From jon at radscan.com Thu Jan 5 19:12:21 2006 From: jon at radscan.com (Jon Trulson) Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 19:12:21 -0700 (MST) Subject: [conquest] Conquest 8.1.2ng1 development snapshot is available Message-ID: at: http://radscan.com/conquest/conquest-8.1.2ng1.src.tar.gz It's 8.3MB :) This version is a development snapshot - not quite ready for prime-time, so the announcement of it will only go to this list, and will not be linked to from the website. It features a few rather massive changes, including the new artwork/textures and iconhud from Cataboligne and a rework of texture management and planet init handling (custom Universe anyone?). Enjoy, and send Cat (on this list) any comments regarding the new graphics :) Here's the somewhat lengthy release notes: 8.1.2ng1 (snapshot release) 1/05/2006 - This is a development 'snapshot' version of Conquest. It is intended to allow people to check it out, specifically the new icon hud from Cat. Distribution maintainers should probably avoid this release, as there is still alot of work to do before becoming an 'official' dev release. - This version incorporates Cataboligne's massive artwork patch. Among them: - new ship textures - team specific photon torpedos and phaser textures - team specific LR tactical grids - doomsday fires an anti-proton beam at unfortunate planets. - original 8.1.2 Conquest included 37 textures. This version includes 173 textures. The src tarball got a little bigger :) This also includes the new 'icon hud' functionality, which promises to be the future default hud, once the kinks are worked out. The nature and size of this patch required that I redo the texture handling code in Conquest from scratch. This stuff is described in more detail below. If you want to see the new IconHUD, go into User Options, and on page 2 will be some new options for configuring the icon hud. Have phun, and send any comments to the list. There is still alot of work to be done with this code, including adding back the animation capability Cat provided (which could not work with the new texture code and had to be omitted). Known problems: - the icon hud does not size/scale properly - The icon hud uses alot of textures, the decal stuff will probably need to be redone. - when switching to the new hud and back to the old one, the hud geometry might get screwed up. If you restart, you should be back to normal. - User config data (~/.conquestrc) is now stored in a new ~/.conquest/ directory. The files that can currently be present in this directory are: conquestrc # used to be ~/.conquestrc conquest.log # what it says img/ # directory containing user textures (.tga) files. *.trc # user supplied texture definition files. If you already had a ~/.conquestrc with your settings in it, simply copy it into ~/.conquest/conquestrc before starting the game. - conquestgl will now emit it's log entries to stderr as well so that gl users might see something useful if something breaks :) - planet and texture configuration and intialization have been completely rewritten through the new CQI infrastructure. - texture loader now supports compressed tga files. - fix server recordings so they include TORPEVENT packets. These were only being recorded for clinet recordings. This is important when rendering the new 'directional' torp graphics Cat added when playing back a recording. - this version includes all of the bug fixes in 8.1.2. The following are some 'devnotes' that describe in a little more detail the conqinitrc and texturesrc changes and formats. Textures: The old hardcoded texture filenames and integer index stuff in the original conquestgl proved to be, unsustainable :) Cat's patches extended ConquestGL's texture handling significantly, but there were still issues. Texture configuration, loading and resolution have been completely reworked in this version of Conquest. All textures that can be used in conquest are specified in a global 'texturesrc' file located in the main etc/ dir of a conquest installation. Additional textures can be specified in a users ~/.conquest/*.trc files. Each texture is specified like: Simplest form: texture { name "star" # required } Textures are referenced in conquest by this name during setup. The name should never change - they have been created to easily find textures for a given object, team, and shiptype for example. The image file loaded in this case would be 'star.tga'. You can also optionally specify a filename (if it's different from 'name'), and you can optionally specify a color (which would be normally be used as part of a texture animation). So a more complex one with all values specified looks like: texture { name "conqlogoF" filename "conq-fed" # optional, defaults to name color "ffe6e6e6" # optional } This is the federation conquest logo. Inside conquest, when this texture