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  #1  
Unread 09-27-2008, 08:59 AM
hoojahmoolah hoojahmoolah is offline
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Panel File IDs

I note from reading several old posts that the Panel File IDs and associated Elements do not appear to enable the positionining of any elements other than those of the main toolbar.

It would appear that many of the Panel File IDs in the SkinDictionary.txt provided by Frosty in the Book14 UI Skin Art Pack do not work and there has been no response from him as to what, if any, IDs are available to us.

Perhaps I have not looked carefully enough and this information is out there but I would appreciate any advice or confirmation as to our ability to manipulate the panel elements. It seems that some have had difficulty manipulating the elements of the Vital panels and thats others are saying that it is not possible to manipulate the Minimap elements at all.

Thanks for any up to date advice that anyone can provide.

Last edited by hoojahmoolah : 10-03-2008 at 12:01 PM.
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  #2  
Unread 10-08-2008, 09:06 AM
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Frosty Frosty is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by hoojahmoolah
It would appear that many of the Panel File IDs in the SkinDictionary.txt provided by Frosty in the Book14 UI Skin Art Pack do not work and there has been no response from him as to what, if any, IDs are available to us.
That's news to me! AFAIK, the IDs in the SKinDictionary.txt do work. I'll investigate.

-P
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  #3  
Unread 10-08-2008, 12:22 PM
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Supermax Supermax is offline
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Lol we've only been complaining since it was released.

But if it's being investigated now then RIGHT ON!
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  #4  
Unread 10-08-2008, 02:56 PM
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Frosty Frosty is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Supermax
Lol we've only been complaining since it was released.
There's the problem. There is "complaining" and there is "COMPLAINING". I'm sure I can dig up a post to see where I said I'd investigate, but things happened...

Anyway. The results are that it *does* work. Sort of. There are issues with panels that live inside the "hidden drag box" (activated with ctrl / ) and some panels that can lie inside other panles (think "the money display"). The problem is the script that's used to generate the SkinDictionary.txt file doesn't work in all cases. Bleah.

What I need to do is re-engineer that script to start at the highest level and drill all the way down to the lowest level while crossing the boundaries of "included and embedded UIs". This will make the SkinDictionary.txt file a lot larger, but it should be easier to understand how it all fits together.

FWIW, the following SkinDefinition.xml does work, the missing piece is that we haven't told you what "GamePlay_DestinyWallet" is anywhere. That piece of info lies along the "embedded UI" line and gets dropped with the current version of the script. I've used the Destiny display as a demo because it was a small, self contained UI.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<opt>
<SkinName Name="BasePanel"></SkinName>
<PanelFile ID="ID_UISkin_DestinyWallet_Template">
<Element ID="GamePlay_DestinyWallet" X="0" Y="0" Width="118" Height="54">
<Element ID="DestinyWallet_Box" X="0" Y="0" Width="116" Height="54"></Element>
<Element ID="DestinyWallet_Close" X="2" Y="2" Width="15" Height="15"></Element>
<Element ID="DestinyWallet_Button" X="8" Y="5" Width="101" Height="19"></Element>
<Element ID="DestinyWallet_Destiny" X="9" Y="28" Width="95" Height="22"></Element>
</Element>
</PanelFile>
</opt>
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  #5  
Unread 10-09-2008, 12:03 PM
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Brygard2007 Brygard2007 is offline
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Count me as number 2 complainer.
It seems that hoojahmoolah was lucky to get frosty attention on this matter.
I'm glad that you have looked at the problems we are having with the panel ID's.
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  #6  
Unread 10-27-2008, 02:19 PM
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I know nobody cares about excuses, so I'll just say this isn't something I'm going to be able fix before Moria launches.

I understand what the problem is and why it doesn't work. I haven't been able to get the SkinDictionary.txt file to print itself out using the correct information yet. I have a couple of other ideas that I hope to get some traction on soon, but there are some things happening in the next month or so that are taking up a lot of time

I'm really sorry that this hasn't been working since launch. I chose a simple testcase (the toolbar) that wasn't a good representative of the complex UIs that comprise the rest of the game.

Let me throw this out there - what are the panels that you really want to move stuff around on? I'm just wondering if "Character Sheet" is everyone's top request...

-P
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  #7  
Unread 10-27-2008, 03:52 PM
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Brygard2007 Brygard2007 is offline
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Most people top request that I notice are follow:
Vitals
Minimap
charsheet

As for me I wish I be able to resize the preview dressing room to higher value say at 1024 size and up depending on monitor resolution.
Reason for this for me,that way I can take a screen shot of my char wearing different outfit with the background black,this for me will be easy to cut out only my character out only using magical wand selection.

And thanks for reply and glad you were able to find the problem we are having.
Yes that's understandable about the time frame for my part.
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  #8  
Unread 10-27-2008, 04:33 PM
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Supermax Supermax is offline
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One thing I find that has been limiting me in my UI designs is that the user's screen resolution isn't offered to us in some sort of variable. We have the math done, but by forcing the average user (or new user) to go into the XML document and input their screen resolution and do the math limits our demographic. Our UIs are all of a sudden being downloaded only by code-savvy people or folk that have the time and commitment to go into the tutorials and learn how to do it.

Mini-bars are very popular. My Mini-bar is different from, lets say, LM's because I use code to manipulate the bottom toolbar and he doesn't. Now obviously this is no attack on LM but what I'm trying to say is all his manipulation in his Mini-bars are done via images as opposed to mine which are done with code and images. What I mean is, players wanting to use LM's Mini-bar's are able to just: download, extract, and play. This is how it should be; although that limits developers. To use my Mini-bars the process looks a little more like this: download, extract, open .xml, adjust to player screen resolution, save, and play.

From what research I've done, .xml can call on variables. So this is what I propose:

Let's say I am attempting to adjust the Mini-bar to fit a 800 x 600 px resolution. The Mini-bar, instead of being 800 x 600 px wide to fit the screen, is only 450 x 100 px. Let's say that the player's x resolution (800 px) is a variable named xresolution. If we were able to code it so that the xml was able to do the math itself and the game could call in the skin without having any user interference (save selecting the skin from the options menu.) It would preferable look something like this:

<PanelFile ID="toolbar">
<Element ID="ToolbarField" X="(xresolution-450)/2" Y="(yresolution-100)" Width="450" Height="100">
</PanelFile>

That way the game would automatically center the Mini-Bar and from within that PanelFile we could adjust the other elements accordingly.

Does that make sense? I hope so.

Last edited by Supermax : 10-27-2008 at 04:37 PM.
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