What needs to be done to compete with Cogmind's UI?

[ribblle]

What are the coding challenges? Has anyone come up with a better way to lay things out? How’s mouse support looking?

For reference, this is Cogmind’s UI:

[TheFlame52]

That looks swanky AF and there is no way Cataclysm’s UI will ever compete with that. We don’t even have mouse support.

[Shadow86]

Looks pretty advanced, and I don’t know much but judging from the animations, I’d say it’d require a whole new engine.

[ApatheticExcuse]

If we paid the devs $25+ per copy of C:DDA, they could probably figure it out.

[size=4pt]Or take the time off of what I assume to be real jobs to write a whole new game, which is likely the only way this will happen in relation to Cata.[/size]

[StopSignal]

That was built from the ground up to be like that. It’s impressive and it looks beautiful indeed, but damn, I don’t think the game even performs fast enough to be able to have those animations, and that’s not even considering coding it in, which for now is impossible, sadly!

[ribblle]

People have discussed donation bounty systems. Maybe that could cut it. It worked for Armok Vision.

[ApatheticExcuse]

I think that might be underestimating the amount of coding required to do that.

The fact we don’t even have universal mouse support (see Coolthulu below), which takes roughly three lines of code to set up if you’re writing a game from scratch and making use of a good library, kinda speaks to how difficult doing UI things in the Cata engine seems to be. There is likely no generic, pre-existing library, simply whatever whales stuck in and what’s been put in since then.

Beyond just writting in the UI, someone would have to spend a huge amount of time fixing all the other stuff doing so breaks, as well. From my understanding, it’s a bit messy back there.

[Coolthulhu]

The fact we don’t even have mouse support

There is mouse support for tiles builds and non-Windows console ones. A bit limited, but it exists.

[ApatheticExcuse]

I was unaware. I’ve only ever played console on windows. Edited to reflect that.

Out of curiousity, why is it only restricted to those builds?

[Coolthulhu]

Windows lacks some basic tools, such as proper console support. The one provided in the game is a custom homebrew one - slower than proper libraries and with less features.

[ApatheticExcuse]

Makes sense. Thanks!

[ribblle]

I mean, Armok Vision (for Dwarf Fortress) didn’t straight up change the game, it reads the information and emulates it in a new program. I’m not sure how he’s implementing direct control, but i imagine it will be a case of plugging commands from that program into dwarf fortress’s existing UI somehow.

[ZoneWizard]

I’m impressed by mouse over “Looking” lol

They just made us look …a little lacking

But I do find the lack of many basic mouse features a little odd, as games as far back as the late 80’s early 90’s had more mouse control XD

But I do like the mousing we have…so no big deal from my perspective.

[kevin.granade]

Just from looking at those animations I can tell you they have a custom windowing and text rendering engine (or possibly a gaming oriented engine), curses just can’t do a lot of those things. We don’t have such a thing because nobody on the project seems to want to write one. They’re complicated and a pain in the ass to get right and require a lot of graphic design skill to boot.
We don’t have mouse interaction by choice, dda is fundamentally a keyboard driven game and the mouse interaction we have is just bolted on after the fact.

In the end, every time a dda dev adds a feature, they make a decision about their priorities and what they want for the game, if I have a month of coding time to spend I want to add something like better monster hordes, or large scale region features, or even a bunch of bug fixing before I’d want to work on a windowing and text rendering system.

[Justin_Case]

Im using version 0.c 19576 gd258505. I see some pretty awesome progress, but UI is still kinda cumbersome in cataclysm. Im trying to advertise this game to my friends, but for them its intimitading. Is it possible to redo for instance the inventory to have pages like…

< Worn >/ < Handguns > / < Rifles > / < Tools > / < Food >/ < Other > etc…

Then the player could easily navigte through the items on his/her character.

Maybe we could add trackers to the game. It could record various stats like “last meal” or “last slept”

Im also thinking in such character creation system, where the player would have to choose various actions prior to the cataclysm. It would be like “6months before the cataclysm this and that happened” the player would have 3 or 4 choices, depending on the job they chose. This way the story plot could be more involved. I have to admit I still dont really get what happened in the game that got out of control, so mostly I try to make up my own story. Involving asteroids that brought a super bacteria to Earth. Then the usual scenario. Virus, outbreak, schemeing goverments and so on.

Are there such items in the game that are one of a kind? I mean spawned only once, and it is not a mission objective? Like a super secret microchip that could reactivate a radar system, which would allow the player to see a couple of military bases or whatever.

I saw some topics about ships. Are we going only to have rivers, or is there ideas behind having an ocean like water area? What about flying? In the near future vtol aircrafts could be wide spread. Flying could happen in map view maybe.

[KliPeH]

[quote=“Justin Case, post:15, topic:13081”][…] Im trying to advertise this game to my friends, but for them its intimitading. Is it possible to redo for instance the inventory to have pages like…

< Worn >/ < Handguns > / < Rifles > / < Tools > / < Food >/ < Other > etc…

Then the player could easily navigte through the items on his/her character. [/quote] Please don’t. I like my inventory unified and I find it easy to navigate the way it currently is, just like most other players. You’ve got headers, item colors and item symbols to help with the case. Just remember that tools will be shown first, then clothing, then food and water, then medicine, and finally materials and misc items. Or something along those lines. You just get used to it, really.

Don’t worry about your friends thinking the game is too hard to play; I’ve had tens of people be fascinated with my screenshots and the amount of depth the game has from various discussions in channels and servers, but fail in practice and claim the game is too complex for them to understand when trying to play it themselves.

Some people just aren’t fit to play CDDA. They can’t be bothered to read or memorize the controls layout, and that’s fine honestly. Let them be. They’re missing out on a great game - a game which you actually have to WANT to play to enjoy.

P.S. If you want to have your suggestions read and commented on, don’t

1. derail threads with them
2. make wishlists out of them.

[Justin_Case]

I never was into foruming so sorry for being an asshole. I tried to point out that the game is hard for newcomers which i dont mind. I also got used to the inventory system. Thoufh a quick page turning button would be awesome. Like tab when you pick up stuff

[ribblle]

Difference of opinion, not being an asshole.

[Justin_Case]

Thank you sir! Trying to save some humanity after the cataclysm