Campaign summary/Journal

[tracktwo]

Yep, I already got the streaming working from the strategic layer, that's how the blue rectangle got there. I'm going to move this flash/ui talk to a new r&d topic I'll start after work though to leave this thread focused more on the actual mod idea itself.

[Zyxpsilon]

A quick sample of what could be done with a Monthly slot...

 

http://s16.postimg.org/6fdm5shz9/Basic_Month_May_sample.png

 

During May... these events happened;

 

-- 2 Abductions

-- 7 UFO Crashed or Landed

-- 3 Exalt missions

-- 2 Council

-- 2 Terror

-- We received $404 and,

-- 3 Satellites were launched.

 

Hopefully, each of these "Rectangular slots" would be clickable to access a comprehensive drop-down list with details.

That's the general idea.

Edited July 6, 2015 by Zyxpsilon

[tracktwo]

Looks cool! But something else to consider - if I get this flash ui stuff working the way I expect to, we don't need to be constrained by just reusing and shuffling around the existing assets. There would be a lot of freedom to generate new ui objects that are more meaningful instead of trying to remember what the orange bar represents. That said, I do like working within the framework of the existing situation room so it looks fitting visually, so there probably should be some balance there.

[Zyxpsilon]

Oh... but this is all theory attempts only!

 

The concept can always be re-created straight from custom assets that we'd like to design specifically for anything.

 

All of these Bar-Rows could even be wider (six or seven of them... UFOs Land & Crash could be unique... Base Assaults... etc) and still fit into the vanilla panel frames on their usual left or right sides.

 

The countries would also return into a secondary screen... all of which should then provide "cumulative" values from campaign start to the end.

 

There are many other concerns to be dealt with; statistical extent, precision in details, drop-down areas where full lists of cyclic events are joined together, etc.

 

The trick should be to properly define the necessary (or essential) Flash resources. I'm open to whatever needs to be allocated to that screen while supplying as many cool features as possible. Not cluttering but at least giving a sense of "Campaign" proportions.

 

As i was trying to figure out how to handle the Continental aspect... i simply took a snapshot of the Holo-Geoscape (Africa)... recalibrated the whole image (952x508 -- including a two pixels wide grey frame) to just fit into the Sit-Room Map panel (when shown onto a 1920x1080 monitor, btw)...

 

 

 

http://s17.postimg.org/xu4vg353z/Globe840_Africa.png

 

The advantage of this setup being that we can use TL & BL corners to display something and the right side empty width to insert a scrolling list, etc.

 

 

 

Then i thought -- hey, why not just use the GeoScaping methods in its formal conditions. Allowing to simply use F1-F5 to give them focus when need be. The advantage being that any tiny symbols would be quickly dispatched to the "listed" coordinates of any events & missions right **ON** that Globe. it might need to be shown in a gray-scale fashion though as the small tags would have to either be colored or at least, show numeric reference tags for clarity.

 

Lotsa decisions to take.

Edited July 7, 2015 by Zyxpsilon

[Zyxpsilon]

Okay -- next concept step...

 

The middle area where the monthly "Event Tags" are being shown. This was produced from a hint given by HQ-DecalSheet blue channel at the bottom. It served as a generic inspiration for a variety of features;

 

 

 

http://s14.postimg.org/9pt8xqpjl/Basic_Mock_Up3_Sample.png

 

Luckily, grey-scale! :wink:

 

1) The "Mission Box" could be made thinner to prevent it from overlapping Mexico and Central America.

 

2) That UFO crash site took place in the UK.

 

3) Since the Month text has just been clicked on the left side panel... we're in July and so far we've had a busy month;

 

--a) Three crash sites; USA, Nigeria & UK

--b) Two Exalt Covert extractions; Columbia & Japan

--c) One terror mission in Japan

--d) Two Council... Italia & Australia (which has an optimal size for the circles - i guess)

--e) One Abduction in India.

 

4) The row of 8 "Boxes" with numbers (don't mind them as they are) would re-give the totals of July. Blue could be UFO-Landings while purple and violet would be used by other stuff such as Alien-Base assaults, etc.

 

5) Both the Polar areas could be used to insert Details, Buttons, Ticker strings, etc.

 

6) The circles aren't really the final shapes. They should rather use the Middle sphere of the Radar which has yet another great advantage; there's a cool blinking morph sprite that could just deploy in order to gain some HUD focus on the currently selected event.

 

7) Anything else that might inspire you? Feel free to share your opinions & comments! :smile:

 

8--) I think we'll probably have to lose the "Continent" buttons as this screen space (real estate is precious for that option) could be using the small "Launch Satellites" popup components to insert things like a "Spreasheet" of activities & more.

