Games and their Widgets

[SirMaverick]

Disabling local widgets as not to confuse noobs is okay I think, as long as there is an easy to find option to renable them. I know there is one for CA but I could not find it anymore. (didnt really bother to search though but should not have to imo)

There is a sticky in CA forum.
Should not have to search? If we put all in one place and show it by default you cry it's cluttered. As said, you cannot please all with one solution.

[Jazcash]

@ Smoth: Ok, finally downloaded Gundam, (took me 5 hours) and tried it for the first time in ages. Now I completely understand your post, widgets aren't locked at all and are also chucked in by default, just disabled. It took me 2 minutes to get my GUI to how I wanted it compared to a 2 hours with CA.

I was just about to make a nice post on how impressive Gundam is, but I'll make a separate post in the GRTS thread soon, just to keep this thread on topic.

Well, I don't have much more to say, other than sorry for including Gundam in my first post, which I updated.

[quantum]

I know there is one for CA but I could not find it anymore. (didnt really bother to search though but should not have to imo)

It should probably be placed on top of the F11 widget list. And display "This will void your warranty!". If a user knows about F11 he expects local widgets to appear there, so this will actually be less confusing.

[SirMaverick]

It took me 2 minutes to get my GUI to how I wanted it compared to a 2 hours with CA.

Exaggeration is always convincing.

[Jazcash]

It took me 2 minutes to get my GUI to how I wanted it compared to a 2 hours with CA.

Exaggeration is always convincing.

I expected somebody to comment on that. It is actually very accurate. I spent between 1-3 hours sorting it out in CA and I can tell you now I just did the Gundam one very quickly indeed. Probably about one minute tbh.

[SirMaverick]

I expected somebody to comment on that. It is actually very accurate. I spent between 1-3 hours sorting it out in CA and I can tell you now I just did the Gundam one very quickly indeed. Probably about one minute tbh.

I don't like the default setup either. But I take way less then 10 minutes to change all settings etc.
Even with disabling widget locking, toggling all widgets and menu settings I cant spend an hour on that.

[Jazcash]

I expected somebody to comment on that. It is actually very accurate. I spent between 1-3 hours sorting it out in CA and I can tell you now I just did the Gundam one very quickly indeed. Probably about one minute tbh.

I don't like the default setup either. But I take way less then 10 minutes to change all settings etc.
Even with disabling widget locking, toggling all widgets and menu settings I cant spend an hour on that.

The reason it took me so long is because I was using the MT build until somebody told me not to, had an old CA config that was borked. Then I found the whole LuaUI system crashed for some reason I couldn't work out. After about an hour of toggling widgets on and off, asking people and all sorts, I found it was a confliction between Stereo3D and Ice UI. This was the problem that ate up the most time.

I also spent about half an hour wondering how to get local widgets enabled without using Chilli.

Maybe three hours is an exaggeration but I wouldn't say it was short of two hours at all.

[Forboding Angel]

Evo includes everything you need to play the game. Just because it uses metal and energy as the resources does not mean that it functions the same. Your local widgets will break the game, imagine how much of a wonderful image that puts across to newbies, moreover, it keeps a level playing field.

Also, evo uses enforced communism, meaning that your allies' metal income (barring energy) is exactly the same as yours. Team resource bars are not needed. If your ally is excessing it is pooling into your storage and every other ally's storage.

There is nothing that you need to play the game that you do not have available to you right form the start. There are a few things disabled by default that are there if you choose to use them. If you don't like a particular element of the gui you can disable that piece.

Sanada summed up the point perfectly. Also realize that if we make customizations to existing widgets, we don't necessarily change the name of those widgets and if we did, you wouldn't know what they were, and if local widgets were enabled you would have a doubling of duty. Local widgets being allowed might not be as big of a deal if local stuff didn't override gameside stuff (some moron dev thought that that was the way to go).

As I said, in evo, you have EVERYTHING you need to play the game. If you think that something should be added, then perhaps you should ask me. Also, when you are buggering around with your UI while spectating a game and asking me questions while I'm playing vs someone who is better than me (cucumber), it's kinda silly to expect detailed answers (which is exactly what happened).

