Topics

1

Programming / Scaled geoscape backgrounds

« on: July 01, 2013, 04:13:21 pm »

As requested, here are scaled versions of the geoscape backgrounds for 640x400 and 960x600 resolutions. It took a while as I did some manual smoothing of the button images, rotation graphics, and fonts.



There may need to be localised versions of these but those can come later.

edit: Whoops, forgot to copy and paste a couple smoothed letters on the 3x version. Fixed.

2

Resources / New armour sprites

« on: June 23, 2013, 02:51:35 am »

So, now that the vanilla extra looks are completed, I'm entering phase two of my extra sprites project...

Firstly, I wanted to make the flying armour a little more distinct from the front without fundamentally altering it. So I went back to the paperdoll, and there's apparently an invisible device strapped to the front of their chests, so I thought: let's make it visible.

Next up: power armour and flying armour with no helmets at all.
After that: with cool visory things that leave most of the head visible.

3

Offtopic / Xcom-like: Massive Chalice kickstarter from Doublefine

« on: June 01, 2013, 01:21:01 pm »

In case any of you haven't seen it yet, Doublefine is kickstarting a second project, and this time it's a fantasy-themed turn based strategy/management game:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doublefine/double-fines-massive-chalice

They specifically list Xcom as one of the project's inspirations. (and a few other TBS games, like Final Fantasy Tactics and Fire Emblem) It looks pretty interesting and I've already backed.

4

Programming / UI updates?

« on: January 21, 2013, 03:20:36 am »

Hey all,

Having familiarised myself sufficiently with C++, I'm thinking an excellent place to start contributing code would be where I'm familiar- in UI development.

I wanted to run my thoughts by everyone to see if they'd step on any toes before starting, but in essence, what I'd like to do is update the options screen, and expose all those "hidden" options in the .cfg file to the user so they can be changed on the fly.

This has a few steps:

1) Implement some modern UI concepts in a way that fits the graphical lexicon of XCOM and OpenXcom. I'm talking check boxes, radio buttons, sliders, (for setting things like volume or animation speed) and most importantly in terms of updating the options screen, a tab interface. Mostly this will involve changing draw routines in existing controls, but the last two will take some extra coding. This will probably be where the majority of the time sink is, and will mostly involve translating graphics into hardcoded draw routines, seeing we don't appear to have external image loading yet.
2) Draft the new layout in paint shop pro. (as it happens, I've already completed this step in terms of the basic options screen in order to think about what I'd need to do, see my attachment)
3) Translate that draft into code.
4) Add some future proofing UI features, such as a container surface for groups of radio buttons, (or even just a list control that takes parameters to automatically add radio buttons) a scrollable text list that incorporates a scrollbar, an unscrollable text list, a combo box for setting the display resolution, etc... All of this should make it easier to make changes in the future, or to add new UI screens that might benefit from them, for example a new crew-ordering screen.

My draft idea should not only give us about six tabs to work with in terms of space for options, but also have more room on each screen, as the UI elements I'd implement take up less space than the current approach of using a text button for almost everything, and needing several grouped text buttons in order to present a continuous range where a slider would be very efficient. (although I don't think I'll be making graphical buttons until such time as we can load PNGs to use for buttons, because hardcoding each different graphic sounds very annoying)

Does this sound like something relatively useful?

5

Suggestions / Maximised windowed?

« on: January 06, 2013, 02:05:26 pm »

Would it be possible to have a maximised windowed option that hides the OS taskbar? While the fullscreen option is great, if I want to be able to alt-tab or use my second monitor, I need to quit the game if I'm using it. Admittedly it's a low-impact feature and thus by no means a priority if it's at all difficult to do, but it'd probably be a much more convenient way to play full-screen.

(This option would have to lock you into your desktop resolution, too, I guess)