to put scroll arrows ( flourishes ), but its more like the other menu's. i have been using kfm's city art in the menus, it's just for specific type menus im trying to make suitable. at least thats what i was aiming for in the test menu, for example.. the Settings-Visual and Settings-Audio menu's are seperate and have their own canvas to display what their intention is, and so on... sort of like that. i am using kfm's city art in the menu's though. although.. the images in those menu's i have displayed should be less obtrusive than they currently are at the moment. ( the visual/audio ).

im trying to figure out a way to distinguish the area where the key binds will take place, seperate from the rest of the menu... i have some other idea's im going to try.

some of the grid looks out of place, its not centered and the corner flourishes on the left side need to be replaced, but it may be the lack of anything else in the menu, this is a more packed one that shows off more. but its not all complete yet, it still needs work.

i was thinking that the areas could be seperated in the scroll list which would make it easier to find what area of binds you are looking for.

small update; im now onto the options windows and started the key/binds menu, but i need to know what ppl's opinions are on if the menu should have all the binds and scroll ( which is what im aiming for ) or like doom3 where each area of binds are seperated ( weapons/movement ) ect... doing the scroll is no problem. here is a quick mockup of it ( not refined yet ) the idea being the flourishes on the right side top/bottom will highlight when you mouse over and operate the scrolling. any opinions on what would be best/better?

ok, well i have reorganised my drives now, i lost a 20 gig where my doom3 was installed, but i managed to save most of it. new clean install of everything and im back on track. overall i lost close to 30 gig of information but i cant remember what it was, so i guess what i cant remember is no big thing... although im shure one day i'll be thinking "wait. didnt i have.. " and then i'll feel some regret. but im continuing on where i left off with the menu's, have to recreate some stuff that got screwed up, but overall i should be back to where i was in a day or so.

since ive built every computer i ever had, i have endured many failures.. never a burnt cpu though... i damaged one before though.. when i was lazy about properly securing cables... a cable had eventually worked its way down and touched the cpu fan.. stopped it... although.. im not shure if it actually damaged it.. it did overheat and shut down a few times til i found out the problem.. but every little thing that happens can bug me even if no damage at all was done... like a power failure.. ( house ) after i restart the puter i feel its not the same.. even though it is.. lol

no real update, just some newz.. puter has been acting up for the last few days... i heard a "POP" somewhere in it, i wasnt shure where.. then it made a sort of hissing sound off and on depending on what i did, like opening a webpage it would hiss and so on.. tore it all apart today ( since its relatively new, not even 1 year old ) and my power supply has burnt... so i pulled some drives out and switched to a different psu i had laying around.. now im in the process of cleaning up space on a 60 gig drive to move all my other stuff onto it for now including all my doom3 stuff... hopefully i should be up and running by the end of today or so.. its just annoying... so bloody annoying... but i dont think any of my hardware got messed because of the bad psu.. just the one drive i had doom3 installed on would not be recognised.. i hope its ok.. i'll find out later when i goto reinstall it and transfer my files.

i can recrop the video myself, the file size will shrink to a workable size for the game.

@gil do you have a screenshot of how it looks blended?

i was searching the net for animated gifs of tree's blowing in the wind and other stuff like that so i could use them on a gui surface like paper ingame so it would have that effect.. sort of like in "the adams family" movie, where fester opens that book and you see some drawing at the top of the page of the huricane and the text lower down.. but the drawing is moving... i still want to try that out if i can ever find some proper animated drawing somewhere.

i added a new folder to the ftp called 'Video Concepts' and put odd's video there, his last one.

i have odd's newest one, in the small size, nice clear and crisp.. about 531k.. but it's at an odd resolution, he made it at 1024x756 for some reason when he should have made it at 1024x768.. the id intro is at 512x512.. as well as a few other full screen roq's they use. so converting odd's video to 512x512 makes it skewed instead of even.. at 768 it would have worked out proper. thats why i cropped it to make it all even.. but thats a huge file meant for making into a roq which would be a small file size in the end. i can upload odd's one to the ftp. here's an image from the cropped one i made, so the clock appears more full screen and it's in proper proportions to be made into a roq vid at 512x512.