Ctrl + F11 is your friend.

[zwzsg]

Also realize that if we make customizations to existing widgets, we don't necessarily change the name of those widgets

Speaking of which, Smoth, would you mind renaming your healthbar widget to something slightly different so it doesn't override my external widget name so I can toggle your team colored healthbar and use back my regular healthbars?

local stuff didn't override gameside stuff

Not what I saw in GRTS.

[smoth]

Go ahead and rename it to "teamcolor healthbars" in the svn z. When I do the hot fix I'll be sure to include the update.

[MidKnight]

I am so confused. I posted this here, but it ended up in the GRTS release thread. What happened?

Anyway, this was supposed to go right after Sanada's first post:

I'm going to have to agree with smoth here, and not just because I'm a CA dev.

IceUI is old, inflexible, and unmaintained. I am a huge IceUI fan (or was, in any case), but it is in no way ideal for a gaming project that isn't *A, or even one that wants to stay current. IceUI is also a huge pain to develop for, and there's nobody to ask if you get stuck (correct me if I'm wrong, MelTraX).

Chilli, on the other hand, is new, extensible, and very actively developed. I recommend looking over the code before you call it messy.

On a final note, if you really dislike Chilli, try opening up the EPIC menu and navigating to 'Settings -> misc. -> local widget config -> enable local widgets'

[Jazcash]

On a final note, if you really dislike Chilli, try opening up the EPIC menu and navigating to 'Settings -> misc. -> local widget config -> enable local widgets'

That's what I'm saying, Evo disabled that option. Not sure about any other games but Evo seems to be the only one that doesn't allow for local widgets.

Also, I can understand hugely why some people prefer Chilli over Ice UI, especially developers, but for a player looking for a simple, basic GUI, Ice UI seems more friendly for me. Ofc, as Chilli is in active development, and IceUI isn't, I'm sure Chilli will soon best IceUI in all areas. But currently, I'm still an IceUI man.

Regardless, this thread isn't about IceUI and Chilli.

[Google_Frog]

The aim of the Zk UI is to work for newcomers to Spring. There is a lot larger market for people who have not tweaked their Spring UI to perfection than those who have.

The complaints about the Zk UI seem to be based on quite old information. The UI has recently improved as things which I think are crap and a waste of time (massive screenhog chat, chat bubbles) have been turned off and the poorly written widgets written in the infancy of chilli that could take 50% of the users CPU (selections, chilli tip) have been replaced (though chillitip isn't quite done).There are also some new things like a great buildmenu.

It would take a lot of little tweaks to a BA UI to get something that works in ZK purely because of all the little workarounds that have been forced upon us. In Zk storage is set to 10000 to prevent the engine from stealing your excess energy so it can be used for overdrive. The terraform unit has massive HP and would block out everything on the minimap if there was not an exception for it in minimap events. Commands such as Jump are always a pain to get working properly. There are extra fields in Healthbars to display things like slowdown and jump reload. These are just the things I have worked on so I am sure there are more that other devs have added.

[smoth]

Baw jaz is a lazy girl who didn't post his nice post he promised!

[Jazcash]

Baw jaz is a lazy girl who didn't post his nice post he promised!

o rly

[CarRepairer]

The reason it took me so long is because I was using the MT build until somebody told me not to

After about an hour of toggling widgets on and off, asking people and all sorts, I found it was a confliction between Stereo3D and Ice UI.

These quotes only prove our point. MT spring and IceUI are the reasons CA broke for you. 90% of your "two hours" is because of those two things. If it hadn't been for those, then as a spring pro you know it would have taken you under 10 minutes to configure the widgets.

[Forboding Angel]

Thanks to work Car as done with evo, the gui for newbies will look just like this

The only overlaps that occur are at extremely low resolutions in 4:3 like 1024x768, and tbh, if someone is playing at that low of a res then other than telling them to raise it, there isn't much I can do for them.