Campaign summary/Journal

[Zyxpsilon]

Welcome back -- "Boss!" :wink: Hope your vacation time was worth every minutes...

 

Next stuff.

 

Then, i'll have to offer two specific options for the "Aliens on Location" section.

 

1) A custom panel which scrolls (when needed) on both sides; ---or--- 2) Simply mimics and resizes most elements from the generic Debrief default;

 

 

 

http://s8.postimg.org/3zyodsyz9/Ao_L_Sample_TWO.png ------ http://s10.postimg.org/ietr8m0jd/Ao_L_Sample_THREE.png

 

NOTES

 

1a) Even at 96x96... the ALIENS won't stack for more than 6 items, hence the necessity for scrolling.

1b) LOOT side being a simple succession of boxes where the quantities are added only.

1c) Requires new special assets, mucho work on SWF encoding, etc.

1d) Gives our mod a distinct concept feel.

 

2a) Alien "Corpses or Captured" strings need to be on two lines to give space to the right.

2b) Similar reasoning for "Alien Alloys" & "Weapon Fragment" slots.

2c) Scrolling too.

2d) The advantage being that we could now push-up the SQUAD area and use the extra space to enhance it or add something else entirely!

 

PS; ...and some more would need three lines to fit.

--- UFO

--- Flight Computers

--- (Damaged)

... for example!

 

 

 

 

Choose! :smile:

Edited July 25, 2015 by Zyxpsilon

[Zyxpsilon]

TrackTwo,

 

You previously requested some saves to analyze or test with your current code features...

 

I've begun a new Beta15F campaign and kept all missions & every 1st day of the Months from the Strategy layer. Also added a comprehensive set of snapshots to keep track of everything with direct references (from the Save/Load screens).

 

So far i hold March to September and will keep & assemble the rest until the very end.

 

Want them all... via eMail or somethin'? :D

Edited July 25, 2015 by Zyxpsilon

[tracktwo]

Yes please, send em over, you still have my email, right?

 

While you guys are discussing the "summary" view, I'm still working on the timeline aspect. Current status of the timeline view:

 

 

 

http://i.imgur.com/u3uvHr4.jpg

 

 

 

The toolbar placeholder there will have controls: a slider to walk through time from 1 March 2015/2016 up to the current game date. Standard controls will be there too: play/pause, stop, faster, slower, step forward, step backward, and seek to beginning and end. These will probably all be custom UI elements, probably using the same green colour scheme as the country box UI borrowed from the satellite launch view. The date in the "country name" box will adjust as time goes by.

 

The map will show a blip for the location of the event just displayed. I figure the box will be able to support maybe 3-4 events, so as new ones come in old events will scroll up and eventually "off" the top of the event box. Blips for each event currently visible in the box will be shown on the map.

 

There will also need to be buttons to switch between this view and the alternates - the summary view you guys have all been discussing and a graph view. Not sure yet where to place that on the screen, as it'll depend somewhat on what the summary view ends up looking like. I'd like for the controls to switch between these to be in the same place for all three so they don't jump around on you when you switch back and forth.

[Zyxpsilon]

Wild stuff!

 

This cool Timeline principle is a complete chronological rendering of an entire campaign while it also offers a spreadsheet of many details. I think the various "Mission Report boxes" could somehow be made accessible via a dedicated button on your Control-Bar or through direct clicks on the descriptive Events-Lines. Depending on the fonts and icons used... those could even reach 5-8 instances. I believe SWF can easily re-size stock icons "in-place" without much resolution-quality-loss if they need to be smaller.

 

I'll try to create some of the Play+++ custom controls for you... don't worry, they'll BE designed as stock Firaxis Cyan GREEN (#5CD16C) styles.

 

PS; We don't need no-sticking "Credits" on the top-right corner, aren't we?!?

 

Can't wait to start seeing it all in action. Excellent work, buddy.

 

Still have that eMail and i'll send what i currently stand with (Monthly ZIP files)... From March-Start up to October -- and, i just finished the Base-Assault. :wink:

 

PS; March & April -- comin' your way! Refer to eMail for more details.

Edited July 26, 2015 by Zyxpsilon

[tracktwo]

I haven't gotten around to removing the credits from the screen yet, but it's on my list :)

 

Don't worry about creating the custom controls, I can handle that unless you can author the flash yourself because I want them to be very similar to the existing XCom buttons. This means they have some basic animations and such that need to be done in flash and not just static PNGs. They will also need to be scaled to various resolutions (which I still need to figure out, as this UI isn't attached to the map, it floats in front of it attached to the master UI movie and not the material of the map plane). So they should be vector shapes, again PNGs would be somewhat worse for handling the other resolutions.