should be rendered, conquest will simply look for textures with a name 'conquestlogoT' where 'T' is the first char of the team name. You can change the filename to whatever you want and conquest will still find it, since all textures are referenced by the 'name' field. The 'color' is specified as a hex encoded 32 bit unsigned quantity that represent a pixel color. The format is: AARRGGBB A = alpha R = red G = green b = blue When conquest starts, it will load/parse this file so it has a complete texture list in the cqiTextures[] array (which is dynamically allocated). When LoadTextures() is called, it will simply go through this cqiTextures array and load each texture it can. For things like drawing planets, ships, etc, the texture id's are looked up the first time they are referenced from the GLTextures array and saved away for future use, eliminating the need to search for textures when rendering - it's just a direct lookup which is alot faster. Users can override texture definitions as well. After conquestgl parses the main texturesrc file, it will then load and parse any *.trc files it finds in your ~/.conquest/ directory. These files have the same format as texturesrc. Textures can be provided in a user's ~/.conquest/img/ directory, which will also be searched when texture loading starts. So for example, if you absolutely hate the vbg (Viewer Backgroud) texture, you could make it what ever you want by creating a ~/.conquest/pick_a_name.trc file with the following contents: texture { name "vbg" filename "my_better_vbg" } Then place your my_better_vbg.tga file into ~/.conquest/img/ . That's the gist of textures. Planets: The planets are also handled differently. They are now all loaded from the global conqinitrc file. There are also 'global', and 'shiptype' sections in this file which, currently, should never be changed until the protocol and common block are changed to support it. But the planet sections can be edited at will. Here's an example for Jinx: planet { name "Jinx" primary "Syrinx" angle 304.393088 velocity 7.500000 radius 2600.000000 ptype "M" pteam "S" armies 153 visible "yes" core "yes" homeplanet "no" xcoord -19392.238383 ycoord -11831.705377 size 300 color "ffe6e6e6" } 'size' is specified in CU's (Conquest Units of measurement). You can optionally have a 'texname' parameter that specifies the texture to use to display a planet, but this should almost never be done. The default rules (described below) for finding a planet texture are generally the best choice. If 'angle' is negative, a random value will be chosen at parse time. The 'armies' field can accept two numbers as well, representing the min and max values to use to generate a random value. ... armies 20 100 ... Will choose a random army value between 20 and 100 at parse time. The downside here is that it is currently not possible to define a planets orbital characteristics to be dependant on another planet (other than it's primary). I do not consider this a loss... You may disagree :) Planet textures in the game are selected for a planet using the following rules: 1. see if one was specified in the conqinitrc entry for the planet, if so, use it. This should usually not be done except in special cases. 2. see if a texture exists with the same name as the planet, if so use it. 3. if all else fails, use the default textures 'classm', classd', 'star' etc. So in general, you never really need to specify a texture for a planet in conqinitrc. If you want a specific texture to be displayed for a planet, just create a texture and add an entry for it in the texturesrc (or a user .trc) file uning the planet's name as the texture 'name'. conqinit: There is a new executable called conqinit. conqinit can be used to test the new parser, as well as to generate a texdata.h file based on texturesrc data, and generate a initdata.h file based on conqinitrc data. These initdata.h and texdata.h files contain defaults for the planets and textures compiled directly into conquest in the event the respective conquestrc and texturesrc file could not be found or successfully read on startup. examples: $ conqinit Simply parses the global conqinitrc file and exits, reporting any errors, warnings, etc. $ conqinit -f Does the same thing but parses . $ conqinit -t parses the default texturesrc file and exits, reporting any errors/warnings. $ conqinit -t -f does the samething but parses instead, and treats it like a file in texturesrc format. $ conqinit -f -h >conqinit.h parses as a conqinitrc file and generates a conqinit.h file that can be compiled into conquest to specify 'last-ditch' defaults in case the normal files could not be parsed for some reason. Note, you should never have to gen any .h files, the parser runs when conquest starts up and will always use the data it found if it can. Validated texdata.h and initdata.h files are