Dawn of War Codex

This is a continuation of the thread here: http://www.dawnofwar.info/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=436

Summary: Old U.I. not purty enuff. Make U.I. more purty.

I've done alot of work recently on having a complete understanding of the Scaleform U.I. aspects in DoW2, for the use in some modding work I'm doing. Seeing the need, I thought Elite could use my skilz.

In layman's terms = I'll be providing a fix for the annoying broken race selection/hero selection graphical stuff shortly! Also, this means yes, any amount of new races may be now added. Also applies to heroes.


Here are a couple of screenshots of the W.I.P new U.I. Enjoy!


Where we've come from... (for comparison)


New Stuff...

Watz dis butun doz?


Disclaimer: Black boxes not included.


Hey good looking!

I'm a layman, but this layman approves!

*sniff*

so beautiful......

Does this mean that Grey Knights could have a second and third commander implemented, should Caeltos wish to do so?

This is a fantastic start!

If you could as some stage start rework on the replay UI you would be the greatest!

Radio the Forest wrote:*sniff*

so beautiful......

Does this mean that Grey Knights could have a second and third commander implemented, should Caeltos wish to do so?

Indeed. And a fourth, if he so wishes. All races will have access to the possibility of 4 heroes. Which should keep the Slaaneshi worshipers happy.

PhatE wrote:This is a fantastic start!

If you could as some stage start rework on the replay UI you would be the greatest!

Thats something I'm working on for my mod. What did you have in mind for a reworked replay U.I? I was hoping to add alot more opacity to the panels (like the race selection panel), for example.

If you go for 4, can you tweak the text layout a bit? Atm long hero names don't fit with the 4 hero hack.

Do you have a tentative grasp of what you can do with the replay UI? Thomas mentioned earlier extra elements can be added in-game at least. I could have some ideas about that (some tweaks, and what if we could track certain extra data via scripting and print it on the UI?)

This UI business sounds very promising.

The Fabricator-General approves this.

O my god, yes! So lovely! <3

DontTouchMyCrumpets wrote:What did you have in mind for a reworked replay U.I?

Would love a time bar to manipulate to rewind in case you missed something
and to skip to the end for ranked game review purpose.

That's not an UI thing, the capacity for RW or skip just does not exist.

Lulgrim wrote:If you go for 4, can you tweak the text layout a bit? Atm long hero names don't fit with the 4 hero hack.

I believe so, yes, that shouldn't be a problem. I'll actually be repurposing the script from vanilla DoW2 race selection buttons (when there were only 4), for the use as the new hero buttons. I assume Relics original work would do this just fine, as the old layout used a smaller font. If not, I can do it more "manually", so to speak.

Lulgrim wrote:Do you have a tentative grasp of what you can do with the replay UI? Thomas mentioned earlier extra elements can be added in-game at least. I could have some ideas about that (some tweaks, and what if we could track certain extra data via scripting and print it on the UI?)

I can pretty much do anything required now, in terms of the Scaleform UI, so if need be, completely original elements can be created in flash and put in-game as required. The hardest bit is actually linking the UI to the game though. SCAR scripting may work in some cases. But .dll injection may be required in others. I haven't really looked into that fully yet though, so I may be wrong. Its on my "to do" list.

Dark Riku wrote:O my god, yes! So lovely! <3

DontTouchMyCrumpets wrote:What did you have in mind for a reworked replay U.I?

Would love a time bar to manipulate to rewind in case you missed something and to skip to the end for ranked game review purpose.

I'm afraid Lulgrim is correct Riku, thats not something that can likely be done at present sadly. A restart button might be possible though. Damn... I can't even remember if the replays already have one or not.

DontTouchMyCrumpets wrote:I'm afraid Lulgrim is correct Riku, thats not something that can likely be done at present sadly. A restart button might be possible though. Damn... I can't even remember if the replays already have one or not.

Damn Demi-gods are supposed to be omnipotent.
Make a baby together in the warp and let him or her do it! :p

No restart button available atm. It's not that big of a hassle to restart a replay though. Replays aren't that important for me personally. But man, a manipulable time bar would be so freaking useful. The warp is presenting us with many talented individuals of late though. So hopes are high :p

It's impossible frankly. The replays work by just kinda saving the actions (input if you will) of all the players, and when you load a replay it creates a game and runs it with the commands from the replay file. So you can't jump to point X as the game has no idea what's going to be happening then.

We could add the possibility to play the replay even faster than x4.

Nice work there. Really helping Elite feel like an "expansion" and not just a mod.

Cheers

I can pretty much do anything required now, in terms of the Scaleform UI, so if need be, completely original elements can be created in flash and put in-game as required. The hardest bit is actually linking the UI to the game though. SCAR scripting may work in some cases. But .dll injection may be required in others. I haven't really looked into that fully yet though, so I may be wrong. Its on my "to do" list.

I can track the kills for certain with SCAR. Resources and other elements perhaps can be done through SCAR, need to look into it more. I am fairly sure .dll injection will have be used to connect the UI to the data. As far as I know the only way to update the UI is through .dll SCAR functions. I will have a look in depth about creating a function for updating the UI.

Can we "draw" custom ingame UI to be added for each race (like DOW1) or even expand that we have now with additional icons such as:
-ranged weapon - when you point the icon you will see description about current ranged wapon, range, dps,
-melee weapon - description about current melee wapon, melee skill,
-armor - desctipion about health per model, armor type, speed, charge etc.
Something like this is in Stracraft 1&2.

Lulgrim wrote:It's impossible frankly. The replays work by just kinda saving the actions (input if you will) of all the players, and when you load a replay it creates a game and runs it with the commands from the replay file. So you can't jump to point X as the game has no idea what's going to be happening then.