 

I've already created a basic button that looks fairly similar to the stock xcom ones except it's green. It has a similar glow and pulsing brightness effect applied to it in the mouseover and down states, so I'm reasonably happy with it. I just need to clone it a few times to make up the transport button bar and it should be good to go.

[Zyxpsilon]

True... PNG isn't really great for "scaling". You'd probably be looking for SVG vectors (such as what X did with the Stats glyphs & many other stuff around the LW-HUD) to implement via Flash processing - indeed.

[Zyxpsilon]

It's really amazing what we can discover once we have the proper know-how.

The instructions you gave me (TrackTwo) about the ReportMission_Patch details being recorded straight into Save files were certainly right on the dot.

Those saves (once decompressed by the excellent RosterViewer tool from cmdr_soylent) contain huge treasures of truth that reveal plenty of facts and structured patterns.

 

Now i understand why you consider this coding trick essential to develop any worthy features for our Summary+Journal mod... all that's missing would be a special mini-GUI-program that picks up & transfers any of these important strings into a straight forward format where a comprehensive "Table" is displayed for analysis. Of course, the priority remains on producing the mod itself... but i have to guess you already have some in-house gimmicks -- if so, i really hope you'll share some of that magic with us.

 

Hex-interfacing is fun when dealing with "Editing tasks" but not that much easier when trying to figure what is burried after & by multiple #### zones of precious values & ID tags! :wink:

 

PS; So, i took this excerpt from a quicky save only to realize there are some extraneous recordings.

 

 

 

Pulled off the Hex_Editor ASCII block and heavily formatted for clarity...

..
December 4 2020 8:30 am : Completed Mission
########################################################
Operation Stone Sleep
Mission Type: eMission_Abduction
Map : Urban Cemetery (Abduction)
|0 Result : eResult_Victory

X-Com Squad

17\17 HP MEC Trooper Master Sergeant Lea Vandenberg
(<font color='#AC20FF'>Laser</font> Lance)
(<font color='#F67420'>Flame</font>thrower)
(<font color='#669933'>Grenade</font> Launcher)
11\11 HP Shooter Master Sergeant Laura White
(<font color='#AC20FF'>Laser</font> Strike Rifle)
13\13 HP Tactical Master Sergeant Ramon Marquez
(Scatter <font color='#AC20FF'>Laser</font>)
7\7 HP Support Master Sergeant Isabelle Freeman
(<font color='#AC20FF'>Laser</font> Rifle)
11\11 HP MEC Trooper Master Sergeant Peter Van Doorn
(<font color='#AC20FF'>Laser</font> Lance)
(<font color='#F67420'>Flame</font>thrower)
(<font color='#CC9933'>Kinetic Strike</font> Module)
8\8 HP Support Master Sergeant Natalia Cabral
(<font color='#AC20FF'>Laser</font> Rifle)
8\8 HP Tactical Corporal Annette Durand
(<font color='#AC20FF'>Laser</font> Rifle)
9\9 HP Shooter Master Sergeant Nikita Zhakharov
(<font color='#AC20FF'>Laser</font> Sniper Rifle)

Opposition (pods):  ( 10  Aliens)

Pod #0
eChar_Mechtoid, eChar_Sectoid
Pod #1
eChar_Muton, eChar_Muton
Pod #2
eChar_MutonElite, eChar_MutonElite, eChar_MutonElite
Pod #3
eChar_Floater, eChar_Floater, eChar_Floater

Artifacts recovered:

Alien Heavy Weapon x1
Alien Grenade x1
<font color='#B679ED'>Sectoid Corpse</font> x3
<font color='#B98C35'>Floater Corpse</font> x4
<font color='#55AA00'>Muton Corpse</font> x4
<font color='#A62700'>Muton Elite Corpse</font> x2
<font color='#F54A0B'>Muton Elite Captive</font> x1
<font color='#0099FF'>Elerium</font> x14
<font color='#009900'>Alien Alloys</font> x18
<font color='#F02020'>Weapon Fragment</font> x24
<font color='#FF9900'>Meld</font> x55
<font color='#E978EC'>Mechtoid Core</font> x1
..

I hope you won't mind me having developped the ReCLR assets in such a way that all of the HTML font instructions stay attached to their Weapons strings, etc! :wink:

 

 

 

Love it -- Total HP per troopers -- Primary & Secondary weapons are listed -- Pods are there ( Yppie! ) -- but, i also just hope the Kills/Captures count can be distributed to the squad as they occured.