supplied in the conquest distribution and should not really be modified unless you know what you are doing. For the future: - Animations. The way I intend to do this is to allow up to 3 animation types to be related to a texture by extending the texture specification to include: anim "animation name" and then an animation would be specified like so: animation { name "animation name" texanim { .... texture anim data } colanim { .... color animation data } geoanim { .... geometry anim data } } animations will be 'executed' via the main renderNode() function and be fairly autonomous with respect to the primary rendering node. Once this is done, then we can re-add some of the animation Cat made into the game. -- Jon Trulson mailto:jon at radscan.com ID: 1A9A2B09, FP: C23F328A721264E7 B6188192EC733962 PGP keys at http://radscan.com/~jon/PGPKeys.txt #include "I am Nomad." -Nomad From ralmoritz at gmail.com Fri Jan 6 02:04:13 2006 From: ralmoritz at gmail.com (Ralph Moritz) Date: Fri, 6 Jan 2006 11:04:13 +0200 Subject: [conquest] Problem building on FreeBSD-6.0-RELEASE Message-ID: Hi. I had a problem building on my FreeBSD box. The problem was gcccomplaining about undefined references to SIGCLD. I grep'ed forit in /usr/include/sys/signal.h but it wasn't there. $ pwd/usr/home/ralmoritz/src/conquest-8.1.2$ grep -n SIGCLD *.[ch]conqmetad.c:517: signal(SIGCLD, SIG_IGN); /* allow children to die */conquestd.c:126: signal(SIGCLD, SIG_IGN); /* allow children to die */ After changing the two occurences of SIGCLD above to SIGCHLD itbuilt fine. Cool game BTW! Regards,Ralph --Ralph A. MoritzP.O Box 649, New Germany, 3620Cellular: 072 385 0679--``A man has a right to use his knife to cuthis meat, a fork to hold it; may a patenteetake from him the right to combine their useon the same subject?'' -- Thomas Jefferson From jon at radscan.com Fri Jan 6 18:38:13 2006 From: jon at radscan.com (Jon Trulson) Date: Fri, 6 Jan 2006 18:38:13 -0700 (MST) Subject: [conquest] Problem building on FreeBSD-6.0-RELEASE In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, 6 Jan 2006, Ralph Moritz wrote: > Hi. > I had a problem building on my FreeBSD box. The problem was gcccomplaining about undefined references to SIGCLD. I grep'ed forit in /usr/include/sys/signal.h but it wasn't there. > $ pwd/usr/home/ralmoritz/src/conquest-8.1.2$ grep -n SIGCLD *.[ch]conqmetad.c:517: signal(SIGCLD, SIG_IGN); /* allow children to die */conquestd.c:126: signal(SIGCLD, SIG_IGN); /* allow children to die */ > After changing the two occurences of SIGCLD above to SIGCHLD itbuilt fine. Cool game BTW! Hmm hehe, bit of a formatting issue up there... Ok, I will rework these with something like this to c_defs.h: #ifndef SIGCLD #define SIGCLD SIGCHLD #endif which should continue to work on everything. I've attached a patch which should apply to virgin 8.1.2 if you want to try it. Otherwise go with what you got :) Thanks! -- Jon Trulson mailto:jon at radscan.com ID: 1A9A2B09, FP: C23F328A721264E7 B6188192EC733962 PGP keys at http://radscan.com/~jon/PGPKeys.txt #include "I am Nomad." -Nomad -------------- next part -------------- Index: c_defs.h =================================================================== RCS file: /home/jon/src/repository/conquest/c_defs.h,v retrieving revision 1.22 diff -u -r1.22 c_defs.h --- c_defs.h 23 Apr 2005 21:54:46 -0000 1.22 +++ c_defs.h 7 Jan 2006 01:32:19 -0000 @@ -45,6 +45,10 @@ # include #endif +#ifndef SIGCLD +#define SIGCLD SIGCHLD +#endif + /* JET - need checks here? */ #include #include From jon at radscan.com Mon Jan 16 15:31:07 2006 From: jon at radscan.com (Jon Trulson) Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2006 15:31:07 -0700 (MST) Subject: [conquest] Conquest 8.1.2ng1 development snapshot is available In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, 5 Jan 2006, Jon Trulson wrote: > > at: > > http://radscan.com/conquest/conquest-8.1.2ng1.src.tar.gz > Just curious... Has anyone played with this yet? Any comments? Some comments (aside from the 'known problems' listed previously): 1. Shields... In general, I do not like the new shield graphics... I think the shield graphics used on the icon display is actaully much better - I'd prefer that. The new sh graphics are just too big/distracting. What I have in mind is a small 'smoke ring outline' around the ship, whose color/alpha indicates their strength. Essentially very much like how they are displayed on the ship icon when shields are up. 2. Any ideas for re-arranging the icon hud so things are more readable? 3. 