Main Menu

[Fidcal]

Got another couple but I'm just gathering ammo info to support my proposal before I post.

[Springheel]

On the topic of menu changes, would people like to try using Carleton for the font? The only reason I used Nancy in the first place was because Carleton was too blurry. That problem should be solved now. I've also become used to Nancy and wouldn't mind if we stuck with it, so we can decide by popular opinion.

[greebo]

I can change the fonts to carleton on my way, no problem.

[Tels]

I can change the fonts to carleton on my way, no problem.

 

I'd like to see screenshots of both to see the difference.

 

Btw, what always bugged me was the *very* blurry "Dark Mod" headline in the main menu. (it seems to be resolution dependend, but on 1200x1024 it is just a blurry mess)

 

Would it be possible to switch that to a real text instead of having it in the background, so it becomes sharper?

 

(We also need to do something about the "clock" in the loading screen I guess. Apart from it showing an impossible time (which is kinda cute I admit), it also is very stretched unless you play on 4:3 monitors - which are becoming very very rapidly rare. Almost any monitor nowawdays is 16:10 and now they start to push 16:9 monitors for some reason.

 

(Probably getting more panels per glass pane for 16:9 than for 16:10 and then sell the customer the smaller panel as "advantage" *sigh*

[Springheel]

Btw, what always bugged me was the *very* blurry "Dark Mod" headline in the main menu. (it seems to be resolution dependend, but on 1200x1024 it is just a blurry mess)

 

There's no reason it should be blurry (it isn't for me). It's part of the entire parchment image, so if that image is being distorted, everything would be distorted equally.

 

it also is very stretched unless you play on 4:3 monitors - which are becoming very very rapidly rare.

 

The problem isn't the clock. All the gui images will be stretched and distorted on a widescreen. We need something that keeps the proportions constant.

[Fidcal]

Remember Nancy has upper and lower case while Carleton is Caps only (though smaller in lower case.) See http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php/Fonts_Screenshots

 

Remember also I shall be repairing all fonts and this will mean more on a line/page so might affect the layout. Maybe I should expedite that work?

 

The blurry menu headers are caused by image_downSize "1". Try setting to "0". Worked for me!

 

I would suggest a compromise with the clock and make it slighly elliptical upright in 4:3 and slightly elliptical sideways in 16:10? And yes, that wrong hand position bugs me too.

 

I've now started a separate thread for assessing what lockpick difficulty settings should go on the menu (I think probably all of 'em!)

[Tels]

There's no reason it should be blurry (it isn't for me). It's part of the entire parchment image, so if that image is being distorted, everything would be distorted equally.

 

I post a screenshot tomorrow.

 

The problem isn't the clock. All the gui images will be stretched and distorted on a widescreen. We need something that keeps the proportions constant.

 

Yes, but with the clock you can easily see the distortion and it draws remarks - it is no longer a circle. With persons, a lamppost or a building, it is harder to see that it is stretched and would pass easily

 

It's not about being perfect, just good enough to fool a human observer

[Fidcal]

@Tels: did you try my blurry fix?

[Tels]

@Tels: did you try my blurry fix?

 

I checked yesterday and was about to post that it is already "0" for me, only to check today again and see it was set to "1" for both diffuse and bumbmaps...and then I remembered yesterday night I checked at the laptop and today on my PC. Ouch!

 

Anyway, the menu is now much sharper, but it could be still improved. On my 1280 resolution you can already see some blurry pixel artefacts, on a higher resolution it will become more apparent when compared to the crystal clear menu texts below the headline:

 

 

Since the menu is such an important and often-seen background, maybe we can increase its size. However, if it needs to be power-of-two, that means 2048x2048 and this might be too big for old cards. OTOH, these old cards do have a image_downSize "1" anyway, so it should work?

[Fidcal]

That blurry problem is mentiond in another section in Performance Tweaks on the wiki but I've now also added it in its own section on that page.

[Springheel]

on a higher resolution it will become more apparent when compared to the crystal clear menu texts below the headline:

 

The menu text below is also made from images, so there is no reason it should be any more or less blurry.

[greebo]

Small progress report:

 

I've refactored most of the menus and it's quite stable so far (I couldn't get the disappearing menu bug on my end, let's keep the fingers crossed).

 

I also reorganised the FM loading and installation code, with outpost as example FM. This seems to work well.

 

Left to do: the purchase menu, all the settings GUI and the documentation for mappers how to create a valid FM package and a custom briefing.

 

I hope to get the rest done until this weekend, but can't make any promises.

[Springheel]

Sorry, I forgot to send you those image files. I'll try and remember tonight.

 

I've refactored most of the menus and it's quite stable so far (I couldn't get the disappearing menu bug on my end, let's keep the fingers crossed).

 

Very promising. I think that and the rising code were our two most universal complaints.

[Fidcal]

This post is really to confirm that what I am seeing is intended.