yeah we could, i mean it would be nice to have it somewhere... i still have odd's old loader screen for the games ( the gears one ) which looks good for that purpose. i mentioned in another thread about having some kind of logo for the team.. it could be used for that also. for instance.. the splash screen could start, then that clock vid with new text that say's "broken glass studios" and at the bottom "presents..." let it play for some time.. maybe 8 seconds.. have it fade out.. then play the darkmod intro movie.. or something. its still a good video, might as well use it somewhere. i have a recropped avi that i made out of odd's last one, its at 512x512 which shows the clock more close.. but its 85 meg's in size.. if you want odd's old one, i can up that to the ftp for you pak.. EDIT: actually.. another good place for that vid would be in the credits screen.. like have it play and then overlay the credits on it.. scrolling.. or fading in and out at different places... so many places we could use it.

here's the renderdef, it does need ajustments for the skewing, hopefully you can get him to render more... inline so to speak.. renderdefs usually give some fisheyed perspective which is hard to get right. renderDef ModelRender { rect 0,10, 320, 400 visible 1 backcolor 0, 0, 0, 0 bordercolor 1,1,1,1 bordersize 0 model "models/md5/chars/guards/elite_citywatch/elitecitywatchmesh.md5mesh" anim "idle" animClass "darkmod_citywatch_elite" needsRender 1 modelRotate 10, 180, 0, 0 modelOrigin 0, 0, 0, 0 viewOffset -60, 0, 50, 0 lightOrigin -100, 50, 0, 0 lightColor 1, 1, 1, 1 notime 1 }

you can put a model there, and have it play some animation.. like idle for instance. but it's tricky trying to orient the model correctly so it doesnt look skewed... but i can see what you mean with it.. like 3wave, when they had the player model on the main menu, or even 'no one lives forever' its to bad we didnt have the thief model oddity made.. that would have looked nice in that type of menu setting. EDIT: ok, i tried a model out, looks ok.. kind of skewed.. hard to get a proper position to view him at... but i had a funny thought... if this was something we wanted to pursue as a test, we could always have him play animations when we mouse over him.. right now he's in idle anim mode.. but if we mouse over him we could have him draw his sword.. ect... just a thought... plus it took some time to load him in the menu... thats another thing to consider.

that looks good.. i like the money bag also.. real nice.

ok, im uploading the trans test as it is for now, until i work out the background moving stuff, but its just a test so keep in mind i made quick character mockups for it, and im no psp/photoshop master.. its just to see how the concept might look. its on the ftp in the guis folder, called transtest1.pk4, to run it just type testgui guis/transtest1.gui

he might have just modeled them in poses with no rigging and no interactivity.. i made a bluescreen map to get the caps i needed to make the transition test, basicly im in a room where the ai cant see me, and i just take screenshots of them with a bluebackground for the texture, that way i can quickly remove the blue in paintshoppro and make the side images i needed for the test.. bluescreen map screen of trans test... i'll upload the trans test soon, i just figured out how to make the background move, have to get it in game. currently, the side transitions between 4 posing characters, i cannot seem to get the prelate to work.. im not shure why.. it did before.. but i now have the clean cvs version.. maybe im missing something. but adding other images like a keyhole in that burned way would also break up the character posing, an image like this.. http://agent47.com/goodlivingguide/business.jsp or something similar... anyways.. i'll get back on this test gui and try to get it up'd.

how about a close-up shot of a door/handle/lock... where you can see the keyhole... if you know what i mean.. not dead-on.. but at an angle.. i'll see if i can find a sample of what i mean.. and i made a trans test gui.. i can upload it now, or later if i can make the background moving/scrolling effect.. course.. i can up it now.. and add that in later...

yeah.. you noticed the text was blue on the 1st load screen? i tried to get a vid to play, but it wont.. might be able to trick the proper text in by changing the fonts/bank in the darkmod folder.. we dont have it there, but if we put the carleton there and rename it so it reads as bank.. as for the color.. =/ and as for the loading screen for the maps.. you just need to make your own gui for it.. which we will do later on. i would hate not using that video at the startup.. but if its not possible.. we will have to figure some workaround. EDIT: the reason mine was super blurry was the original image i used was 640x480.. i didnt realize til a few minutes ago.. after getting a proper power of 2 image in there, it looks good.