MCM hits 1.0! (Soft Launch)

[Dragon32]

Dragon32: Yeah, the tooltip text issue is an annoying thorn in my side. The reason for the problem is that the built-in text tooltips were never meant to display extensive text, so in order to accommodate more sophisticated tooltips I will probably have to replace the existing tooltip system. I'll have to admit, that's relatively low on my list of priorities compared to a few other things I have in mind. What I might do is add an info button feature to let you pop up an explanatory dialog. Much more conducive towards extended descriptions.

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Now that's a good idea (extra dialog), tooltips should (IMO) be used for short, explanatory text. If they're a long read then it can get frustrating ensuring you hover over them with the mouse. Having a (i) button which'd spawn a pane of information I could read at my leisure would be very nice indeed, the tool tip would then function as an aide memoire to the more extensive explanation in the info pane.

[abeclancy]

Pardon the terrible MS Paint skills, but this is kind of what I hope the menu looking like eventually, to allow for a bunch of information to be presented to the user:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/xaewlylebagups8/mcm-example-tooltip-icons.png?dl=0

 

Yellow question mark icons (like the game uses for describing soldier skills in detail) would open a right-side pane. The mod list on the left could be used by the mod to display information like the mod author, license, etc. The option list on the right can be used to display a long tooltip string, examples, maybe even a format for including descriptive images in the game would be nice? Something that would allow for a cropped screenshot to be displayed that a mod can use to show what an option does as well as describe it with text.

Edited July 4, 2016 by abeclancy

[bunnytrain]

Yup! That's basically what I had in mind. The problem with doing that specific thing is that the widgets (especially sliders and dropdowns) are already very width-constrained on space for the label.

 

I might try to show that icon on mouse-over or something in order to preserve the extra 2-3 characters of horizontal space. Or maybe I'll just expand the entire window's width by the corresponding amount and remove the soldier mesh like you at one point suggested.

[Zyxpsilon]

Honestly.. there are already some workaround solutions to add visual "cues" to details & infos. Using localization strings components and HTML formatting.

 

Here's a quick example of what can be achieved.. this is an early rendering of what LAByrinth will (aside from the whole custom XCom-Archives search Index-Tree & other tools) offer to players;

 

 

Inventory, BlackMarket lists (( BUY gets the cool cyan layers! )), Engineering (etc) are enhanced by such graphics too, btw. :wink:

 

That possibly reminded you of the "Tiny Tags" used aside from customization options .. initially brought up by Anarchy-Children DLC, IIRC.

 

Soooooo -- technically, a lot of various gfx components can be tricked into whatever HUD concepts anyone could think of. It's a simple matter of design and necessary packaged resources. :geek:

Edited July 5, 2016 by Zyxpsilon