Does that mean that a bug where a unit goes crazy when killed and starts floating all over the place for example could be seen in the actual game but not in the replay? Or is that recorded as well? I'm just curious.

It's not recorded as such but rather reproduced perfectly (same circumstances -> same result).

Any news about U.I. modyfication Mr. Crumpet ? Can we expect new race selector in 2.2 final ?

The second and third picture in the first post puts a big grin on my face (:

I was always under the impression that there were limitations to how new forces could be implemented and always dreaded the fact that a new faction would be superimposed on the roster of another. The fact that it now seems possible to have them as a complete and separate entity gets me all excited for that reason specifically.

Though, of course, it also opens up the possibilitys of putting in new commanders for the new factions which also opens up the door to incredible possibilities.

MUCH APPRECIATED KIND SIR, THANK YOU FOR YOUR WORK.

UPDATE: New screenshot of latest build, see first post.

Hi guys, sorry for the lack of updates of late, RL things have been sucking my time away recently, so haven't been able make as much progress recently. Never-the-less, I have new picture for u, of a nice, polished up bro-cap selection screen. Just at uni atm, so will finish writing answers to all the questions in a few hours.


Right, so...

Dark Riku wrote:No restart button available atm. It's not that big of a hassle to restart a replay though. Replays aren't that important for me personally. But man, a manipulable time bar would be so freaking useful. The warp is presenting us with many talented individuals of late though. So hopes are high :p

Lulgrim wrote:It's impossible frankly. The replays work by just kinda saving the actions (input if you will) of all the players, and when you load a replay it creates a game and runs it with the commands from the replay file. So you can't jump to point X as the game has no idea what's going to be happening then.

I was thinking about this problem, and maybe a possible work-around. Though it would probably require a bit of research into the exact structure of the replay file.

My thought was adding a script which reads the replay file, and creates multiple smaller copies of it, with the simulation commands split into time blocks within each file, progressively becoming shorter in length by, say 5 mins, across all the copies in sequence. So, say there's a 45 min replay, the script would create 9 copies of it, with the 1st being the original replay (conatining the full 45 mins of the game), the 2nd containing only 40 mins (beginning 5 mins in), and so on. As the copies are then just essentialy now shorter individual replays, I could add in a UI element which places 5 minute blocks (buttons) over the time bar, and clicking each block would essentially just load a new replay. Just some musings...

Asmon wrote:We could add the possibility to play the replay even faster than x4.

Thats probably not too hard? Will look into it.

TomastheTankEngine wrote:I can track the kills for certain with SCAR. Resources and other elements perhaps can be done through SCAR, need to look into it more. I am fairly sure .dll injection will have be used to connect the UI to the data. As far as I know the only way to update the UI is through .dll SCAR functions. I will have a look in depth about creating a function for updating the UI.

Cool, sounds good Tank Engine, let me know how you go. I'll take a peek at it too when I've finished up the selection screen.

fankater wrote:Can we "draw" custom ingame UI to be added for each race (like DOW1) or even expand that we have now with additional icons such as:
-ranged weapon - when you point the icon you will see description about current ranged wapon, range, dps,
-melee weapon - description about current melee wapon, melee skill,
-armor - desctipion about health per model, armor type, speed, charge etc.
Something like this is in Stracraft 1&2.

Yes, I think some things like this can be possibly done, in the future. Not a priority atm though, as I'm starting to rack up quite a list of requests and what-not. Only so many hrs in the day!

fankater wrote:Any news about U.I. modyfication Mr. Crumpet ? Can we expect new race selector in 2.2 final ?

Hopefully I can finish it up soon! Just depends how much spare time I get. Fingers crossed.

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Ugghh... well thats a good wall of text. Anyway sorry if I missed something!

Commissar Vocaloid wrote:The second and third picture in the first post puts a big grin on my face (:

MUCH APPRECIATED KIND SIR, THANK YOU FOR YOUR WORK.

And to all the others, thanks for the kind words of support!

Ermergawd. Want. Download link pls? :p

Can't wait for this, great work!

Check my previous post, just answered some outstanding Q's

Dark Riku wrote:Ermergawd. Want. Download link pls? :p

Good things comes to those who wait. Except for the Big E it seems...

All of this is really exciting and amazing stuff! Many thanks for all the hard workers of this mod!

DontTouchMyCrumpets wrote:My thought was adding a script which reads the replay file, and creates multiple smaller copies of it, with the simulation commands split into time blocks within each file, progressively becoming shorter in length by, say 5 mins, across all the copies in sequence. So, say there's a 45 min replay, the script would create 9 copies of it, with the 1st being the original replay (conatining the full 45 mins of the game), the 2nd containing only 40 mins (beginning 5 mins in), and so on. As the copies are then just essentialy now shorter individual replays, I could add in a UI element which places 5 minute blocks (buttons) over the time bar, and clicking each block would essentially just load a new replay. Just some musings...

Interesting idea but this is basically jumping to fixed positions in the replay which isn't possible. Prepending new modified headers at these points might make it valid "RelicChunky" format and perhaps appear in the replay list (depends if it validates checksums etc) but it will most certainly cause a sync error after loading. The problem being that the replay file simply is a sequence of actions/inputs where each action is dependant on those before it, and not at any point will it dump the game state to make jumps possible. If we had read/write access to this data though, it might be possible without breaking the current format but that's going to require some major dow2 modding/reversing breakthroughs. Feel free to surprise me though

I'm really impressed with your UI work btw, keep it up. Oh and if you feel overwhelmed with tasks, let us know maybe we can be of help.

When its gonna be released ?

Something occurred to me -- when you pick a new race, what happens with Army Level?

#revelations