 

Overnight, tdm has started to run at what looks like 640 x 480 in windowed mode yet I have the following in doomConfig.cfg...

 

seta r_customHeight "800"

seta r_customWidth "1280"

seta r_fullscreen "0"

seta r_mode "7"

 

I think what happened is yesterday after reading about menu progress I tried it and saw about 5 missions in the Start Menu. I tried some of them and although they installed they won't run. I assumed that part is not yet done or even they might not be set up right on my system. But maybe tdm is using the doomconfig from the last one I tried. But there is nothing in the menus to UNinstall all missions.

 

BTW, the 'settings' menu cannot be reached. Again, I assume that is intended and is disabled while you fix it?

 

Meanwhile, I'll see if I can UNinstall the last mission probably delete currentfm.txt or something might do it.

 

[EDIT] Confirmed, deleted currentfm.txt in the darkmod folder and got 1280 res back.

[greebo]

The packages in the fms/ folders are not set up to work with the new loading code yet, and the entire menu is still heavily WIP. It's not ready for testing at this point.

[Ishtvan]

Btw, we now have a cvar for toggling between automatic melee parries and manual, "tdm_melee_auto_parry". It should go along with the "invert attack controls" and "invert parry controls" settings. Actually I guess if it's set to auto parry then you don't really need to have the invert parries setting, but for simplicity we could just leave it there.

[greebo]

Yes, I already considered that on my list, but thanks for the heads up anyway.

[Springheel]

Loving the new error parchment.

[greebo]

Thanks.

 

I'm almost done, I just need to look into a few more complicated things before I can call it a day. I'll upload the modified photoshop file to texture_src when I'm finished, so that you have it.

[Flanders]

It's nice to have a 'are you sure?' message when you quit a mission, but should there be one when you quit the game? It's not like there is any loss of data when you accidentally press quit in the main menu. I'd prefer such a message only if you quit a mission.

 

Also, even though it's not ready for testing I noticed that when I install a mission Doom3 restarts but com_allowConsole is not set to 1 as before installing the mission.

[Fidcal]

That problem was sorted out by using tdmlauncher. I don't know if this is still in place as I've not used it for a few weeks but if you launch tdmlauncher instead of darkmod direct then it uses the arguments in darkmod/dmargs.txt.

[Ishtvan]

It's nice to have a 'are you sure?' message when you quit a mission, but should there be one when you quit the game? It's not like there is any loss of data when you accidentally press quit in the main menu. I'd prefer such a message only if you quit a mission.

You do lose the map that's currently cached when you quit the game though. That would be a pain if it takes 5 minutes or so to load, especially if you just wanted to quit the mission and restore a save (though why you wouldn't just go directly to 'load game' I don't know).

[Tels]

You do lose the map that's currently cached when you quit the game though. That would be a pain if it takes 5 minutes or so to load, especially if you just wanted to quit the mission and restore a save (though why you wouldn't just go directly to 'load game' I don't know).

 

Misclick esp with laptop trackpads are quite common (my wireless mouse f.i. starts to do funky stuff if the battery gets empty like jumping all over the place or missing clicks, causing you to repeatedly try to click).

[greebo]

Another status update:

 

The main menu is 98% done now, save testing and bugfixing. The settings menu is pretty complete, but there are two features I need to implement in the code to cycle maps and keys/lockpicks via hotkeys. The changes are already in SVN, btw.

 

I also restructured the mod loading code and am about to update the documentation about how to create FM packages. I also could implement a way to open ZIP/PK4 files to our mod loading code so that FMs can actually be a single, monolithic PK4, which is easier to distribute than three or four files. FM installation is already working on both Windows and Linux.

 

The outpost package has been updated for the new FM loading code, a new code PK4 is on the way.

 

What's left?

- The inventory features I was talking about

- Get tdmlauncher to work in Linux - this is my next step.

- Convert menu images to DDS as soon as the changes are approved by the team.

- Testing

[Fidcal]

A couple of minor suggestions: can the quit dark mod message override the quit mission somehow so we only get one quit confirmation to exit or maybe when exiting dark mod it could just call the quit mission? only then exit. So, if there is a game running you get a confirm message on exiting dark mod but otherwise no confirm at all?

 

The other suggestion is, can it be possible to Esc from the game to the last menu used instead of always the main menu. When tweaking settings etc one goes back and forth. Not critical but nice. mmm... deja vu ... think this was discussed already and not possible to eg go straight to objectives menu so I guess not. But why can't the main menu have a menu page variable with a conditional test - go straight to menu 3. The conditional test would work much like getting the user's keypress to go to that menu anyway.

 

Oh one other, on entry into controls settings can one of them be made to show by default instead of just the headers?

 

Sorry, one more, I noticed a long pause on Esc (several seconds) from the game before the menu appears. Hope none of that is a deliberate delay?

 

Anyway, the above seem trivial compared to the problems we had so if as seems so far this is much more robust then good job!