'Team colors'. I find this stuff actually quite confusing. Previously, indicator colors were determined based on the 'status' of an object (ie shield level, temperatures, etc). It was easy to keep an eye out for things turning yellow or red in the hud while in combat. I find that I can no longer do that. I'm thinking of removing this 'team colors' option. I think, regardless of what ship you use, the color red should mean 'danger' and the color green means 'all ok' :) 4. Numeric indicators for heading and warp. I'd like them to be bigger. Also, I find reading the graphical warp indicator... not so easy - sometimes I have to search for the indicator line. Maybe this indicator should be more obvious? 5. tactical grids. Look nice. The relative gamma for these needs to be equalized however, so that a 'brightness' of 50 for example looks the same regardless of what grid (team) you are using. A couple of other changes I forgot to mention for the ng1 release: - reworked the vbg code so that tac and vbg aren't mutually exclusive. A future addition will be an ALT-G hotkey for toggling the grid. - directional torp vectors are now standard for all ships. I reworked this somewhat to base the angle() on the torp's delta direction of fire, rather than the lastblast dir (which can change between the time the torp fire command was sent, and when it actually shows up on your screen). Much more reliable :) - Cat had provided different explosion graphics for each team. I removed this as I think explosions should look the same regardless of what is exploding. Anyway, was just wondering if: - anybody had tried this version and what problems/comments you may have had. Also, Cat, have you looked at this yet? Are you not speaking to me anymore??? :) [...] -- Jon Trulson mailto:jon at radscan.com ID: 1A9A2B09, FP: C23F328A721264E7 B6188192EC733962 PGP keys at http://radscan.com/~jon/PGPKeys.txt #include "I am Nomad." -Nomad From jon at radscan.com Wed Jan 18 15:17:05 2006 From: jon at radscan.com (Jon Trulson) Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2006 15:17:05 -0700 (MST) Subject: [conquest] Conquest 8.1.2ng1 development snapshot is available In-Reply-To: <20060117011756.60413.qmail@web60313.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20060117011756.60413.qmail@web60313.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Mon, 16 Jan 2006, Bill Patterson wrote: [... CC'd to the list...] > Here's what I see....... I don't like the reticle > thing over the galaxy view. It's distracting. Maybe if > it were more transparent. the tactical overlay in LR mode? You can adjust that in the (O)ption screen, page 2. > > Every single meter scale is off by about 25%. For > example: say energy is 100%, it shows about 75% on the > meter. I can't remember which one is which (or read I've noticed this too... > Orion) so I just go by the numbers now anyways. Which > is sad because the alien font is way cool. Maybe a > hotkey that switches to english then back to alien? The problem with the 'alien' fonts is that they aren't really fonts. They are a part of the textures. I think this will have to go. If we want to do the alien font thing, then we should use actual fonts - that way we can switch them easily. > > I like the warp meter. Oh so cool! > Yes, but I find it hard to read at a glance. > I really like the visible shields, but perhaps if they > were more "glass bubble" looking, and less > substantial, they would look better. But I like them > as they are much better than not having them. And the > shield icon rocks. > I too prefer a shield indicator around the ship... Just not the current one :) > I've been thinking.... Why not render the stars as > real lights and the ships as some simple 3d models? > It'd add alot of snazziness to the game. No need to > move the camera or anything. Just a bit of dynamic > lighting. You can get free Trek Blender models from: > http://www.blenderwars.com/frame.php?module=models > Alternately bump-mapped sprites would probably look > 99% as good. > Hehe, well the selection of ships there is pretty limited. Might be interesting to use them to generate better orion textures though (maybe using the b5 models?). > Actually I been thinking about this alot...... 3D > could be a command line switch, when enabled causes > the routine that draw the ship sprite, to draw the 3d > model instead. I been messing with 3D code from here: > http://www.spacesimulator.net/tutorials.html > As good as you are, you could probably have it all > running in an hour. lol > Well, for lighting you would need to draw actual objects rather than the tex mapped quads we are using now. But that's quite a bit more complicated. I have always thought it would be cool if the suns were light emitters. > On the server side, I'd love it if there were a way to > double (or is it quadruple?) the size of the universe. > Example, max distance from center is now about 28k in > the middle and about 40k in the corners. It'd be way > cool if the distance to the barrier in the middle > could be set out to about 60k or so. Heck even a 100k. > Add an element of exploration into the game. Well, there is a limit to the universe's size. In