project-navigation
Personal tools

Author Topic: Graphic settings Noob Help - What settings?  (Read 27574 times)

Offline MCR

  • PHALANX veteran
  • ******
  • Posts: 1244
    • View Profile
Re: Graphic settings Noob Help - What settings?
« Reply #75 on: July 04, 2010, 11:40:54 am »
So is someone working on improving this further @ the moment ?

We still need to integrate quite a few cvars here & the graphic options menu should be split into a standard graphics options menu & an advanced graphic options menu to have a place for all those cvars ;)...

Also Kildor requested more space for the translations, as those are sometimes much longer than the English version of things & asked to make the sliders smaller to allow for all languages to be displayed correctly...

I would personally like to see much higher resolutions or vectorgraphics, new fonts, more colors, new backgrounds, maybe even some 3d backgrounds for the menus, like our rotating, season-changing earth (our engine would easily manage that), more effects like transparency & this also intertwines with a new GUI as we should keep 1 look throughout the game...
« Last Edit: July 04, 2010, 11:57:52 am by MCR »

Offline MCR

  • PHALANX veteran
  • ******
  • Posts: 1244
    • View Profile
Re: Graphic settings Noob Help - What settings?
« Reply #76 on: July 15, 2010, 12:03:16 pm »

Just wanted to inform everyone interested in this topic, that the next big upgrade for our menus is in the making  ;D

I will implement many additional options & cvars, restructure the whole menu once again, introduce tabs navigation for the several submenus, add icons for tooltips, make some easy setting options (set all gfx to low/med/high with 1 button) like requested in this thread, extend & debug the comments & tooltips, restructure the *.ufo files internally for easier debugging & will also try first experiments to upgrade & enhance our background graphics, icons & UI-graphics & bring some nice colors & maybe even higher resoltions into our menus...

Also I want to take a look @ the possibility of 3d animations in the background of our menus (like used for 'Credits') ;)


That is the plan @ least ;)

Feel free to tell me via this thread what you like & definitely do NOT want to see, as I am in the process of implementing all of that above & should be finished within the next few weeks...

I simply feel for the next versions of our game we need a more modern & upgraded version for the menus & UI also, as players should feel that v2.4+ is a massive upgrade compared to previous versions from the first second the game starts...

Offline geever

  • Project Coder
  • PHALANX Commander
  • ***
  • Posts: 2561
    • View Profile
Re: Graphic settings Noob Help - What settings?
« Reply #77 on: July 15, 2010, 01:37:29 pm »
Also I want to take a look @ the possibility of 3d animations in the background of our menus (like used for 'Credits') ;)

menus != sequences. ATM you can't do 3d stuff in menus (other than showin' a model).
To tell you the truth, the menu system should be strengthened with features that sequences support ane more and sequences system should be removed. (In many terms our menu system is much more advanced already) Not an easy task...

-geever

Offline MCR

  • PHALANX veteran
  • ******
  • Posts: 1244
    • View Profile
Re: Graphic settings Noob Help - What settings?
« Reply #78 on: July 15, 2010, 01:51:37 pm »
menus != sequences. ATM you can't do 3d stuff in menus (other than showin' a model).
To tell you the truth, the menu system should be strengthened with features that sequences support ane more and sequences system should be removed. (In many terms our menu system is much more advanced already) Not an easy task...

-geever

First of all, thanks for your input.

The 3d stuff was not intended to be in the next version of the menu, but in the mid-term I could imagine having our 3d globe turning in the background, so that you can actually watch the graphical highlights Arisian already implemented (like the changing of the seasons texture morphing animation), while changing the options.

Additionally we could have some of our (flying) models pass in the background randomly or show some far away ufo fights over the earth ;) or other things from the codebase we could 'misuse' (XVI spread for example)...

We also could have some previews for the individual graphic settings, maybe I will implement this also in some of the future versions (could make this with small preview pictures like we already have for the levels or with realtime 3d graphics (would probably need help for that version))...

3d graphics in the background would also have the advantage of scalability & would therefore be always displayed sharp (@ least the edges of the triangles) no matter what resolution the player has chosen...