I don't suppose it's possible to just let the "toby" issue go, is it? We had a nice sort of happy thread going here, Brad made a nice thoughtful post about the goings on behind the scenes of the game. It would be nice to think that we don't have to drag every single thread contentiously off topic.
I'm not expecting much in the way of truly fundamental transformation until the expansion next year. I wont even be playing it much until then, so as not to burn out until the real fruits of the re-working show up. I think people looking towards 1.1 as an expansion level transformation to the program might be disappointed. I think people looking towards the 1.1 update as an indicator of the direction they're heading in, and a landmark to compare against what they played on launch
Why is Kael going by this "Derek Paxton" name on these boards? It sounds made up.
[quote who="ZehDon" reply="23" id="2817318"]Nice. I'm glad to hear that Elemental is going to be the best Elemental it can be, and not a mash-up of ideas from other games borrowed because those games are perceived as 'good'. [/quote] Indeed! I'm looking forward to Elemental becoming the best Elemental it can be. I love MOM and FFH both, but I already have those games. Sounds like Kael has it well in hand.
[e digicons]:beer:[/e] Congrats on the new position, and best of luck with the team's goals!
You might look into some of the classic Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone Fighting Fantasy books. While it's hard to classify any books of this sort as for "adults", these definitely skewed older, and were built around a simple RPG system with rules for self-determining combat using dice, although they could just be read as traditional CYOA. There were fantasy, sci-fi, and supers settings. I think many have been reprinted. &n
Just for community information, I figured out those border artifacts around my PNGs were the result of containing solid image pixels that extended all the way out to the borders. As long as I have at least 1 pixel of transparency all the way around the border, I'm fine. I'm pretty sure I already knew this from a similar situation, but had forgotten.
Thanks Cari! The image file itself that I was attempting to load into the appearance tab was > than 1024. Here, by the way, are the fruits of my early testing to see what I can and can't do. In retrospect, I probably could have chosen a much easier object to modify than the main UI panel, but I am better educated for it. It was slightly more impressive before I ran into the 1024 res limit, and had to scale my concept way down (I was building around a 1200
Theres nothing that mentions a specific number, *that I have found*. The main, full page background container object, MainUI_Background has this script associated: Sub System_OnScreenChange Object.Height = System.ScreenHeight Object.Width = System.ScreenWidth End Sub Which seems fairly self explanatory. The smaller bottom panel container, MainUI_Bottom_Container has this attached:
^ | | Also, it seems I have no trouble violating the vertical height of the original image file or the parent containers, only the width. I can't exceed 1024 resolution in width even if I increase the width of the parent containers, without that image vanishing from in-game. I'm hoping this is something I'm doing wrong on the DeskX side of things, and not another hardcoded limit.
I'm stumped at another point, if Zubaz or anyone else who knows what they're doing is out there. This might be sort of advanced, and just a case of me not really understanding Desktop X very well. Right now, Im working on the main game window interface panel (MainGameWnd.Dxpack in the Screen folder). I've been swapping out the back panel art ( the Bottom_Bar_4.png in the MainUI_Container_Back object). Everything's fine as long as
I'm happy the game has stabilized to the point it no longer needs critical patches every week, and they can instead focus their attention on more meaningful updates and expansions like the one going into beta next week, rather than an incremental trickle.
[quote who="Zubaz" reply="32" id="2812598"] Did you poke her about the \mod\screen issue?[/quote] Yes, she also verified that the game is not scanning the Mods/screens folder at present.
Cari_Elf just confirmed in chat that both those aspects of the status bars are hard-coded and beyond our ability to change at present.
I'm content to muddle along by myself. If a Dev answered, it would probably be something really simple that would make me feel silly. Are they aware of the problems with the Mods folder, though?
As a matter of fact, everywhere that Seanview appearance is used, it's a sort of stand-in for some element that isn't in the DxPack itself (little graphics and values). I can't find a data file that is pointing there, though. I thought I had actually deleted those Seanview objects from out of the magic cell, but I must have simply moved it away, because deleting it breaks that file altogether, making it disappear entirely from the in-game interface. So it's possible that that ob
Yes, I was suspicious of seanview. It does something, but I'm not sure what, yet. By which, I mean it seems like it's used in many different fields for some purpose. It doesn't seem to have any bearing on the bar color, though. First of all, it's only blue (I'm not even sure its the same shade). There is no green counterpart in the file that Ive seen to affect the other bar, so it wouldn't be establishing the bar color just by virtue of it's own color. Also, I removed the seanvi
Here, you want something a little trickier to help me figure out? ( Of course you do!) I've figured out just about everything I think I need to at this point, about the way things work (enough to muddle along with trial and error, anyhow), to start in on the artistic side of things. With one exception. I would very much like to figure out the trick behind the behavior of those little diminishing status bars, for instance the hit points and mana bars you se
My observations have been far from scientific, but one I recall offhand is the SplashScreen.png file in the gfx folder. The modified version of that one which I put in the main game directory showed up, but when I placed the same folder into the Mods directory, it did not override the image in the main game directory, and yet some of the other modified image files *were* apparent. And of course, Ive not gotten any of the dxpack files in the screens folder to show up as simple override
[quote who="Zubaz" reply="20" id="2812011"] [quote]Quoting Bingjack, reply 17Unlike many of the graphics in the GFX folder, just dropping a new Screens folder it into the Mods folder as an override and turning on mods doesn't seem to do anything.[/quote] Hmmmm. According to very good sources, any files in mods/screens WILL be used over their 'core game' counterparts. If it doesn't work it may need to get a bug report for Stardock.[/quote]
Ok.
My intent, at least right now, is a complete graphical re-skin of the interface, more along the lines of what some people may enjoy in other games in the fantasy strategy genre, with highly ornate art...or at least as much as I can do without compromising performance and reasonable scalability. I have no idea yet how difficult it will be to make it into a non-destructive (of core game files) mod, that can be enabled or disabled at will. Unlike many of the graphics in the G
Ah, and from that location, I can even delete the old image states that I am replacing from the DXpack file (or at least, they no longer show up in the scroll-down list of available appearance states) , which hopefully will keep the file sizes down. I have no idea how much impact, if any, creeping up those file sizes would have on game performance, but it seems a good policy to keep them down and not laden them with unnecessary data if possible.
[quote who="Zubaz" reply="13" id="2811852"] Quoting Bingjack, reply 12is there a way to "release" a graphical element back into its original image format state once it's been imported into a dxpack? While you have teh DXpack open, go to C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Stardock\DesktopX\CurrentTheme adn teh extracted images will be available to muck about with. Is that what you needed?[/quote] It sure is. [e digi
While I have Zubaz's attention ...is there a way to "release" a graphical element back into its original image format state once it's been imported into a dxpack? It would make things really easy then to use that image as template for size and shape in a graphical program, to design new graphics over top of. I've figured out how to isolate the element, but I can't seem to get at the original .png. The original source file for some of these is not available in t