the common block, it's a double so it is quite large already, however the protocol limit's you to around +/- 1,000,000 CU's. Pretty big. The barrier is setup to the coords to list, but nothing prevents you from placing planets/stars, etc outside the barrier :) > > If I see more stuff to whine about, I'll write again. > :-) > > --- Jon Trulson wrote: > >> On Thu, 5 Jan 2006, Jon Trulson wrote: >> >>> >>> at: >>> >>> >> > http://radscan.com/conquest/conquest-8.1.2ng1.src.tar.gz >>> >> >> Just curious... Has anyone played with this yet? >> Any comments? >> >> Some comments (aside from the 'known problems' >> listed previously): >> >> 1. Shields... In general, I do not like the new >> shield graphics... >> I think the shield graphics used on the icon display >> is actaully much >> better - I'd prefer that. The new sh graphics are >> just too >> big/distracting. What I have in mind is a small >> 'smoke ring outline' >> around the ship, whose color/alpha indicates their >> strength. Essentially >> very much like how they are displayed on the ship >> icon when shields are >> up. >> >> 2. Any ideas for re-arranging the icon hud so >> things are more >> readable? >> >> 3. 'Team colors'. I find this stuff actually >> quite confusing. >> Previously, indicator colors were determined based >> on the 'status' of an >> object (ie shield level, temperatures, etc). It was >> easy to keep an eye >> out for things turning yellow or red in the hud >> while in combat. I find >> that I can no longer do that. I'm thinking of >> removing this 'team colors' >> option. I think, regardless of what ship you use, >> the color red should >> mean 'danger' and the color green means 'all ok' :) >> >> 4. Numeric indicators for heading and warp. I'd >> like them to be >> bigger. Also, I find reading the graphical warp >> indicator... not so easy >> - sometimes I have to search for the indicator line. >> Maybe this indicator >> should be more obvious? >> >> 5. tactical grids. Look nice. The relative gamma >> for these needs >> to be equalized however, so that a 'brightness' of >> 50 for example looks >> the same regardless of what grid (team) you are >> using. >> >> A couple of other changes I forgot to mention for >> the ng1 release: >> >> - reworked the vbg code so that tac and vbg aren't >> mutually >> exclusive. A future addition will be an ALT-G >> hotkey for toggling the >> grid. >> >> - directional torp vectors are now standard for >> all ships. I >> reworked this somewhat to base the angle() on the >> torp's delta direction >> of fire, rather than the lastblast dir (which can >> change between the time >> the torp fire command was sent, and when it actually >> shows up on your >> screen). Much more reliable :) >> >> - Cat had provided different explosion graphics >> for each team. I >> removed this as I think explosions should look the >> same regardless of >> what is exploding. >> >> Anyway, was just wondering if: >> >> - anybody had tried this version and what >> problems/comments you >> may have had. >> >> Also, Cat, have you looked at this yet? Are you >> not speaking to >> me anymore??? :) >> >> [...] >> >> >> -- >> Jon Trulson mailto:jon at radscan.com >> ID: 1A9A2B09, FP: C23F328A721264E7 B6188192EC733962 >> PGP keys at http://radscan.com/~jon/PGPKeys.txt >> #include >> "I am Nomad." -Nomad >> >> > > > Bill Patterson > cyberbillp at yahoo.com > > Owner of: > http://ultramaxx.com > > __________________________________________________ > Do You Yahoo!? > Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around > http://mail.yahoo.com > -- Jon Trulson mailto:jon at radscan.com ID: 1A9A2B09, FP: C23F328A721264E7 B6188192EC733962 PGP keys at http://radscan.com/~jon/PGPKeys.txt #include "I am Nomad." -Nomad From god.000 at gmail.com Tue Jan 24 12:59:45 2006 From: god.000 at gmail.com (Almighty Tallest Cataboligne) Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2006 14:59:45 -0500 Subject: [conquest] Conquest 8.1.2ng1 development snapshot is available In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: > > > http://radscan.com/conquest/conquest-8.1.2ng1.src.tar.gz Urr. I had to take a break from this code base, so I have not installed this yet. Busy right this moment upgrading my network with wireless hub/cards and better graphics cards. The current goal is better support for GL games on my network. My comments are based from the code submitted prior to this update. As yet I have no idea what changes Jon made in implementing what I submitted. > 1. Shields... In general, I do not like the new shield graphics... > I think the shield graphics used on the icon display is actaully much > better - I'd prefer that. The new sh graphics are just too > big/distracting. There were a few options to control live shield gfx. It should not be difficult to change the gfx to the design you want - i.e. the luminous cloud deal. > > 2. Any ideas for re-arranging the icon hud so things are more > readable? Need txf font files for all the hud stuff...I was working on this and had to walk away when I hit a few stumbling blocks. The tools to make txf's cant get ttf fonts even though my OS can use them. This leads to recoding the txf making tool. I'm not prepared to get into that yet. 3. 