Start Mission cleanup

[joebarnin]

I'd like to do some cleanup of the Start Mission menu chain (New Mission, Briefing, Objectives, Purchase). I'd like to get these menus looking and behaving as consistent as possible. Before I dive in I think we need to reach consensus on some basic questions of the menus. (Maybe consensus has already been reached, in which case someone just needs to tell me ).

 

Text vs. Graphics. Some menus use graphics for buttons, others use text. I'd love to make things consistent -- which way do we go? Graphics give you more control over the rollover behavior (I think). Using text is nice because it's easy to change. Also, some buttons have to be text because their value can be specified by the map creator (for example, the 3 difficulty levels (Easy, Medium, Hard) can be overridden in the map). If we declare that buttons are all text, I can make this change. If we want buttons to be graphics, I don't have the knowledge on how to do this, but perhaps I could be taught.

 

Fonts: Is there a rule for when to use carleton and when to use nancy? The current rule seems to be that main button text and "headings" are carlton, and everything else is nancy. Or should we just use one of them? Perhaps this is moot, depending on the answer to the Text vs. Graphics question.

 

joe

[Springheel]

I'd like to do some cleanup of the Start Mission menu chain (New Mission, Briefing, Objectives, Purchase). I'd like to get these menus looking and behaving as consistent as possible.

 

This is a useful goal. I wasn't aware all the functionality was working, or I would have been on this myself.

 

Text vs. Graphics. Some menus use graphics for buttons, others use text.

 

In almost all cases, buttons are graphics. There are a few exceptions for reasons that you noted. If you need any specific buttons, just let me know.

 

Fonts: Is there a rule for when to use carleton and when to use nancy?

 

The general rule is, "when it looks good, use Carleton. Once the text gets too small to be clear, use nancy".

 

There are lots of places where I would have preferred to use carleton, but it just isn't readable after you get around size 25 or so.

 

I have visual templates for all the menus you mentioned which you can use as a guide.

[joebarnin]

Here are the buttons that are currently text:

 

New Mission:

• Start
  
• Install this Mission (dislays on the left when you select a mod on the right)
  
• Main Menu (already a graphic, but I think this should be moved to the right side of the page (it doesn't look good where it is), and thus the colors will have to change)
  

Briefing:

• New Mission
  
• Objectives
  

Difficulty:

• Briefing
  
• Buy Equipment
  

Shop:

• Difficulty
  
• Start Mission
  

If you create the graphics, I'll be happy to place them in the guis.

[Springheel]

Here are the buttons that are currently text:

 

New Mission:

Start

Install this Mission (dislays on the left when you select a mod on the right)

Main Menu (already a graphic, but I think this should be moved to the right side of the page (it doesn't look good where it is), and thus the colors will have to change)

 

The Main Menu button needs to moved further down but it should stay in the left corner. We want to establish a "left corner = back", "right corner = forward" convention for the start menus.

 

The other ones do need to be buttons, so I'll add them to my list.

[Dram]

It might actually be a good idea to say "back to difficulty" etc instead of just difficulty etc. Or another alternative is < difficulty .... Briefing > etc

[Springheel]

I cleaned up the New Mission screen a bit, but I'm finding it very slow going. I can't figure out why the "start mission" button is not reacting to mouseEnter commands, though the button actually works.

[greebo]

I cleaned up the New Mission screen a bit, but I'm finding it very slow going. I can't figure out why the "start mission" button is not reacting to mouseEnter commands, though the button actually works.

The start mission button reacts on my end - you can hear the click sound being played when the mouse is moved over the text. Does the sound play on your end?

 

Oh, you mean the other "Start mission" button, right? The one in the shop screen?

 

edit again: Ah, I can see the problem. I'll check that out.

[greebo]

Found the problem: the windowDef choosemod_parent was covering the Start button:

 

Change the dimensions to this:

windowDef choosemod_parent {
rect	324,193,320,160

 

(160px height instead of 300).

[Springheel]

Thanks, that did it.

[joebarnin]

greebo, you are a god! By the time I received the Topic Subscription Notification, you had already fixed the problem!

 

Thanks!

 

joe

[greebo]

greebo, you are a god! By the time I received the Topic Subscription Notification, you had already fixed the problem!

 

Thanks!

You're welcome, no need to thank me, joe.

 

Still nice to know that you're subscribed to the topic, I know now how to summon you.

[joebarnin]

Springheel - if there's any New Mission GUI work you want to hand off to me, just let me know.

[Springheel]

Thanks Joe. I'm mainly cleaning up some graphics, but it's nice to know you're around.

[Springheel]

Ok, I think the New Mission menu is now pretty spiffy. I've started to work on the briefing and shop screens. One thing I notice about the briefing screen is that the characters continue to fade in and out in the background--they should be disabled for all the New Mission screens, but I'm not entirely sure how that has been done for the other screens, so it might be best if someone else did that.

 

I'm specifically working on getting the shop images and remaining buttons done.

