[help needed] EET start screen

[K4thos]

Before EET v1.0 there are some tasks left related to start screen that will require skills that are beyond what I'm able to do (well, I can to do half ass job as seen in this topic, the point is to improve it ).

Here is how the start screen looks like right now (it's already fully functional):

 

edit: screen updated (problem 1 and 2 solved).

 

1. As seen in the screenshot the campaign selection is currently coded as BAM buttons instead of table (only the left side, the text on the right works as intented laready). This is due to my lack of knowledge regarding LUA coding. Changing it to normal text will allow for translations, eliminate a problem with adjusting icon look to background image (that red shaded overlay is part of the patch 2.0 table design) as well as appending additional campaigns by external mods (with automatically added scrollbar if needed). There are tons of examples in the UI.MENU file (responsible for GUI in patch 2.0) how to add a table (look for "list" in NI) but for some reason it doesn't show up in the start screen when I copy a table over to the startscreen. Could anyone help with this task?

2. Those spell icons are obviously just temporary. If someone would like to prepare proper images in 32x32 size (or a little bigger but definitely less than 40 since that is the height of each row) for all campaigns here are some example images that could be used for this purpose: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/35433122/logo.zip
Some probably will look good enough with just resizing, but SoA icon would definitely need some cropping first. If you leave it to me than the result will be awful

3. This startscreen design shows up text on the right side if you move mouse over the campaign button (no need to click it). Here is a text that is currently implemented:

 

@4000100 = ~"He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster... when you gaze long into the abyss the abyss also gazes into you..." -Friedrich Nietzsche.

For as long as you can remember, your view of the world has been limited to the heavily fortified walls of Candlekeep. Your foster father, Gorion, has done everything in his power to protect you and keep you out of harm’s way.

All of that is about to change. Forced to leave your home under mysterious circumstances, you find yourself drawn into a conflict that has the Sword Coast on the brink of war. An iron shortage of unknown origin threatens to plunge the city of Baldur’s Gate into conflict with Amn. Meanwhile, there is something else at work, far more sinister than you can even begin to fathom...~
@4000101 = ~"Fate leads him who follows it, and drags him who resist." -Plutarch

The threat of war looms over the city of Baldur's Gate. A crusade marches from the north, seizing supplies, forcing locals into military service, and disrupting trade along the Sword Coast. A charismatic warrior known as the Shining Lady leads this army, her background shrouded in mystery. Rumors whisper that she follows a divine agenda. Could the gods truly guide this Shining Lady?

The farther you travel from the city, the more you realize how many forces have a stake in the outcome of this conflict. Baldur's Gate has put its faith in you, but you must determine whose interests you truly serve before you face the Shining Lady among the ruins of Dragonspear Castle...~
@4000102 = ~"The Lord of Murder shall perish, but in his doom he shall spawn a score of mortal progeny. Chaos shall be sown from their passage..." -So sayeth the Wise Alaundo

Kidnapped. Imprisoned. Tortured. The wizard Irenicus holds you captive in his stronghold, attempting to strip you of the powers that are your birthright.

Can you resist the evil within you, forge a legend of heroic proportions, and ultimately destroy the dark essence that haunts your dreams? Or will you embrace your monstrous nature, carve a swath of destruction across the realms, and ascend to godhood as the new Lord of Murder?~
@4000103 = ~"There is no peace for a child of Bhaal. You’ve learned this lesson time and again. As all who are close to you suffer; because, of your tainted blood."

Welcome to Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal, the expansion pack to Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn, and the final chapter in the Baldur's Gate series. The time of the prophecy has come.~
@4000104 = ~"Come one, come all! Feast your eyes upon most marvelous martial magnificence that the Underdark has to offer!" -Baeloth the Entertainer

Deep within the Underdark where few dare to tread, the mad drow Baeloth has used his extensive mastery of magic to force a duergar colony into creating an entertainment complex of his own design. He has invited guests from across the realms, from Maztica to Menzoberranzan, and they will readily attend - Baeloth is known to be an excellent showman.~
@4000105 = ~"Come one, come all! To the greatest show this side of the Astral plane!" -Dennaton

Welcome to Black Pits II: Gladiators of Thay, a follow-up to Baeloth's Black Pits. Explore the tactical depth of high-level Dungeons & Dragons combat. Turn your captors against each other while you dodge traps and battle for your life against Demi-Liches, Mind Flayers, and the legendary Githyanki.~
//based on BG:EE @24353
@4000106 = ~"Hello, child. Shall we continue your lessons?" -Tutor

Welcome to the Ducal Palace, the tutorial area for Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition. This is a simple walk-through of some of the basic skills you will need to play and enjoy the game. Once the tutorial area has loaded, an NPC (non-player character) will guide you through fighting monsters, casting spells, the use of thieving abilities, and some of the more common interactions you will experience in the game world.~

 

If someone would like to prepare proper campaign descriptions instead of these marketing quotes please post in this topic. Not sure what should be in such description really.

4. Overall the start screen could use some improvements (book image blending with the rest of the picture etc.) I'm green when it comes to GIMP, so if someone would like to work on it more here is XCF file as well as images that have been used to create it: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/35433122/startscreen.zip

 

Thanks in advance.

