Request for testers for ingame window changes.

[Venalan]

I very much like getting feed back form players on stuff I make, so I'm asking again.

I've made a number of changes to the flames/bones/scholar skins on the buddy/ignor/npc dialogue windows. Before I add them to the SVN for the next update I'd like to make sure people like them.

scholar_beta.zip
flames_beta.zip
bones_beta.zip

INSTALLATION

1 - Download the UI skins you want to try.
2 - Place them in the "C:\Program Files (x86)\PlaneShift\art\skins" folder.
3 - Load PSlaunch.exe and chose the skin name from the options.
4 - Run the game and try out the new changes.
5 - Comment and let me know if you like the changes.

[cdmoreland]

Great job, Venalan!

My tastes run toward "scholar" and it looks and works good, even on  my old Dell laptop.

[Venalan]

The one problem I've had with the scholar skin is that I get "shadow" text in certain text boxes, things like spell descriptions and quest descriptions.

I think it's just happening with the use of a 'pawsMessageTextBox' and it seems to be a hardcoded function of this UI component as I can't find anywhere suitable in either styles.xml or spellwindow.xml .... etc where I can turn the shadow text off. I also get the window titles which default to having "shadow" text but at least with those I can [shadow="no"] which turns it off, this is also why the skin has so many extra *.xml files. If anyone can work out why this is happening with 'pawsMessageTextBox' and propose a fix I would greatly appreciate it.

[bilbous]

I took a quick look at them and didn't see any problems, had more trouble downloading them than anything but that was just me. The scholar is a direct link to the file but the other two are not. If I hadn't right clicked on them it would have saved me a bit of trouble.

[Neeno]

Venalan, you could try following code patch: http://pastebin.com/qs4tnMpZ
I didn't test it myself, so good luck

[Venalan]

Thanks Neeno, I don't actually know how to compile the client but I'll try and grab a PS coder-dev and talk to them about this.

[Venalan]

Thanks for all the comments I've had here and privately. I've found a good number of 'tiny mistakes' and I have fixed them, slight art problems, font colour and size changes in bubbles, addition of themed art to NPC response bubbles+larger/clearer text. I've updated the download links with the latest versions so you can just download them again to get the newest versions.

[ecirtaeB]

I like the Scholar skin best out of the three

Just noticed though that long NPC responses, such as when asking "About Xiosia", don't fit in the chat bubble. And there's a minor correction needed in exchange.xml. "Header Font" style should be within widget instead of frame:

    <widget name="receivinglbl" factory="pawsTextBox" style="Header Font" >
        <frame x="185" y="30" width="135" height="20" style="Header Font" />

Btw, did you manage to fix the shadow issue? There's also another problem with window titles in that they aren't using the "Main Header Font" style in styles.xml as they're supposed to. There's a workaround for it, by setting "New Standard GUI" style "inherit" to "Main Header Font", but there must be a more proper way to fix this.

[Venalan]

Thanks ecirtaeB;

Those long responses are due to the way 'Knowledge areas' work in just sending one long block of text to the player and not split into lines like quests. I must say I didn't test those. But I did test quests in that a line of text "The The The The The he The The The The The The The The The he The The The The The The The The The he The The The The The The The The The he The The The The The The The The The he The The The The." long fits in the box which I though was ok. Maybe I'll just make the response bubble 50% bigger and hop they all fit.

I just checked and the "style="Header Font" " error is actually in the SVN version of the xml so isn't a change i made, I look at editing that at some point.

I've not been able to fix the shadowing or get a Dev from the engine/code department to help me yet. For the window titles I've added shadow="no" to all of them. I tried your edits to the styles.xml but they don't seem to make any difference to the shadowing to me, it changes fonts in lots of other ways, but shadowing is always on in title bars unless I specifically say "no"

[ecirtaeB]

I'm not sure but I seem to remember Levrus replying in multiple lines when I told him "You are crazy." (lol)

Anyway, this is what it looks like for me when I ask "About Xiosia" to an NPC. And if I'm not wrong, the widgets' sizes for NPC response bubble are apparently set this way in dialog.xml. So, I guess the widgets' sizes and/or chat bubble image could use a small adjustment

And yeah, that workaround below in styles.xml would only fix the window titles font style but not the shadow.

    <style name="New Standard GUI" inherit="Main Header Font" >
        <bgimage resource="Scaling Window Background" />
    <title resource="Scaling Title Bar" align="left" close_button="yes" style="Main Header Font" />

One way to go about it would be to then change the shadow color in styles.xml so it matches the background color (works for window titles only, in Scholar skin), like this:

    <!-- Font used for main headers eg. window titles -->
    <style name="Main Header Font">
        <font name="/planeshift/data/ttf/scurlock.ttf" r="63" g="33" b="18" size="14" scalefont="no" bold="yes" sr="226" sg="209" sb="181" />
        <frame height="25" />
    </style>

This way, you wouldn't need to include shadow="no" to all .xml files. But that would still be a bit of a fuss..

Hopefully, Neeno's patch will do the trick and a dev can find a proper fix for those

[bilbous]

I've just noticed something here, maybe it is due to an out of date version, but if you are mouse scrolling lists such as completed quests or storage items in a particular category, you sometimes get the list pane shaded. It seems fairly random but occurs in the same place if you scroll up/down once it happens.

I believe I'm using the scholars, atm, the mouse pointer is a feather quill. I'll download the most current version and post again if it behaves differently.

Addendum: Having just downloaded the most recent version I see this still happens. Most obviously it is with short lists that cannot scroll. Those immediately get dark. Longer lists tend to be more of a flickers but they sometimes darken for a bit longer if you keep scrolling up/down.

to be perfectly clear I mean using the mouse wheel to scroll the lists, not the scroll bars.

another thing about that particular skin, I think was mentioned by someone else is info windows with a dark background and dark text are hard to read.

more notes: the skills window shows only part of the list that could fit in the space allotted to the list, using only about 1/2 the available space. I like to have that window resizable so I can see all the skills at one time, as it is now that would not help much.

[Venalan]

Thanks ecirtaeB. I'll have another play and see if i can't get your suggestion to work. I would prefer to keel the zip as small as possible.

@bilbous

The window shading is nothing to do with my skin as it happens in elves, its a coded behaviour. When people test new things like this they often notice old problems which I think is what you have done here.

The dark box+text has been mentioned before, I might look at it.

And, "only part of the list that could fit in the space allotted to the list, using only about 1/2 the available space" the list box for skills is filled when you have enough skills to fill it, like 'jobs'. I'm not really sure what you mean here.

[bilbous]

I'm sorry, this, too, is endemic to the default behaviour. Compare these two images, your skin and The Way of the Hammer skin. As you can see the default behaviour has a large space underneath the list that is for the skill description. Making this window resizable and reducing the description sub-window allows for the complete list to be shown removing the need for scroll bars.  I don't blame you for not understanding what I was talking about, I was not clear about it myself.
   

[Venalan]

Oh... I see. Let me have a play and see if I can't come up with something.

[Venalan]

I've adjusted all three skins to include something like the request.

The new files are at the first post links.