[Tels]

Springheel:

 

One small thing, on the background graphics for the briefing for TD (I think we are using it again?) there is a brightly lit window. It is a bit too bright, everytime the briefing screen came up I found myself gazing at this bright spot and wondering "what is that? oh its a window in the background and there is text, heh lets read it"

 

Could you make it a little bit less sticking out, please?

[Springheel]

One small thing, on the background graphics for the briefing for TD (I think we are using it again?)

 

That was just for Thief's Den.

[New Horizon]

Couple of issues with the start missions windows.

 

1. If I don't use TDM launcher, the objectives will only show up after I choose 'install this mission', if I shut down and reload the mission with doom3, the objectives are gone. If I use TDM launcher, it works correctly. I guess the lesson is, use TDM launcher, as it performs some extra tricks?

 

2. If I go to the shop screen, select everything I want to buy, go back to difficulty to make a different selection and then go back to the shop screen...all of my choices are gone.

[Springheel]

1. If I don't use TDM launcher, the objectives will only show up after I choose 'install this mission', if I shut down and reload the mission with doom3, the objectives are gone.

 

Do you mean "reload the mission" as loading a saved game, or just using the console?

 

I'm still not 100% sure how the installer is working either...when I installed St.Lucia recently and D3 reloaded, all my graphics options were at the lowest settings, so I had to restart D3 anyway.

[New Horizon]

Neither. I mean shutting down to desktop and restarting d3 via the d3 icon. If I only use the d3 icon, the objectives will be gone the next time I open d3. If I use tdm launcher, the objectives always show up.

[joebarnin]

1. If I don't use TDM launcher, the objectives will only show up after I choose 'install this mission', if I shut down and reload the mission with doom3, the objectives are gone. If I use TDM launcher, it works correctly. I guess the lesson is, use TDM launcher, as it performs some extra tricks?

"Install mission" just puts the FM name into currentfm.txt. When TDM launcher runs (either from the restart or when you run it from the desktop), it read this file and sets the +set fs_game command line variable. So when doom3 runs the correct FM is on doom's path (via the fs_game variable).

 

This also explains why the graphics options reset when you switch mods -- doom looks for the DoomConfig.cfg in the fs_game location, and (I guess) creates a default if it can't find it. I would call this a bug -- when you install a mod, I should probably copy the existing DoomConfig.cfg to the new mod directory, if one doesn't exist there. That will at least get your defaults correct. Unfortunately, if you change settings in one mod, they won't apply to others (because they get saved in the local FM dir). At least, that's my understanding of it. I'll look into what can be done to fix this. In some ways, it's very powerful; you can have different settings for each FM. But I would guess most people don't want that level of granularity.

 

2. If I go to the shop screen, select everything I want to buy, go back to difficulty to make a different selection and then go back to the shop screen...all of my choices are gone.

Right, this is a feature or a bug, depending on how you look at it . The idea was, you're backing up to a previous screen, so you're throwing away whatever choices you've made. I could keep track of what choices were made and try to populate the shop screen accordingly. Note that the FM designer could specify completely different parameters for the shop, based on difficulty (starting cash, the number and types of items available, and the cost of each item can vary based on the difficulty). So automatically giving you what you chose before might not be a good idea (or even possible). But if there's demand for this feature, I can put it in.

[Springheel]

I want to get back into getting the start chain menus finished, but first I need to know how to properly launch it. How do I create a "tdm launcher", and when should I be using it to start the game?

[greebo]

Hm I think you just need to hit the "Start Mission" button - the screen you see is all you get, regardless how you launch the game. The only thing that's changing is the text telling you about the currently installed mission.

 

The tdmlauncher is invoked as soon as you hit "Install Mission". Then the FM/PK4 is copied and the game is restarted with the appropriate +set fs_game and fs_game_base parameters.

[Springheel]

Wasn't there a discussion a while ago about having to use a separate icon or something?

 

When I start St. Lucia from the Start Mission screen, I don't see any objectives or difficulty options, which I thought were already working?

 

Wait, do you mean I have to install the mission every time, even if it already says that it is currently installed?

[greebo]

Once the mission is installed, it should stay that way. Whether it is actually used depends on the fs_game and fs_game_base settings.

 

If you're using your ordinary D3 shortcut, I guess the fs_game_base parameter doesn't fit. I don't recall any discussion about this, maybe I missed that. If it doesn't work, this probably needs a revisit?

 

In any case, as you haven't installed the Saint Lucia package on your system yet, there's no point in using the fs_game_base parameters anyway.

 

I suppose I should look into that and post some step-by-step instructions of how to set this up.

[Springheel]

It was this thread: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showt...amp;hl=launcher

 

Though on re-reading it I may have misunderstood.

 

When I use the Start Mission menu, the shop screen loads correctly, but there is no difficulty screen (actually there is but it is very out of date and with no objectives), so I thought I was doing something wrong. Are you saying that's what everyone currently sees?