[Ulb]

Seems like the EET is coming along nicely, looks good!

 

As for the LUA part, you might want to post this over on Beamdog's UI modding forum for more exposure?

 

I'll give it a try and look into making some proper campaign icons.

 

I think the start screen looks quite good overall, I doubt I could improve anything.

The perspective of the book looks maybe a bit off and of course the bam icons don't blend well with the parchment of the book background but since those get replaced anyway it's not really an issue.

[CrevsDaak]

... but for some reason it doesn't show up in the start screen when I copy a table over to the startscreen. Could anyone help with this task?

Maybe the table is in the background/behind the interface? That happened to me while messing around with my game.

[Ulb]

First set of icons is ready.

I mostly just rescaled stuff and adjusted colors and such, nothing fancy.

The SoA one is a bit problematic, all the little details and color variations makes rescaling it pretty messy.

 

 

Here are three variants, let me know what you think.

 

 

Variant 1:

All icons are 38x38 pixels The Black Pits ones look a little smaller compared to the rest since the overlapping weapons take up a lot of space and the rest is scaled smaller as a result.

 

 

 

 

Variant 2:

All icons are 32x32 pixels except the BP ones which are still 38x38 to make them appear the same size.

 

 

 

 

Variant 3:

Same as V2 but a different (trimmed) SoA icon.

 

 

 

[Sam.]

Here's my go at the icons. The black pitts ones turned out a little dark... The BG1, BG2, HoW, IWD, and SoD icons are the 32x32 icons extracted from the EXE. The TBP, TBP2, and ToB icons I resized myself.

 

EET_icons_Sam.zip

[K4thos]

Ulb, nice! The 32x32 version looks better to me.

 

I see that I forgot to include reference image for tutprial icon. Here it is (by geminibruni): https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/35433122/LOGOTUT00000.PNG

 

As for the SoA I think it's better to simply cut most of that image and leave just face simillary to how it was done in icon distributed with vanilla SoA (unfortunately it has bad quality): https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/35433122/baldur.ico

 

Maybe the table is in the background/behind the interface? That happened to me while messing around with my game.

Indeed that may have been the case. After adding the table again on top of the start screen it showed up. But it's not the end of my LUA problems With table implementation campaign higlighting that displays text on the right side without clicking on the button no longer works.

 

With buttons implementation it looked like this:

 

 

    text --bg1
    {
        bam "CMPGSML"
        sequence lua 'getCampaignIcon(1)'
        frame lua "getCampaignHighlight(1)"
        area 192 215 291 40
        align center center
        --tooltip lua "getCampaignTooltip(1)"
        action
        "
            onCampaignButton(1)
        "
        actionEnter
        "
            highlightedCampaign = 1
        "
        actionExit
        "
            --highlightedCampaign = nil
        "
    }
    text --sod
    {
        bam "CMPGSML"
        sequence lua 'getCampaignIcon(2)'
        frame lua "getCampaignHighlight(2)"
        area 192 255 291 40
        align center center
        --tooltip lua "getCampaignTooltip(2)"
        action
        "
            onCampaignButton(2)
        "
        actionEnter
        "
            highlightedCampaign = 2
        "
        actionExit
        "
            --highlightedCampaign = nil
        "
    }

    text --soa
    {
        bam "CMPGSML"
        sequence lua 'getCampaignIcon(3)'
        frame lua "getCampaignHighlight(3)"
        area 192 295 291 40
        align center center
        --tooltip lua "getCampaignTooltip(3)"
        action
        "
            onCampaignButton(3)
        "
        actionEnter
        "
            highlightedCampaign = 3
        "
        actionExit
        "
            --highlightedCampaign = nil
        "
    }

    text --tob
    {
        bam "CMPGSML"
        sequence lua 'getCampaignIcon(4)'
        frame lua "getCampaignHighlight(4)"
        area 192 335 291 40
        align center center
        --tooltip lua "getCampaignTooltip(4)"
        action
        "
            onCampaignButton(4)
        "
        actionEnter
        "
            highlightedCampaign = 4
        "
        actionExit
        "
            --highlightedCampaign = nil
        "
    }

    text --bp1
    {
        bam "CMPGSML"
        sequence lua 'getCampaignIcon(5)'
        frame lua "getCampaignHighlight(5)"
        area 192 375 291 40
        align center center
        --tooltip lua "getCampaignTooltip(5)"
        action
        "
            onCampaignButton(5)
        "
        actionEnter
        "
            highlightedCampaign = 5
        "
        actionExit
        "
            --highlightedCampaign = nil
        "
    }

    text --bp2
    {
        bam "CMPGSML"
        sequence lua 'getCampaignIcon(6)'
        frame lua "getCampaignHighlight(6)"
        area 192 415 291 40
        align center center
        --tooltip lua "getCampaignTooltip(6)"
        action
        "
            onCampaignButton(6)
        "
        actionEnter
        "
            highlightedCampaign = 6
        "
    }

    text --tut
    {
        bam "CMPGSML"
        sequence lua 'getCampaignIcon(7)'
        frame lua "getCampaignHighlight(7)"
        area 192 455 291 40
        align center center
        --tooltip lua "getCampaignTooltip(7)"
        action
        "
            onCampaignButton(7)
        "
        actionEnter
        "
            highlightedCampaign = 7
        "
        actionExit
        "
            --highlightedCampaign = nil
        "
    }

