Some Thoughts From a New Player ...

Or How I Learned to Stop Being Afraid and Love The Bomb (an old aside to Dr. Strangelove)

from Sins Forums

Just a quick note now that I'm into my first full week with SoaSE, It is great!! I am mostly a 'single player' player, and the days long games for the first few games has been interesting and great fun. It takes a little while to pick up on all the subtleties, the little plus and arrow stars on the empire map showing that a ship has updated. and the click center picture in the bottom menu to go directly to the ship or destination in question, but i'm working on getting it all down. But more than almost anything, the wonderful community of developers, players and modders here is outstanding, and the support they give is very nice. I haven't seen that much helpfulness and niceness in one place in awhile.

Anyway one quick question if I might, with regards to the bottom and top ui display bars, it would be wonderful if they were collapsable for a full 'clean' screen look, and re-sizable. I'm running 1900 x 1200 (approx i think) and the ui bar is still very large, it seems, maybe its just me and my quirkiness, but just wanted to see if that might be possible, or has already been done and I don't know about it. At only a week in, there is a ton I don't know.

Also, just as a last note, I tried my hand at modding a bit. I'm no coder, but from the examples given in the modset with the Forge Tools I boosted the hulls, shields, armor and weapons and weapons range for the advent (my favorite right now :) ) and tweaked the max linear speed for the scout. :)  I'm having great fun and not dying too much! :)

Thanks to all the great people here, It's wonderful to be a part of this!

Take care,

-Teal

 

5,606 views 4 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

Anyway one quick question if I might, with regards to the bottom and top ui display bars, it would be wonderful if they were collapsable for a full 'clean' screen look, and re-sizable. I'm running 1900 x 1200 (approx i think) and the ui bar is still very large, it seems, maybe its just me and my quirkiness, but just wanted to see if that might be possible, or has already been done and I don't know about it. At only a week in, there is a ton I don't know.
End of quote

This can't be done without a mod, unfortunately. I remember early on there was a "minimalist UI" mod released, but I don't think it has been updated and I don't know if it works or not with the latest game version. In any case, it should be in the mod database (Downloads > Mods on top of this page), so you can try it. They can't be made resizeable dynamically, however.

Once you get a feel for modding, you can try doing what you want yourself as well, you'll need to find the right .brush file for the UI elements in the Window folder, and tweak it :) If you want to go that route, I can give you a hand in understanding how the textures make it into the .brush files, though I haven't messed with the overall UI myself.

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

Annatar11,

                      Thank you for the nice thought. I don't know if i'm up to a ui revamp, but the minimal mod you mentioned sounds very nice, I will give it a try. Perhaps down the line I can work up the courage to try something as complex as tweaking .brush files. I am guessing, because i dont know, that i would need to redraw all the ui frames to a smaller size myself, but maybe i'm just feeling a bit overwhelmed by the thought but the actual practice might not be as beyond me as i think, haha, well, I could always try and give up if it was too much. But thank you for the thought on looking at those .brush files. Perhaps if you have posted it before I could read up on your threads and see if I can understand it.

Thank you and take care, have a good night,

-Teal

 

Star Control: Origins
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

It would probably take me longer to find it now than to write it up again, because it was many months ago :) The basic principle is that the .tga files in Textures contain *all* the game's graphics assets, including all the UI elements. The .brush files splice these up and assign 'names' to the various bits of the images, and the window files tell them where to go. So, in theory, you would basically have to take the .tgas that contain what you want to change, find the parts in them, shrink them/modify them however you like, and then change the splicing coordinates in the .brush files to correspond to the new sizes. Again, I haven't looked at the files related to the UI itself, so this is a very broad and basic overview of the three file types :)

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

Annatar11,

                     ahhhhh..... sounds interesting, though shrinking the ui elements might look cartoonish after i finished with them. As for the co-ordinates, i understand the principle, but wonder how to determine them. Some time ago, when working with LiteStep, i took another mod and modified the mod, with a nod to the first modder of course. So it may not be as intimidating as it first sounds. But thank you for pointing me in the right direction. I wonder if it would be possible to raise the display size and have everything 'shrink' comparibly? but at 1900x1200 i am sorta maxed out at the moment. But a newer video card and/or a monitor may fix that. Haha, but much more expensive don't you think? $200 video card, $299-$399 monitor = $600 fix for the ui size. Haha and Oh my! Maybe the minimal mod does look more and more attractive.   :)

Thank you again and take care, I may get to be a coder whether i can do it well or not haha, just to try some things.

Have a great game out there, thanks again!

-Teal