Commander Genius and Galaxy Engine progress

All discussion about the Commander Genius project (a Keen interpreter + more).
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kuliwil
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Post by kuliwil »

pizza2004 wrote:Hey, so here is an example of how it might look:

Image

I tried to make it as minimalistic as I could, so that it won't block out too much stuff behind it. We might also make a trigger button to toggle display on and off, for easier access.
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Post by gerstrong »

pizza2004 wrote:Hey, so here is an example of how it might look:

Image

I tried to make it as minimalistic as I could, so that it won't block out too much stuff behind it. We might also make a trigger button to toggle display on and off, for easier access.
Hmm, it looks nice, only downside, the raygun image will always be the same, so not very suitable for mods. That is what I don't like about the idea. It could be an extra like the HQ Stuff. Remember one thing about the letters. The background must always be white or according to the mod. That's different in Galaxy, because they are monochrome and then coloured.

I also want to point out, that there are two reasons why I pulled that feature out of my mind. I know, it wasn't directly planned, or not even in trac reported directly.

1.- I'm working heavily on the galaxy support. Because the galaxy engine has a HUD which also can be disabled/enabled, I though we should write that code. So this HUD was not meant for vorticons engine, but well, we can also use it here, why not?

2.- The original CloneKeen, one of the last versions also has something similar.

If you have a problem you might make an advantage. I wrote the code for the Galaxy HUD and we using it in the vorticon engine. If the HUD class by this far does not detect HUD graphics, it will draw it this way.

@Pizza: I have a small issue with that and I think you will agree, masked bitmaps. You can load it like the sprites, but honestly I don't like that solution very much. Maybe support another format and create it as alpha image already. I really don't want to mess the CHUD class. But nevertheless, it looks great. :-)

Trigger button to toggle display on or off? I don't get it. You can toggle it through settings->options->HUD already :confused
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Post by DaVince »

I think he means a in-game hotkey that lets you enable and disable it quickly. To be honest, that does sound beneficial.
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Roobar
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Post by Roobar »

Replace the gun with a simple bullet. It's not very original, but will do the job.
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Post by pizza2004 »

Actually, this is just an example. I purposely made the space where the gun and the helmet are 16x16 tiles that I will allow people to change for their mods. Plus, the original is a TGA file, and it has masking applied.
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Post by tulip »

I had hoped that it stayed as uncomplicated as it is now, without having to create more tga files.
Why exactly is it bad to automatically use the sprite parts? I can only see problems with mods like chibikeen or keenbot, where the whole keen sprite is 16 pixels high, but wiivan's idea might do the trick: The upper part of the keen sprite for lives, the keen bullet for ammo.
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Post by pizza2004 »

tulip wrote:I had hoped that it stayed as uncomplicated as it is now, without having to create more tga files.
Why exactly is it bad to automatically use the sprite parts? I can only see problems with mods like chibikeen or keenbot, where the whole keen sprite is 16 pixels high, but wiivan's idea might do the trick: The upper part of the keen sprite for lives, the keen bullet for ammo.
The main reason is that it doesn't match Keen very well, and the big black box looks really obtrusive in the corner when I have it turned on, but I do still like to have it there.

Edit: Here is an example of what I did, except in game. You'll notice that the helmet and gun pictures match the picture Gerstrong submitted, and that is because currently they have to be cropped off of the player sprite. We will have to make the game load two extra sprites, one for the gun, and one for the helmet, in order to allow better customization. Also, I'm not sure how to get rid of the black box around the outside of the sprite images.

Image

For Tulip: I made this entirely with rectangles in the code, so no new image is needed for the HUD itself, and currently none are needed for the lives and ammo images, although I would like to change that to allow it to better work with mods.
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Post by Commander Spleen »

What about using one of the map sprite frames for the lives icon? I don't think any mod or Keen game uses anything over 16x16 for it. In fact, that's what the Lives Left box uses in Vorticons anyway.
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Post by pizza2004 »

Great ideas Commander Spleen, although I don't want to permanently keep it this way, as I would like to have better sprites made specifically for lives and such. I made those changes, and managed to get rid of transparency issues.

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Post by tulip »

Woo perfect!
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Post by Roobar »

I think that in the end, changing icons doesn't really matter. Mod or not, we all know it's keen, so maybe it's better to be only one kind of a hud and stay that way. I think keen's head with helmet and the gun will fit the most best and are very well known by all. These will work too for universal hud no matter what kind of weapon or player sprites are using the mods.
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Post by DHeadshot »

What about having a default image built in and then loading a couple of bitmaps if they are available in the mod folder?
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Post by tulip »

I think that in the end, changing icons doesn't really matter. Mod or not, we all know it's keen
BIIIIG dissagreement here. (obviously you don't play mods)

There are many mods where you don't play keen. there are mods where the gun and the shot looks completely different.

AND: If the map sprite and the keen gun sprite are loaded automatically, we don't need extra bitmaps -> less complicated equals better
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Post by Genius314 »

I think it'd be nice to give modders an option to include their own HUD images, though. If those can't be found by CG, it'll use the sprites instead.
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Post by Roobar »

tulip wrote:
I think that in the end, changing icons doesn't really matter. Mod or not, we all know it's keen
BIIIIG dissagreement here. (obviously you don't play mods)

There are many mods where you don't play keen. there are mods where the gun and the shot looks completely different.

r
I play mods. But you don't get my point.

I agree with "AND: If the map sprite and the keen gun sprite are loaded automatically, we don't need extra bitmaps -> less complicated equals bette"
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