[MOD] [WIP] GTTS:It's Coming...

[Shrooblord]

Something wonderful is about to happen...

 

 

Stay tuned.

[jmattspartacus]

This looks really exciting! How's it coming? I'm piddling with making an update to that other gate mod myself, just for myself and funsies.

Are there any good places to look for examples for gui modding? That gui you've got going looks slick!

[CaptPatrick01]

***JUMP GATE CONSTRUCTION IN PROGRESS***|***DEFEND IT FROM PIRATE ATTACK UNTIL THE TIME ELAPSES***

Or that's how I would imagine the disclaimer anyway. Call me hyped!

[Ravien]

YES!!!

[Shrooblord]

Thanks for voicing your interest guys! The mod is still very much under development. I had been away from Avorion for a long while as life called me to other duties, but I've been chiselling away at this again quite contently as of late.

 

Current progress report:

• Players can create the Gate Beacon "factory" unit.
  
• Players can cause the Hyperspace Gate to start forming using the UI interaction (as shown in the video).
  
• The "mock UI data" you saw in the video has been replaced with actual data, i.e. it shows actual Sectors in the Galaxy where you have set up another Gate Beacon to form a link towards.
  
• The mod keeps track of which Sectors are currently forming Gates towards each other.
  
• The Gate is "built up" over multiple stages, taking real-time time to build up its shape, from tiny, 200 HP structures, up until the 200k HP monstrosities they are when near-completion. Obviously, the 200 HP babies are very hard to defend against attack (which is the point) -- I myself have already had my Gates curbstomped by Pirates or Xsotan a couple of times --, while the 200k HP monsters are almost invulnerable in large parts of the Galaxy. This adds a nice difficulty curve to creating and nurturing these Gates currently, and should only improve as I script in special events specifically for this mod.
  
• Completed Gates are functionally identical to "basegame Gates" in the way that they are invulnerable, contain wormhole-like travel, are named after the Sector they lead to and that they display cardinal directions, i.e. "SW Gate to...", and that you pay for travel through them depending on your relations with the owning faction. In fact, at the end of the Gate building process, the script spawns an actual Gate Entity, not just something that mimics its behaviour (also already shown in the video).
  
• Added some security checks to prevent (intentional) misuse of the new Hyperspace Gate functionality.
  
• You can place a lot of Gates in one system before things start to "break down". It is advisable not to build an excessive amount of multiple Gates in the same direction (> 8), but otherwise, Gate placement looks very natural. This allows you to create "hub systems" almost like an interstellar central station where all trains depart leaving for everywhere.
  
• The mod is 0.20.2 Security Update-compliant and runs smoothly on the current 0.20.3 Beta Branch.
  

 

My most recent development has been a little struggle with getting the Gates to play nice with Alliance ships. Currently, only player-made Gates are supported; Alliance vessels appear not to want to trigger the appropriate interaction UI. It's a simple permissions issue, and I am currently investigating where along the grapevine the message is being blocked.

 

All summarised, the core functionality appears to be working very well! If you want, I could release an extremely rough and cheaty alpha version Soon™. It will be horribly unbalanced, there will be none of the cool scripting or Event-driven functionality I want to have in there in the future, and it will allow you to make a Gate from anywhere to anywhere else, which is also not what I want for the final product, but the core functionality should work already. You could have your Gates, and it would be a good testing grounds for bug-finding for me. ^^

 

Now, to reply far too late to what you've said...

 

Are there any good places to look for examples for gui modding? That gui you've got going looks slick!

For this, I looked long and hard at the original game's UI code and the documentation, but also especially at Laserzwei's Complex Mod. Couldn't have done it without that firm groundwork in place. When this is released / in some form of releasable alpha state, feel free to poke around in my code to see how I did the UI.

 

***JUMP GATE CONSTRUCTION IN PROGRESS***|***DEFEND IT FROM PIRATE ATTACK UNTIL THE TIME ELAPSES***

Or that's how I would imagine the disclaimer anyway. Call me hyped!

Awesome! ^^

And consider me equally hyped...! I can't wait to show you guys the final product.

[Laserzwei]

Put me in on the hype train  ;D

Are there any good places to look for examples for gui modding? That gui you've got going looks slick!

For this, I looked long and hard at the original game's UI code and the documentation, but also especially at Laserzwei's Complex Mod. Couldn't have done it without that firm groundwork in place. When this is released / in some form of releasable alpha state, feel free to poke around in my code to see how I did the UI.

@jmattspartacus also have a look into the UI code of Sector Manager, as it has much less other code, but uses many of the techniques I learned from my work with the complex mod.

Also pm me, if you got any further questions.

[Shrooblord]

A small update. I've been working on creating my own little Dev Debug window so I can work with some of the variables better in-game. The result: ... well... a dev.. debug window.

 

 

what did you expect

 

 

 

Anyway, I'm quite proud of it -- another bout of UI hacking well-completed:

 

 

This will help speed up some of the development process for sure. As you can tell from the length of the variable displayed in the larger text box on the right, it would be quite tedious to attempt to read all that in the tiny boxes the standard dev window provides. But not anymore!

 

Up and over -- back to coding functionality you guys are probably actually interested in. ;>

[Kamo]

That'd be cool for other modders or even the developers to help debugging !

Don't hesitate to attach the script ! :D