 

 

 

 

I think such a system of UI items is versatile enough to be developped even further.

 

I'm planning to devise a way for "Countries" to be zoomed in straight off the above map (when the Sit-Room is showing the National panels). Not sure yet about the 3D Geoscape for continents though.

Edited July 7, 2015 by Zyxpsilon

[tracktwo]

That looks fantastic! Little icons for abductions/UFOs/terror missions/council missions/etc would probably be a nice touch in addition to the colour coding.

 

The only info that I think you are showing there that currently isn't in the journal is the location of the mission. That information is obviously available somewhere, cause it tells you on the mission briefing, but it isn't recorded. That should be simple enough to fix (I hope).

 

See my post in the falsh/UI thread for an update on that, I am making good progress on that front and now have some scripting working, so I optimistically think all the pieces are coming together.

[Zyxpsilon]

Thanks!

 

Using regular Icons to "tag" missions on the map is problematic though. The rendering quality would suffer a lot for large (Vanilla) glyphs since the most optimal size for relatively easy to see variety of such vast amounts falls near or into the 16x16 range only.

 

Here's a quick test i've been trying on my 952x548 Holo-Map (The cyan basic feel has been "darkened" instead of the previous old Decal-Grey source above -- this effect could be handled programmatically straight off the "animated" default by a Flash option or additional layering textures, IIRC) with a small tag for UFO Crashes -- it's the Radar middle circle with drop-shadows added; http://s18.postimg.org/js9aidgj9/Map_Tag_Circle_C.png!!

 

Yep, it *IS* very small... but trust me, when we get down to the nitty gritty Year-Totals where a multitude of little circles (of many colors) start populating the core screen such as what i have so far in the sample below -- just like me, you'll also rationalize simplicity (with colors only) would be much better visually.

 

 

 

http://s12.postimg.org/cmp1nnogt/Basic_Mock_Up5_Sample.png

 

Alright then, some details...

 

1) We received 3 Scientists + 2 Engineers in MARCH!

 

2) Continental buttons have been moved and centered to the top of the Holo-Map

 

3) The "Grey" grid (20x10 squares of 48x48 pixels - including their frames) will be a toggle layer. Some people might want to simply turn it Off & On at will.

 

4) The mission types "Boxes" were rendered a bit taller for good reasons, i think. Numbers will be a bit bigger and i want to have spare room in the key areas for further development(s).

 

5) We're currently in November, so anything after must be greyed-out as inactive.

 

6) I've added "UFO-Landings" (blue) and "Base Assaults" (magenta) in the reference bar at the bottom strip. Still room down there for other stuff.

 

7) I'll explain more later about the tiny boxes (red X) and their cyan arrows.

 

8--) Not sure yet... but i guess the "Defense Shield" could be replaced by the Monthly Report rating letters?

 

 

 

 

Still many things to finish up. But, i'll also give you a layered version of Holo-Map where you'll simply be able to "View" whatever Months and sections as need be. A kind of demo, if you will.

 

I'd say about 60% of the features are completed.

:wink:

Edited July 8, 2015 by Zyxpsilon

[Zyxpsilon]

Well, i ran some further tests for the "Continental" feature and it looks like it won't really be feasible within our predictable Summary context.

 

They just seem "pointless" since i'd rather have each individual countries accessible on their own Holo-mapping systems. The 3d Geoscape could have been an alternate way to display that kind of unique set of various backgrounds but it also proved to be cumbersome to use or implement directly.

Unless, there would be a gimmicky function that could Zoom-In-Out and rotate (tilt or flip, etc) such stuff with precise rendering methods... the only solution i found so far is to;

 

1) Use already "prepared" orthographic files such as what WikiPedia offers free & under Common(s) rules for distribution.

2) Do some tricky edits to adapt these pictures to our XCom schema of Cyan hues.

3) Then... create the whole set of 16 countries.

 

For example, here's what i ended up with for Russia. Polygons and SVG scaling can result in acceptable images, AFAIC. It's temporary and might just change later on.

 

If i can just get to examining GIS programs which would do a better job at producing source material than GoogleEarth (ugly yellow coastlines restriction, for example)... there may be other good enough images for final choices.

 

 

 

http://s11.postimg.org/yz68jrdfn/Country_Russia.png

 

Strangely this sort of concept could fit quite well in the current SituationRoom middle area (952x508). But as everything else... we'd still need a tricky inner code that could re-calibrate the usual coordinates system for proper tagging with our little symbols -- for each individual maps, since UK and other smaller countries need to be rendered with bigger proportions to make visual sense & balance on the HUD framework with our layers of elements added.

