Messages

91

Builds & Ports / Re: Android Port

« on: December 01, 2013, 10:36:53 pm »

Worked up a different layout. The idea was to make it more comprehensive (camera actions tend towards left, while unit actions tend towards the right) and also to reduce the cluttered button hell a bit.

Other changes between the are: switched Reserve Crouch/rest of reserve buttons to avoid fat-fingering the real crouch button, making you lose TUs. Since the other Reserve options are to be made into one big toggle button it'll be a lot easier to hit (and harder to hit the actual crouch button by accident)

92

Open Feedback / Re: Mouse sensitivity setting please?

« on: November 30, 2013, 07:27:24 am »

As far as I know, it moves exactly the same as your Windows cursor, so try changing those mouse settings

93

Builds & Ports / Re: Android Port

« on: November 28, 2013, 08:52:43 pm »

I'm not sure if that's a very good base. PocketUFO was made for use with a stylus, and the point of all this is for the game to work well with a finger. Furthermore getting OpenXcom to work in a portrait orientation sounds like more hell than it's worth. (It would be cool though! I just think it would have to be an either/or type of deal, because getting the game to adapt either way would be rough)

I'll think of other layouts that would restore the older button order. It might cut down on viewing area, though.


As for the basescape, yeah I see what you mean. A simpler solution I guess would just be 4 taller menu buttons (with text) that open up new menus for the rest of the options.
"Manage Bases" -Contains Base Information, Build New Base, Build Facilities
"Manage XCom Forces" -Soldiers, Equip Craft
"Manage R&D" -Research, Manufacturing
"Manage Inventory and Hires" -Buy/Hire, Sell/Sack, Transfer
And a smaller one to go back to Geoscape.

I just thought the icons would have been a good idea since that would require the least amount of coding effort (simply reorganizing the button zones) without having to code new menus.

EDIT: I've thought about how movement/looking can work too without magnification. Obviously all these are a lot more than simple changes, but seems like the most intuitive way to do it on a touchscreen.

Tap on a unit to select it (Automatically center camera, too? Might be too much)

To move the unit, tap the unit again to enter 'Move Mode' where the red 3D cursor appears. Then you can tap on the map AND/OR drag the box to the destination. Dragging the box would allow for much finer movement. Then tap the box again to confirm the destination.

For looking, just dragging from the soldier to where to look should work, especially if tiles get shaded to show the FOV before the finger lets go. This would work best if it was outside of Move Mode, but would be a bit more cumbersome.


Other ideas would be adding buttons for entering moving/looking mode, but those might take up valuable space.

Shooting would work like the move mode, where you can tap the target and/or drag the target cursor around, then tap it again to confirm the shot.

The idea is that the shooting/moving targets are separate from the actual 'cursor' and instead are objects that you can drag around.
EDIT: After trying out PocketUFO, this is actually exactly how it's done there. Good idea then?


As for camera movement, drag scrolling should be fine, across all modes.

Do we have any control over the magnifying glass, or is that just given by SDL? For example, could it be made so that doing the pinch zoom gesture in the view area makes it zoom in the entire mapview (but not the UI)?

94

Builds & Ports / Re: Android Port

« on: November 28, 2013, 03:09:52 am »

This looks really nice. I think the next unit buttons are fine how they are, but maybe switching the abort and end turn buttons would be better because there's no confirmation for ending a turn and fat fingering the end turn button when you meant to fire could be disastrous.

Also, instead of a list, making the reserve cluster a single button that cycles through the options could be better, as well as easier to implement. It would start on green by default, and you would have to touch it three times to get it to autoshot.

Thanks,
Red

Yeah, I thought of this too, but with the Reserve for Crouching/Dump TUs buttons from TFTD being regular in OpenXcom (something I forgot to include in the mockup) that might be tricky to hit since they're so thin. I'll think of something.

EDIT: Okay I've got it. I'll have the 4 reserve buttons act as one big button that cycles through them like you said, and then next to it will be the Reserve for Crouching button. To set TUs to 0 that can be assigned to long-pressing the "Don't Reselect Unit" button or something. Not super intuitive, but then again neither was right-clicking it.

Revised version. I think another thing that could be done (since buttons have a lot more room now) is little text labels! I don't know if it's better off being done through the text engine or by adding it to the graphics themselves, so I'll just leave it alone for now.


I also got rid of the black outline sorta for the regular reserve buttons to give the impression that they're actually 1 button.


And here's a WIP of the Basescape changes I had in mind. The missing button is Base Information which I figure could be made to come up by tapping the base name/location/funds bit

95

Builds & Ports / Re: Android Port

« on: November 27, 2013, 07:19:40 pm »

I've been thinking a while about how Xcom could be modded a bit to work well for fingers on a 4-inch screen

Here's a battlescape mockup I drew up, and I don't think it would be too hard to modify the code to have it like this (is the UI externalized at all anyways?)



I was thinking, to make the buttons even wider, End Turn and Minimap buttons can go up next to the Retreat/Options buttons. Even further, the 'Done With Unit' button can be removed and added as a long-press for Next Unit instead to make them even wider. What do you think? Is it fine the way it is or would that be better?

