Better loading texts

[Caydr]

MTR you say? I'd agree, but 1) it's been forgotten about and 2) there's some original ideas here.

Can a system be set up to do something better than just an indication of what's currently loading?

One way it'd be useful is to have random text messages - I think every mod out there has got like 20 starting screens just for the sake of having more gameplay hints. That's like 150 KB minimum just to display 2 KB max of text.

Another good thing would be if there were variables, like:

%mod% - displays the mod's name
%map% - displays the map's name
%commdeath% - displays the comm death status

and more for pretty much everything else you can think of.

Then you need a very basic positioning system. I'd recommend just a super simple screen centering, both horizontal and vertical. Fancy stuff can come later.

Then move the loading status text to the bottom of the screen, just above the Spring version number.

This way you could have things like:

%tip%

You are playing %mod%
on %map%.

Commander death is %COMMDEATHSTATUS%,
D-Gun limiting is %DGUNLIMITING%.

Note that I put comm death status and d-gun limiting in all-caps, meaning that it would appear as "ON" or "OFF" instead of "on" "off". Perhaps also make it bold. Maybe %Commdeathstatus% gives you "ON"/"OFF", and %COMMDEATHSTATUS% gives you "ON"/"OFF". %tiP% might give you the tip in italics.

Tips would be defined in the same format as the death message list.

[jcnossen]

I vote for lua loading screens! Otherwise everyone is going to have remarks about the layout anyway.

[smoth]

I vote for lua loading screens! Otherwise everyone is going to have remarks about the layout anyway.

+1

[imbaczek]

I vote for lua loading screens! Otherwise everyone is going to have remarks about the layout anyway.

+1 is the only sensible answer.

[AF]

At least have the option to outline it, having white text borderless text in the middle of a big white nuke explosion doesnt do well for the eyes.

Or at least move it out of the way to the side.

[Michilus_nimbus]

I made some modifications to the code some time ago which allowed the mod to change the size and position of the loading text. Nobody showed interest back then, and unfortunately I lost it

[smoth]

I did but I also did not hear much else about it.

[jcnossen]

And you could have cool loading animations as well.. progress bars and such..

trepan?

[Caydr]

Well if you want to talk about cool stuff, why not have a mod-defined "whatever.cob" running a mod-defined "whatever.3do"? Have some ninja peewee action going on during the loading sequence!

...Or we could just have text.

[trepan]

Ya, I almost posted a "you could use lua to script this" message
myself, but I figure folks I tired of hearing it from me. I'm glad you
stepped up instead

This would be quite easy. The LuaOpenGL library is reuseable,
except for a few calls that depend of the mod being loaded (like
gl.Unit(), gl.UnitShape(), and gl.DrawListAtUnit()). You could
load some of the other libraries as the related initializations were
completed (LuaUnitDefs, LuaFeatureDefs, etc...). This would get
you a little more information to play with.

A lot of the call-outs in LuaSyncedRead would have to be nil'ed,
or the LuaLoadScreen could provide its own calls instead.

jcnossen: so there you have it ... but I'm otherwise occupied.

[Zoy64]

What about having unit stats

(i dont care if i put the wrong the stat numbers, this is an example.)
Example:

Zeus
Health:180
Strength:50
Speed:20
Tip:Best used for light attacks blah, blah, blah, etc.

And you have an awesome pose or something of the units being described or something of that nature.

[Tobi]

Put down comparisons then, not plain stats. I don't think people will learn really much from the raw numbers...

[zwzsg]

Since Dune2, I hate units info screen that reads like:

Heavy Tank:
armor: heavy
weapons: heavy
movement: slow

And much prefer raw stats. With the actual numbers, I can make out the difference between two heavy tanks, or know exacly how much heavier than a medium tank it is.

[rattle]

What about a combination of both?

[Tobi]

Since Dune2, I hate units info screen that reads like:

Heavy Tank:
armor: heavy
weapons: heavy
movement: slow

And much prefer raw stats. With the actual numbers, I can make out the difference between two heavy tanks, or know exacly how much heavier than a medium tank it is.

Maybe I didn't put it clearly enough, but raw stats are fine IMHO, just not for a single unit only. There should be some units next to each other so you can think like 'hey, the jeffy is faster then the flash but has less health'. (This is especially so because players don't know the scale of all stats since it are (almost) all fictional scales).

If you put down the stats of a single unit you assume the player is capable of memorizing all stats until he sees a loadscreen with a different unit on it.

[Zoy64]

What about having an Arm and Core comparison.
Jeffy Weasel
Side:Arm | Side:Core
HP:50 | HP:50
etc | etc
yadda, yadda, so on and so forth.

Get what im saying?

[Dragon45]

I would like to add that all info screens should be viewable ingame in some capacity. Because I know that many people will want that info on-call at some point or another (especially if the map/etc loads quickly).

[trepan]

Dragon45
That would be a simple LuaUI widget.

[trepan]

Kinda like this (only works with SVN builds):
http://trepan.homelinux.net/spring/gui_loadscreens.lua