Edited July 27, 2015 by Zyxpsilon

[tracktwo]

Kill/capture stats currently aren't recorded, but could be modded in for sure. I already did some experiments way back at the beginning of this thread with recording shot chances from the tactical game and that works.

 

I don't really have any gimmicks - it's just a string processing problem. Unfortunately neither UnrealScript nor ActionScript 2.0 have much in the way of regular expression support so the string processing will be a little awkward.

 

And regarding the font info in ReCLR, it's no big deal. Or rather, it shouldn't be. For the timeline view I'm just going to be presenting the log entries more or less as-is, with just some formatting changes and stripping out some of the boilerplate text like the ###### bars around mission logs. The meat of those entries will just be written as they appear, and with the localized strings that are embedded within them. So with ReCLR installed you'll get the colourized entries in the timeline too.

 

This is more of an issue for the summary view and the graphs, because those views include some summing of data. It's not insurmountable though, all I really need to do to total up the number of scientists is to look for entries of the form "XCom received n of resource Scientists" but instead of looking for 'Scientists' look for the localized string, which might have a reCLR font tag around it or it might be in another language. Doesn't matter as long as it doesn't change part way through a campaign.

 

Another option that is probably worth doing is to modify those entries to write the enum constant instead of the localized string. This solves the mid-campaign localization change issue and makes things easier to process as the values are hardcoded instead of localizable. I should be able to handle both cases, so installing the summary mod entry changer part way through a campaign shouldn't be too much of a problem: first check if the entry contains an enum constant, and if so use that to figure out what 'thing' it's referring to. Otherwise assume it's a localized string and try to compare it to the current localized string values to figure out what it is. That could fail if many changes occur mid-campaign, but there isn't much I can do about that. All of this string processing may be fairly slow, that remains to be seen.

 

And that's a nice segue into what I think I've figured out tonight, which is why the council mission reward log entries are bugged. It's trying and failing to write the localized string for the resource awards (e.g. cash, scientists, engineers). It uses the same AddResource() function as is used elsewhere to do this, and all the others work. I believe the problem is because these localized strings are in a weird place: they're in the XGScreenMgr class which is a UI parent class. The AddResource journal writing code gets those strings by looking them up in the HUD UI element. My theory now is that this fails for council rewards because the rewards are awarded and the journal is written after the mission completes but before the game returns to the HQ and sets up the UI. So the HQ UI object it's accessing to get these localized strings hasn't yet been re-created and so it can't find the localized string. This will be fixed by recording the enum constant instead because that's fixed and has no dependency on the UI.

[Zyxpsilon]

Remember when i wrote about EMAF symbols instead of Cap-Letters to identify such resources in a number of UI places?

 

Three current concept tries of 128x128 that would later be converted to proper SVG...

 

1) Elerium 2) Alloys 3) Fragments

 

http://s30.postimg.org/l83a8dm65/Logo_Tag_ELERIUM.png---http://s30.postimg.org/rztpb8b5p/Logo_Tag_ALLOYS_2.png---http://s9.postimg.org/jj4auhli3/Logo_Tag_FRAGMENTS.png

 

And how they'd probably "show up" (inserted by PSPro-X copy/paste only) in the Engineering top-right corner...

 

http://s8.postimg.org/eph8n9a45/EMAF_Corner_Inserts_Test.png

 

Not sure if i should design a custom MELD version either.

 

There's a tricky fact about it anyway... the engine (and GFX functions) seem to be able to handle #MELDTAG string insertion in some places. The trick would possibly be to provide the same assets for the other three and make certain a UPK gets recognized by the whole Strategy+Tactical layers at runtime. I have to guess that it is quite possible to do so as proven by SpazmoJones' little (dotted) glyphs used during the Squad-Load-Outs to the left of Troopers names.

[Zyxpsilon]

Kill/capture stats currently aren't recorded, but could be modded in for sure. I already did some experiments way back at the beginning of this thread with recording shot chances from the tactical game and that works.

.......

This will be fixed by recording the enum constant instead because that's fixed and has no dependency on the UI.

 

All of that technical assembly of factoids is quite re-assuring, AFAIC.

We're in capable coding hands -- that's fantastic! :D

 

If anything, the eNums solution you are suggesting might allow for (( much? )) faster processing when it matters the most; within the Journal cyclic simulator & its user's inputs to navigate in many different ways.

Edited July 27, 2015 by Zyxpsilon