Also, for the TU reservations, I was thinking tapping any of those buttons would just bring up a big list to pick from instead, kinda like the firemode list.


As for geoscape/basescape, I think using icon grid menus instead of lists would also be hugely beneficial. I'll make mockups of those later.

96

Suggestions / Re: [CORE] Replacing TFTD "Expend Remaining TUs" button with "Hold Fire" function

« on: November 27, 2013, 04:52:42 pm »

Yeah, sorry to be blunt, but that's your own fault.

The RMB failsafe IS the result of thought, because if it was just left click-activated, it would be VERY MUCH MORE prone to misclicks.

The other fact is that RMB use is so rare otherwise that yes, you'd have to try pretty hard to do it on accident.

97

Suggestions / Camera smoothly follows bullet

« on: November 26, 2013, 10:13:15 pm »

Sometimes it can be jarring with the camera jumping around when a bullet leaves the screen, so what if the camera tracks it smoothly in the center of the screen (after it reaches the edge of the screen the first time) until it hits something? This would also help those few cases where it hits something in the corner and you can't see what it hit very well.

As an option, of course

98

Programming / Re: New graphical option: Black bands to keep aspect ratio

« on: September 07, 2013, 05:42:03 pm »

I've done some work on OP's topic, but only for the OpenGL renderer. I stopped working on it because I couldn't figure out how to do it for the SDL mode and I couldn't build OpenXcom without it running extremely slowly (this has nothing to do with my patch, however, probably just my build environment isn't quite right)

It is completely finished though, for OpenGL. The only thing that hasn't been done is adding the option to the ingame menu.

You can shamelessly steal it, if you'd like: here's the original post of it

99

Open Feedback / Re: Feels like enemies are more difficult. MYSTERY SOLVED - Warboy is a meanie

« on: June 20, 2013, 11:00:44 pm »

I don't wanna live on a planet where X-COM is reasonable.

It should at least be as reasonable as the original. This is a bit too far if you ask me.

At the very least, could it be an option? Adding it just because "lol Xcom is hard" is a bit shallow...

100

Suggestions / Re: Aspect Ratio Correction option

« on: May 20, 2013, 08:13:44 pm »

Maybe the game could have an indicator marking which resolutions are x2, x3, etc. multiples of the games native resolution? This would be helpful for selecting larger resolutions and maintaining the games native aspect ratio.

No need for this since I have this feature (mostly) done. I just can't build it properly :X

But if you wanted to know you can just do the calculations yourself, 320x200 is the base resolution. It would also be an issue because the game has a feature to change the base resolution, so that would need to be accounted for.

101

Open Feedback / Re: Seperate mod that improves the graphics, adds more skin/hair colours only?

« on: May 14, 2013, 08:57:20 pm »

I honestly agree that we should get classic AI at least as an option. I think getting reaction fire on every single step is a bit ridiculous, especially on Beginner. I think I had 5 guys gunned down by THE SAME SECTOID during MY TURN because every time they took a step they would get shot at.

102

Suggestions / Re: Aspect Ratio Correction option

« on: May 10, 2013, 10:20:35 pm »

Hmm, I tried the deps package from there and now I'm getting "openxcom.exe has stopped working" on launch.

Sigh. I have a feeling it's yaml. If I replace it with the one I built then it runs, but it still has massive slowdown in the battlescape. It's not FPS slowdown, it stays at 60+fps the whole time, but the animation speeds are almost like they are all set to 1 even though they're at 6, even when using the software mode with no scaler at 640x400.

103

Suggestions / Re: Aspect Ratio Correction option

« on: May 10, 2013, 05:57:09 am »

I'm building the Release version then copying the .exe to the game directory.

Curiously, it happens if I build stock 0.9 from source, so I'm not sure what the problem is, and the resulting .exe from it is a good 337kb larger than the released build...

Would anyone mind uploading their deps folder? I'd like to rule that out, at least. The only other difference I can think of is including windows.h instead of afxres.h in OpenXcom.rc since the MFC library doesn't seem to come with VC Express 2008.

104

Open Feedback / Re: Feels like enemies are more difficult. MYSTERY SOLVED - Warboy is a meanie

« on: May 09, 2013, 10:53:11 pm »

I've noticed this too. I'm getting reaction fire from pretty much every step I take in Alien sight, usually from the same unit. And this is all on Beginner!

105

Suggestions / Re: Aspect Ratio Correction option

« on: May 09, 2013, 09:09:26 pm »

Indeed. Using the 'auto' setting I have will make it letterbox to 16:10. You won't notice a difference if you're already on a 16:10 resolution, but if you're using 1920x1080 like me it will letterbox it to not be as wide.

Auto doesn't just make it 16:10. Just in case the base resolution feature gets expanded upon later, the auto setting will calculate the ratio based on that. So if you change baseResolutionX/Y to 640x480, then 'auto' will set it to 4:3 instead, for example.

Can someone else try building my fork for me and running it? I'm still getting a lot of slowdown in Battlescape even with my code commented out and I'm not sure why, it might just be an issue with my dependencies. I'm running VS2008...