Wintermute Engine Forum

Wintermute Engine => Feature requests, suggestions => Topic started by: Scarpia on March 11, 2003, 10:46:19 PM

Title: Interface thoughts
Post by: Scarpia on March 11, 2003, 10:46:19 PM
Hi again. Just wondering if it'd be possible to make it easier to implement user interfaces like the ones from those legendary commercial adventure games? I'm thinking either by tutorials, included demos or built-in support? Not that I can't do this myself, I just had one of those "hey - wouldn't THAT be cool!!"-moments  :P Now, I dont know how many of these are already possible/supported/built-into WME, but by all means, do enlighten me ;)


* Icon dialogue options

* Automatic verb selection on mouseover (Broken Sword etc.)

* Verb icons + Text field "Talk to Woman", "Use Lever", etc. (LucasArts style)

* Zooming inventory objects (Broken Sword 2 style)



Scarpia

Title: Re:Interface thoughts
Post by: Banbury on March 12, 2003, 08:17:58 AM
Scarpia, if you can do it, why don't you create some templates?  ;D

Greetings

Banbury
Title: Re:Interface thoughts
Post by: Mnemonic on March 12, 2003, 08:56:11 AM
* Icon dialogue options
Is supported, not tested though...


* Automatic verb selection on mouseover (Broken Sword etc.)
Can be done by setting object's cursor and/or default game cursors.


* Verb icons + Text field "Talk to Woman", "Use Lever", etc. (LucasArts style)
Can be done using the GUI layer. Although, as I mentioned in another thread, you must design your scenes with respect to that; by default the scenes cover the whole screen.


* Zooming inventory objects (Broken Sword 2 style)
Currently, the only way of doing that is to have the item detail as a separate scene, but that's not a very good solution. I'm planning some improvements to the GUI layer to make it more flexible (basically, the GUI windows will be able to contain entities, that's gonna be flexible enough for most pusposes... IMHO).
Title: Re:Interface thoughts
Post by: Jerrot on March 12, 2003, 09:47:34 AM
Hi Scarpia,

now that's funny, I had the same idea yesterday - there should be some more templates for interfaces, inventories and option screens (where you can adjust text, text+speech, speech only, sound volume, and finally save/load etc.).

I will try what I can do, but I'm still newbie to WME and there are still too many undocumented scripting possibilities, so be patient. But I read some announcements of games developed in WME here, didn't I ? Are they using the defaults ?
Title: Re:Interface thoughts
Post by: Jerrot on March 26, 2003, 05:36:00 PM
Back to the verb bar!  Jerrot proudly presents his first WME scripts... 8)

If you like, download this alpha package (just the dcp file, hope this works for you ? The source code will come when finished) and comment.

http://www.waelisch.de/verbbar_alpha1.zip (2,50 MB, sorry...)
Edit: Link removed, you can find the final version here:
http://www.dead-code.org/forum/index.php?board=12;action=display;threadid=239 (http://www.dead-code.org/forum/index.php?board=12;action=display;threadid=239)



I used some new features from the 020 build, so please make sure you installed it.

There are some problems left, but let's see whether you discover them. ;)
Title: Re:Interface thoughts
Post by: Mnemonic on March 26, 2003, 07:35:27 PM
It works! Cool!!! No problems discovered so far (except for some weird talk about monsters and developers ;D)
Title: Re:Interface thoughts
Post by: Scarpia on March 28, 2003, 09:56:26 PM
Sounds cool.. I've been looking forward to it (but then again, you knew that already), and now it's here. Great - I will download as soon as I get home.

Scarpia - from the house of his chick-friend (ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies)
Title: Re:Interface thoughts
Post by: Jerrot on April 01, 2003, 09:29:40 AM
Hi Mnemonic,

It works! Cool!!! No problems discovered so far (except for some weird talk about monsters and developers ;D)

Oops, you really found that one. ;) So you tested good, thanks!

Well, there are some problems with my MouseEntry functions. As you may have noticed, the preselected verb changes in color when you move the mouse e.g. over the drawer. When you right-click the drawer it opens. If you didn't move the mouse, it's over the open drawer entity now, which has a MouseEntry function, too, but to activate it, I have to move the mouse away from the drawer and move back to it again.

Actually I suppose this is a problem to be solved in the script, you have the same effect when using the items (Book1 + Book2) and in some other cases. I'll have to think about it, I'm just too poor in time currently.
Title: Re:Interface thoughts
Post by: Mnemonic on April 04, 2003, 09:48:40 AM
Oops, somehow I missed this post :-o

Quote
Well, there are some problems with my MouseEntry functions. As you may have noticed, the preselected verb changes in color when you move the mouse e.g. over the drawer. When you right-click the drawer it opens. If you didn't move the mouse, it's over the open drawer entity now, which has a MouseEntry function, too, but to activate it, I have to move the mouse away from the drawer and move back to it again.

I didn't notice that. Actually, I thought the right click function was pretty cool :) I suppose it's the main reason why you used entities instead of buttons for the verbs, right?
Title: Re:Interface thoughts
Post by: Jerrot on April 04, 2003, 10:07:49 AM
I didn't notice that. Actually, I thought the right click function was pretty cool :) I suppose it's the main reason why you used entities instead of buttons for the verbs, right?

Right, I tried the same with buttons before you released the last build, but it was far easier with entities and its low-level events.

I guess when "cleaning up" the verb bar after a command, I just have to check the CurrentObject and force a MouseEntry event for it, that should fix everything and I can start to make it "nice" as tutorial/template for everybody. (This should be possible by .ApplyEvent("MouseEntry"), right ?)

Need more time, need more time, need... :)

But currently I'm using my little time for art and coloring tutorials, trying to make some sketches etc. Sometimes I wish I'd be unemployed to learn all the stuff I'm interested in... (hope my boss does not read this!).