 

 

 

I've got them all done -- mostly!

 

http://s13.postimg.org/ehmtn9qnr/16_Samples.png

 

I'd very much prefer if the basic "surroundings" would follow the darkened feel of borders as shown by Mexico, Brazil, Argentina & Nigeria though. And, i believe Japan should be tilted by about 45-60° to the left while the Korea-China coastline would then be pushed up on the top screen region.

 

Don't forget we'll need to insert the 8 tiny colored boxes and our Mission summary box somewhere on these screens. Both areas could be moved around at runtime if necessary, i think.

 

What do you think? :wink:

Edited July 9, 2015 by Zyxpsilon

[tracktwo]

Those look great, and I agree with you on the darker ones.

 

USA looks a bit weird tilted like that to get Alaska in...

 

One piece that I'm not clear on, which would be very cool is the actual coordinates for missions. The game can reasonably correctly put the mission icons on the right spot for the particular cities for abduction/terror missions, but I dunno if we can do the same on the situation room map. Clearly there is some logic somewhere for doing this translation as active ufos are shown in both, I'll need to figure out how it does that and hopefully we can then record not just the country, but the city the missions occur in and have the blips show up in the right spots on the maps. Obviously thatd be way more work with these per-country maps as the coordinate translation isn't already there for those.

 

The other thing I can't remember right now is whether council and exalt missions are associated with a city or just a country and where on the country they show up on the hologlobe if they are not per city. And then there are ufos which have hologlobe coordinates but no cities, and the weird bugs where the crash happens way outside the country borders but still counts as that country.

 

Lots of stuff to consider! But the next step is to maybe mock up some of the ui in game. I'll try putting some stuff together this weekend that isn't just a big ugly box on the screen.

[Zyxpsilon]

These individual maps were made as "demonstrative" assets only.

 

The tilted USA looked cool anyway and it was done in this manner to somehow prevent the big chunky Canada to take up too much screen real-estate -- indirectly.

 

Another **MUCH** easier way to create each of these countries Holo-Cyan map(s) could be to trick the in-game engine to use a temporary (virtual) GeoScape mode in order to;

 

1) Obtain true copies of their orthophonic styles ( It's a real globe after all! ) by F1-F5 'ing relative locations just as when we can center continents on screen. But this process requires some extra steps...

1a) We'd have to remove the tiny models of the base & satellites on top of the readily available Console call "UIToggleVisibility".. this benefit from a pure image to take snapshots of which would then be editable as we see fit.

1b) There's also the auto-Zoom factor (happens just before Interception begins)... that does give an even better resolution for that shot.

1c) Find the actual center spot of the "National" extent... provide this value to our custom F binding... 16 times for each session.

1d) Drop their corresponding "Borders" model onto the globe. Green without any animation inside should be okay.

1e) In this case we don't use the Holo version. The "real-Earth" imaging file is plenty enough.

1f) Make sure Daylight is synchronized with the on-screen stuff.

1g) Take the snapshot(s).

 

--or--

 

2) Trick the Situation-Room to reproduce most of the above steps with yet another Geoscape that functions straight *INTO* our 952x508 area... where we tie the directions & conditions (F's) with clickable country names from panels. This has advantage of using the very same coordinates system as the real ingame "Scan for Activity" cycle & where events are (most probably) already referenced as Zone values. Refer to the list of cities and their X-Y system for that sort of persistent data.

 

Coordinates translation between the orthophonic globe and its equirectangular variation (Situation-Room Holo-Map) is almost as easy as digging for the proper math formula online, i guess.

Then again... if we decide to use individual images for each countries (picked from #1 stuff), we'll also have to provide sixteen different "translations" routines that adapt to whatever Tilt, Zoom, Angular scope that were used to take the snapshots. A bit more complex -- indeed but not entirely undoable, AFAIC.

 

Any Council & Exalt missions can receive whichever "coordinates we choose, i think. Of course the Site-Recon Hive *IS* in Newfoundland while some obviously use direct city "operations" choices.

 

It would certainly be nice to witness some of these "Sampling" attempts right on the UI!

 

Soooo... to help you out; if your screen is 1920x1080 the actual Top-Left pixel is located at X:485 (Width) by Y:186(Height) for the central Holo-Map. But i think the engine is considering such relative components from a basic 1024x768 and re-configure the addressable GFX areas according to people's resolution settings, right? Something to have in mind -- eventually.

 

That "Big box" might be ugly --- but it *HAS* sooooo much importance!! :D