 

 

 

In other words I had control over highlightedCampaign variable number that triggers the text on the right side because each button was coded separately. But now that all of this is handled via single block I don't know how to set the correct variable number. Same case for icon cycle and number. Here is the code:

    list
    {
        column
        {
            width 15
            label
            {
                area    0 0 -1 -1
                bam "CMPGSML"
                sequence lua 'getCampaignIcon(1)'
                frame lua "getCampaignHighlight(1)"
                align    center center
            }
        }
        column
        {
            width 85
            label
            {
                area        0 0 -1 -1
                text lua "t( EET_campaignTitles[rowNumber][1])"
                text style "normal_parchment"
                text align left center
            }
        }

        area 189 214 316 384
        
        rowheight    40
        table        "EET_campaignTitles"
        var        selectedOpt
        scrollbar    'GUISCRC'
        action        "
            onCampaignButton(selectedOpt)
        "

        actionEnter
        "
           highlightedCampaign = 1
           --how to set highlightedCampaign variable into row number that the mouse cursor is on?
        "
        actionExit
        "
           --highlightedCampaign = nil
        "

    }

As you can see I've used:

                sequence lua 'getCampaignIcon(1)'
                frame lua "getCampaignHighlight(1)"
                highlightedCampaign = 1

which just sets values to 1. What I need to do is getting the current row number that the mouse is pointing at similarly to how selectedOpt is used in the above code (which is a variable that is set after clicking on the row text)

 

Any ideas?

 

I've tried to use rowNumber but it seems to always show 7 (since we have 7 rows here)

btw. I really don't know what I'm doing

 

-----------

 

edit:

 

Here's my go at the icons. The black pitts ones turned out a little dark... The BG1, BG2, HoW, IWD, and SoD icons are the 32x32 icons extracted from the EXE. The TBP, TBP2, and ToB icons I resized myself.

 

EET_icons_Sam.zip

thanks I see that you've included IWD icons - these campaigns are indeed intended to be added into start screen if IWD-in-EET is installed.

[Ulb]

I'll resize the tutorial icon. Do you still want me to work on the SoA icon?

I think between Sam's and mine you should be good as far as the other icons are concerned.

[K4thos]

I'll resize the tutorial icon. Do you still want me to work on the SoA icon?

please give it a try if you have some time

 

I think between Sam's and mine you should be good as far as the other icons are concerned.

I think so too. I will compare them in game and chose one by one.

[Ulb]

I've included 3 versions for SoA, hope one will do.

 

link

[K4thos]

which just sets values to 1. What I need to do is getting the current row number that the mouse is pointing at similarly to how selectedOpt is used in the above code (which is a variable that is set after clicking on the row text)

success! I've been looking for any other GUI element that would work similarly to how I want startscreen to work and suddenly it came to me that whole in-game dialogue options highlighting is pretty much the same. And yep, the variable that is set without clicking on the row was used there. It's called "mouseoverRow".

 

I've included 3 versions for SoA, hope one will do.

 

link

 

thanks!

 

 

[Etamin]

I don't like this new start screen. Comparing to previous one (http://i.imgur.com/lzeeQkk.jpg) this one looks pretty poor. I guess you wanto to have all buttons at start screen, but maybe try something like this:

(I'm not graphic designer, just wanted to show some concept)

3 main games in shape of those books and expansions below as smaller buttons (books could be resized, since there's not much space below).

 

Second idea:

Expansions in form of bookmarks. Tutorial button could be in place of options.

[K4thos]

Etamin, I think the default implementation should be as flexible as possible which means allow appending more campaigns by other mods (including IWD-in-EET). Your designs using old art while pretty to look at doesn't allow this.

[Fouinto]

I agree with K4thos, but more than this, IMHO, all on the same "screen" is great

[ScuD]

Is it possible to do something that Beamdog has done for BGIEE/SoD? Switching the game and screen by clicking on a big icon on the right.

I understand that may be too difficult to implement.

[Jarno Mikkola]

Is it possible to do something that Beamdog has done for BGIEE/SoD? Switching the game and screen by clicking on a big icon on the right.

I understand that may be too difficult to implement.

But that's why the screen is there for. The choice of the start point and the innerts of the next menu, not the over all arch of the game, as you can go back in a way at least, it's all the same for all those locations... except that you have more XP when you start at later chapters and you might have more characters near by and equipment ... as you get a basic field kit(aka, you get a bag of holding or other stuff with items in it just like in ToB start), and NPCs that are available or already joined the party. Well that's the vision I have...

The BG1 had a start for the TotSC adventure too, made with an existing save, it wasn't the best implementation, but it was adequate for the purpose, So would there be people other than me who would wish to have this as a feature ?