IceUI

[rattle]

Are you going to make it compatible to the current build too? Eventually, you have to anyway.

have you tried that link, 5 posts above yours?

Yes.

There are two versions on UF.. One for the current release and one for the latest SVN builds of Spring..

The version for the SVN build is a bit broken atm though if you update it..

Alright. Got the SVN version and it seems to work, although there are some issues.

The resource bars cause the biggest drop in FPS for me. 15-20 fps with resource bars tab visible, ~30+ fps without. That's an improvement to the CPU spikes it caused in the beginning.

The issues I have is that some text is misplaced for the system menu and sometimes the build menu too. Dunno why, in tweak mode they appear to be fine, then again they don't. No idea...

Looks good so far, except that low end machines can't make much use of it (yet).

[MelTraX]

Yeah, that's exactly the stuff that is broken atm.. That's because we changed some stuff about position/size handling but it's not finished yet.. I'm sorry that those errors made it into the release but I didn't bother to undo it because it's just the version for Spring SVN builds and only one or two people play actual games with that..

Thanks for those performance tests.. I'll do my best to improve performance where I can but maybe low end machines will have to stick to the default GUI.. That's a bit unfair because IceUI makes some gameplay stuff easier (at least it should) but as I said last post, it will take some time to draw..

To all: If there's something besides performance and the obviously missing parts you don't like about IceUI, please tell me because it's usually not much work to add another option or to change the default settings or to make a little fix..

[LOrDo]

Yah, IceUI eats FPS as of now because of springs font outlining system. trepan I think it was already replaced this with a new LUA font renderer next version which is better and way more efficent.

[MelTraX]

Yeah, the font is the worst but not the only part that eats FPS.. Trepans Lua font stuff brings major improvements in that area but I won't use it until he made some changes that make it easier to use.. Maybe he already made those changes in his huge patch he's working on atm..

Another thing that will come with the next version is a widget selector made with IceUI. It will have multiple columns sorted by groups and for the GUI it will provide the functionality to choose between the default (if available), the new or none of them for each window..

[BigHead]

This is all wrong. My computer can handle running spring with huge terrain and dozens (hundreds) of units at 60 FPS, but when I turn IceUI on it falls to average of 25 FPS. The UI itself isn't anything spectacular - it's just a few boxes and some text. I don't blame you by any means for that. It's great that you are working on a framework that would make creating lua widgets easier. However lua obviusly isn't good for the job. This kind of UI shouldn't take more than 1-5% of performance but it takes 50 (depending on machine, of course).
Menus, buttons - this kind of stuff should be handled by game engine itself and lua should be able to use it. Just like developing for windows (or linux) where you don't need to draw menus line by line. It's done by OS API.
You wrote in some post that new UI won't be for everyone. Just think of it - it's a simple user interface. How come a computer that can handle doom3 can't handle that. I think it's spring engine that needs UI framework implemented, not LUA.
Sorry to be so negative but as (quite) experienced coder I find this ridiculous.

[imbaczek]

World of warcraft uses Lua almost exclusively to do UI and it's still fast. Of course a UI mod can make it slow, just like in Spring, but that usually can be worked around. No need to bash LuaUI for some particular mod not being finished.

[BigHead]

You misunderstood me. I think that it's great that LUA is implemented. After all it's a tool that almost anyone can use and so ithere is much more inovation in this area. People who wouldn't download and compile spring source can create superb widgets. For example Idlebuilders2 changed the way I play Spring :)
What I tried to say is that work done by this framework should really be done by engine itself becouse current LUA implementation is obviously too slow.

Offtopic: Btw can anyone point me at spring documentation for lua? Link in wiki shows nothing.

[MelTraX]

Most of the documentation is in Spring\LuaUI\API.txt..

I agree that the performance loss is ridiculous atm.. Just give me and the Lua implementation in Spring a little more time.

It's kinda wierd though that it depends a lot on the machine it runs on.. With the current SVN version of Spring and the current SVN version of IceUI I don't lose a single FPS when turning on IceUI.. But I know that it's only on my computer.. Other people still have major performance decrease..

I planned several improvements that should increase performance now and I promise that I'm close to actually implementing them this time .. The only things holding me off atm are some exams and similar stuff in the next weeks.. The last one is on 2007-08-10 so after that I can really get some work done with IceUI..

[AF]

I think its worth noting that ICE UI is an alpha, it isnt feature complete, and as such to expect a super fast optimized widget would be foolish.

Having said that also bear in mind this isn't a commercially produced UI either, its a hobby, be grateful they've gotten as far as they have on their own steam.

[BigHead]

I really appreciate what you guys are doing for spring. Btw AF your AI is great :) AI-making has been my hobby for a long time and If I didn't start to work (as a java coder btw) I'd probably make AI for spring as well. Unfortunately studying and working take too much time.

[udm]

Hi,

I noticed that I'm unable to build wind generators when IceUI is loaded. It causes the game to crash. I'm using build 53 of IceUI

-edit-

Nvm I believe it's because R53 is incompatible with spring 0.75b2. When's the next version coming up meltrax?

[ZellSF]

Hi,

I noticed that I'm unable to build wind generators when IceUI is loaded. It causes the game to crash. I'm using build 53 of IceUI

-edit-

Nvm I believe it's because R53 is incompatible with spring 0.75b2. When's the next version coming up meltrax?

It is out. Run the updater.

Also, if you're playing Complete Annihilation, join #ca and ask there how to it to work nicely with IceUI.

[LOrDo]

...What updater?

[MelTraX]

Build 53 is the latest and should work fine with 0.75b2..

There is a problem with Complete Annihilation Beta 2.1 though because Quantum played around with IceUI and forgot about it..

It is fixed in the SVN builds of CA and you could also change IceUI to not load GUI elements from the mod archive.. This requires some knowledge about Lua though..

The updater is in the Accessories folder (like I said in the UF file description).. It won't update anything if you already have build 53 though because I didn't have time to work on IceUI lately..

My last exam is on 2007-08-06.. That's when I will continue active work in the Spring community..

Thanks for helping out answering questions, ZellSF..

[AF]

I downlaoded it and ran the updater and got this:

the players pane panel doesnt start at the edge of a screen, so because I have a widescreen resolution it started behind the message panel

Dragging items too close to the edge in tweak mode makes them dissapear. If you carry on draggign it becomes apparent theyre now on the other side of the screen btu this si a problem as you have a moment of a second or two where the widget isnt drawn at all and is unrecoverable, resulting in you loosing a resource bar or tooltips. Thsi features should be removed as it prevents the user from snapping the panels to the edge of the screen.

Holding shift while resizing doesnt keep a panels proportions

The energy resource bar didnt obey the alpha settings I gave it whereas everything else did

[Licho]

I already had wget and it doesnt know --no certificate switch.
This breaks the updater which deletes existing ice ui and downloads nothing..

[MelTraX]

Hmm.. Are you using Windows or Linux? And from which IceUI version were you updating?

Because the updater cancels if wget doesn't end with exit status 0 since a few revisions..

[LOrDo]

The updater is in the Accessories folder (like I said in the UF file description).. It won't update anything if you already have build 53 though because I didn't have time to work on IceUI lately..

Ack, how did I not notice that? thanks

[Linebacker]

Where can I get a version of IceUI for Spring 0.74b3?

[MelTraX]

This should be the latest version for Spring 0.74b3.. You need 7-Zip or any other archiver that supports the archive type to extract it..

IceUI (r51) - Latest for 0.74b3

Just extract it into the folder Spring\LuaUI\Widgets but be sure to delete a newer version of IceUI if you already have it in that folder..