Topics

1

Mapping / Mapeditor Improvement: Clipper tool

« on: January 20, 2009, 08:15:41 pm »

There is a bug/feature request regarding the clipper tool. Actually on cutting brushes results look different from expected. Level/content flags are not applied to new faces, shader is set to default (nodraw).

There are different ways how this could be improved:
level/contentflags
1) apply diff of content/surfaceflags of all brush faces to new one (e.g. all have levelflags set -> apply those)
2) apply some voting diff (e.g. most of the faces have one flag set -> apply those flags that have some majority)

texture
actually it seems that texture is set to nodraw. Here we also could set
a) diff texture (if all have the same, set it to new, otherwise nodraw)
b) voting diff: apply the texture that is used by most of the faces

I did not look into the code, but this could probably also be applied to subtract and other face-generating tools.
Any suggestions?

2

Mapping / Mapeditor Improvement: Inconsistency

« on: January 20, 2009, 08:08:54 pm »

I actually started to implement some improvements regarding inconsistency of different values regarding selected entries.
For this I updates surfaceinspector->content/levelflags + value field. There are more fields that actually don't show a state representing actual selection, so I want to ask which would be the best way to solve it:

surfaceinspector/texture : the fields at the top showing texture name, stretch + shift + rotate values belong together, actually they show the content of last selected face (if you select a brush, last face of this brush is used). Applying changes updates values of all faces in current selection.

We have different solutions how to solve this:
1) apply changes only to displayed face
2) apply changes to all selected faces (as is, could lead to weird results)
3) let the user choose whether applying to all or only last selected face (add 2 radio buttons / preference for prefered behaviour)

A) Show only last selected face (as is)
B) Show diff between all selected faces, apply only those that were changed or not inconsistent (like for content/levelflags)
C) add a combobox (dropdown) that enables the user to choose which face to show from current selection (selection would look like "entity 1 face 1", "entity 1 face 3"...)

Which is the prefered solution for these? Any other ideas?

3

Artwork / Needed: Category folding icons

« on: December 20, 2008, 08:55:40 pm »

We need icons for category folding state, e.g. a + and - symbol that indicates whether a category is open or closed. These are needed for message options. Actual images there are only placeholders.

4

Artwork / Images for messageoptions settings

« on: October 18, 2008, 11:10:48 pm »

Actually I improved messageoptions settings - we decided to use pictures as headers for the columns pause, notify and sound. As there are no good pictures, I used some placeholders. Ingame you find them under Options->game->pause/message (menu options_pause in menu_options.ufo)

If anybody has some good pictures for these, please add them.

5

Coding / Event system

« on: September 19, 2008, 09:47:43 pm »

I don't know whether I should ask this question in coding section or in design. Because it has more impact on coding, I'll ask it here:

Are there plans to use an event schedule system instead of actual "forward time, check for events" system? I actually found a bug caused by actual implementation:
at 16:23 I ordered to remove weapon from my aircraft, it states work needs 2 hours. At 18:00 work was finished, expected time ws 18:23. This happens if you choose a slow time progress and hourly update of installation time occurs. This updates installation time to 0 (as only hours are counted) and finishes process too early.

With an event schedule system, a new event could have been added at 18:23, no other checks for updated installation time would be needed and game time stop could have been done exactly at this time.

I know that for such an event system there would be much work to do, but it could enable us to handle some events easier (and more exactly).
From my years of study I remember that such event systems are used in huge simulations, because this way is the easiest to handle many different events. For UFO:AI basically CL_CampaignRun could advance time to a) next time interval (based on actual time progress setting) or b) first event that occurs in this time interval.