'Team colors'. I find this stuff actually quite confusing. Team colors should have and off option - which should be the default...in that case the original red/yellow/green should be used. Though, if no one else will use them, putting an #ifdef set around the code would do fine. > 4. Numeric indicators for heading and warp. I'd like them to be > bigger. Also, I find reading the graphical warp indicator... not so easy > - sometimes I have to search for the indicator line. Maybe this indicator > should be more obvious? The numbers can be tweaked. I know a better positioning system needs to be done for the hud. I'll take another look at the heading pointer, but with my upgrade to TFT monitors, I doubt my visual is going to help. 5. tactical grids. Look nice. The relative gamma for these needs > to be equalized however, so that a 'brightness' of 50 for example looks > the same regardless of what grid (team) you are using. I'll take some samples and compare those. Shouldnt be hard to achieve this. A couple of other changes I forgot to mention for the ng1 release: > > - reworked the vbg code so that tac and vbg aren't mutually > exclusive. A future addition will be an ALT-G hotkey for toggling the > grid. Thought I had a grid toggle key? Vbg with the tac? maybe good...the vbg should have an swap key too. - directional torp vectors are now standard for all ships. I > reworked this somewhat to base the angle() on the torp's delta direction > of fire, rather than the lastblast dir (which can change between the time > the torp fire command was sent, and when it actually shows up on your > screen). Much more reliable :) Cool, I had no idea how to do this without server data on the torp. - Cat had provided different explosion graphics for each team. I > removed this as I think explosions should look the same regardless of > what is exploding. > Hope you just replaced the data in the image resource file...I like the different explosions. My hardware and network changes should be done in a week (I hope.) I'll try and get back to this then. Besides at that point I can do some in house testing! Regards, -Cat- ---------------------------------------------- 3 4 | 2 \|/ 5--*----> 1 Thing is facing this direction /|\ 6 | 8 7 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jon at radscan.com Tue Jan 24 21:22:16 2006 From: jon at radscan.com (Jon Trulson) Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2006 21:22:16 -0700 (MST) Subject: [conquest] Conquest 8.1.2ng1 development snapshot is available In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Tue, 24 Jan 2006, Almighty Tallest Cataboligne wrote: >> >>> http://radscan.com/conquest/conquest-8.1.2ng1.src.tar.gz > > > Urr. I had to take a break from this code base, so I have not installed Noooo... > this yet. > Busy right this moment upgrading my network with wireless hub/cards and > better graphics cards. > The current goal is better support for GL games on my network. > > My comments are based from the code submitted prior to this update. As yet > I have no idea what changes Jon made in implementing what I submitted. > A couple lines or so. :) >> 1. Shields... In general, I do not like the new shield graphics... >> I think the shield graphics used on the icon display is actaully much >> better - I'd prefer that. The new sh graphics are just too >> big/distracting. > > > There were a few options to control live shield gfx. It should not be > difficult to change the gfx to the design > you want - i.e. the luminous cloud deal. > Yeah, this was not meant as a list of things for you to fix :) I was just trying to get an idea of what others thought. > >> >> 2. Any ideas for re-arranging the icon hud so things are more >> readable? > > > Need txf font files for all the hud stuff...I was working on this and had to > walk away when I hit a few stumbling blocks. > The tools to make txf's cant get ttf fonts even though my OS can use them. Ahh, yes, it requires bdf (standard X11 format) fonts. I wonder if there's a tool out there to convert a ttf to bdf... > This leads to recoding the txf making tool. I'm not prepared to get into > that yet. > > 3. 'Team colors'. I find this stuff actually quite confusing. > > > Team colors should have and off option - which should be the default...in > that case the original red/yellow/green should be used. Though, if no one > else will use them, putting an #ifdef set around the code would do fine. > But would you even use them in battle? > >> 4. Numeric indicators for heading and warp. I'd like them to be >> bigger. Also, I find reading the graphical warp indicator... not so easy >> - sometimes I have to search for the indicator line. Maybe this indicator >> should be more obvious? > > > The numbers can be tweaked. > I know a better positioning system needs to be done for the hud. > I'll take another look at the heading pointer, but with my upgrade to TFT > monitors, I doubt my visual is going to help. > Well the headin indicator is ok (need begger numbers) - it was the warp line I had trouble locating quickly. Maybe I'm just used to looking at the number... > 5. tactical grids. Look nice. The relative gamma for these needs >> to be equalized however, so that a 'brightness' of 50 for example looks >> the same regardless of what grid (team) you are using. > > > I'll take some samples and compare those. Shouldnt be hard to achieve this. > Yeah, was just going to fire them all up in gimp (at the same time) and go from there. > A couple of other changes I forgot to mention for the ng1 release: >> >> - reworked the vbg code so that tac and vbg aren't mutually >> exclusive. A future addition will be an ALT-G hotkey for toggling the >> grid. > > > Thought I had a grid toggle key? Vbg with the tac? maybe good...the vbg > should have an swap key too. > There was no grid toggle. I like the vbg, the grid isn't bad either, so yes, I'd probably use both. The vbg toggle is ALT-B. > - directional torp vectors are now standard for all ships. I >> reworked this somewhat to base the angle() on the torp's delta direction >> of fire, rather than the lastblast dir (which can change between the time >> the torp fire command was sent, and when it actually shows up on your >> screen). Much more reliable :) > > > Cool, I had no idea how to do this without server data on the torp. > Ah... Just use the torp dx/dy delta's at x/y = 0 coords and take the angle(). :) > - Cat had provided different explosion graphics for each team. I >> removed this as I think explosions should look the same regardless of >> what is exploding. >> > Hope you just replaced the data in the image resource file...I like the > different explosions. > Right now only the 'normal' explosions are present. Once animation stuff is done, they could be added back, though I'd want other opinions on them. I think that all things explode the same way in most universes :) > My hardware and network changes should be done in a week (I hope.) > I'll try and get back to this then. Besides at that point I can do some in > house testing! > Yes, I want to redo the hud geometry stuff as the first thing :) > Regards, > -Cat- > Welcome back.. -- Jon Trulson mailto:jon at radscan.com ID: 1A9A2B09, FP: C23F328A721264E7 B6188192EC733962 PGP keys at http://radscan.com/~jon/PGPKeys.txt #include "I am Nomad." -Nomad From jon at radscan.com Mon Jan 30 20:00:04 2006 From: jon at radscan.com (Jon Trulson) Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2006 20:00:04 -0700 (MST) Subject: [conquest] Conquest 8.1.2ng2 development snapshot is available Message-ID: .. at http://radscan.com/conquest/conquest-8.1.2ng2.src.tar.gz It's not linked to from the website so you won't find it there. As with the previous version, this version is not quite ready for prime-time. No changes have been made to the server in this release, only the Icon Hud stuff in the GL client. Here's the release notes section: 8.1.2ng2 (snapshot release) 1/30/2006 - This is a development 'snapshot' version of Conquest. It is intended to allow people to check it out, specifically the new icon hud from Cat, which will probably be the default hud soon :) As with ng1, distribution maintainers should probably avoid this release, as there is still alot of work to do before becoming an 'official' dev release. - The main focus of this release was to get the icon hud actually working. It now scales properly. Yay. The icon code was split out of the normal renderHud() function and given a function of it's own. Same with the geometry setup. The geometry setup was completely redone, since the code from Cat didn't quite work properly - probably because he didn't know what updateGeo() was really doing :) I will add some comments later. I promise. Some things changed as well: - the decal3, 3a, and 3b textures (red/yellow/proximity alerts) are gone. Once the geometry was done, there was simply no place to fit them in. In addition, those textures did not provide info on the ship that caused the alert. So I improvised. The alert is now identified by 'alert bars' located on either side of the iconic ship diagram. The ship causing the alert is displayed just below the icon. The bars are coded the same as in the original hud, though there is no text on them. - steady yellow = proximity alert - blink yellow = enemy ship in yellow alert range - steady red = ship in red alert range - blink red = ship in phaser range - The torp 'pip' stuff is gone as well (though the texture is still there). The main problem there was that each ship was different in where in the decal texture the pip array is located. This made it far too tedious/painful to implement correctly. I'd also like to try to make it reasonable for someone to add a new shiptype someday without severe pain. I like the idea though, so it may return in a more 'generic' way that looks and acts the same on all ships, and is therfore easier to code and maintain. - The 'animated' tractor icon decal was removed for the same reason. - The decal indicating you are carrying armies does not display the army count. Same reasons as above. I'll remove the empty '[]'s soon. - there were some bugs representing a cloaked state in the icon. Now when you are cloaked, the icon is dimmed (like your ship). - The warp indicator bar is not rendered. It was expensive in terms of rendering and I could rarely see it anyway unless I was specifically looking for it. Now the 'bar' is treated just like a scale. I much prefer this - easy to see out of the corner of your eye :) - icon shield indicator textures were 'broken' in that the textures had the color embedded in them, which made it hard to see what was going on (status). I redid the icon shield textures in alpha-blended white, which allows me to programatically select whatever color I choose at render-time. Now the shields will show the correct color indicating their strength. Same with the icon ship images (though no texture rework was needed there). The icon ship is rendered the same color as your current damage level. - there is no room for some of the standard indicators, so some are located in other areas, for example: numeric warp and heading, these are displayed to the bottom left of their respective icons. armies/ai - this is indicated by '%d armies' displayed in the upper left of the icon area, or by the action token when watching a robot. towing/towed by - this is indicated in the lower left of the icon area. destruct - this is now rendered in large, semi-transparent blinking letters centered in the viewer. Don't know why I didn't do that in the first place, 'cause it looks kinda cool :) - Some options are present that will go away: - do_icon_color, do_conv_color - sorry, but this is too messy, expensive, and confusing (for me anyway, I haven't heard from anyone else). Some of the textures will need to be re-edited (to remove/re-arrange) color, but I strongly believe that red should be DANGER regardless of which team I am flying :) - do_icon_only - the numbers gotta stay. There just is no substitute for accurate info in battle, so no need for it to be an 'option'. This will not quite work properly in ng2 anyway (you will lose the alloc gauge and the numbers will still be on :) - do_icon_hints - there is no more room to display text, and it does not look good with it overlapping the other items. It does not really work in this version anyway. This brings up the 'language' problem. I am not fluent in Klingon or Orion so it's difficult to work quickly :) In the future, I think we need to remove the text from the textures and just use the standard english fonts (except for the logo). Until these 'alien' fonts can be rendered as true fonts (converted to bdf format and then to txf), I don't see any other way. Also, I can't imagine a new user going into the CP with Orion gauges, and sticking around for long. How can you fly if you can't read the controls, hehe If they could be converted into fonts we can use, then these alien languages could be easily supported for those true uber geeks among you who require authenticity :) - do_icon_test - this was more of a debugging thing and ate up way to much time in the primary rendering loop. If this is added later (really only a developer would want it), some other way can be found.. like ALT-L = Lamp Test :) The logic for this has been mostly removed/disabled, though the option remains - just to tease you. - changed default WxH to 1024x768 as 800x600 is difficult with the iconhud. - redid drawIconHUDDecal() in GL.c (moved there in ng1) to no longer hardcode sizes (now that updateIconGeo() is working). - uiPutColor() can understand alpha now. - fixed several minor conqinit parser issues. - ALT-G will toggle the tac display on/off in LR scan. - should be able to switch HUD modes in options now and get a proper display. Some of the colors may be wrong though (due to the remnants of the icon color related options mentioned above). - My fps at the default resolution went up from 51 to 83. Not really noticable in play, but still comforting. :) -- Jon Trulson mailto:jon at radscan.com ID: 1A9A2B09, FP: C23F328A721264E7 B6188192EC733962 PGP keys at http://radscan.com/~jon/PGPKeys.txt #include "I am Nomad." -Nomad