TEPonta Posted September 22, 2008 Report Share Posted September 22, 2008 Tony, No more crashes here. Thanx, Buddha Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TonyE Posted September 27, 2008 Author Report Share Posted September 27, 2008 New version attached (this must be used with 2008.056 GE). Unzip the whole ball of wax with directories in tact to your HCE directory. (so that you'll end up with a HCE\UnitWin directory as well as the updated DLL in ExportDLLs directory. Added a bunch of stuff. Known issue is stuff drawing in black that should be some color. Otherwise look for crashing when closing the game. Some of the code I wrote to increase responsiveness may result in crashes if I didn't get it solved. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TEPonta Posted September 27, 2008 Report Share Posted September 27, 2008 Tony, The display doesn't appear to be tied to the unit window with this release, as it was before. By that I mean that in the previous version I could R-Click on the Group Window to center around a particular group for display in the unit window, and when I refreshed the new UnitWin window, only the units in the Unit Window would be listed. Now, it appears that all units in the scenario are listed regardless of whether they are displayed in the games Unit Window or not. The only way to use the new feature as a Unit Window is to scroll around to the desired group and then use the zoom to display the individual unit symbology. Buddha Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TonyE Posted September 27, 2008 Author Report Share Posted September 27, 2008 True Buddha, but now the DLL shows all of the detected units. Next we start to get to those challenging parts of selection of a unit in the UnitWin window and those other functions you've just mentioned (right-clicking in Group window to affect the UnitWin window). Zooming is an area for which ideas are welcome. I was thinking about adding a horizontal slider that you drag with the mouse to zoom in and out. Fixed zoom levels probably don't fit very well like in the existing Unit window. Thoughts? Note that you can also right-click and drag a rectangle to zoom to that approximate area. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TEPonta Posted September 27, 2008 Report Share Posted September 27, 2008 Tony, Adjustable Zooming sounds like a good idea, maybe something similar to the slider in Google Earth? I still like the window only displaying data for the units in the game's Unit Window, the way it was before, but if concensus is for the present inclusion of all active units, I'll live with it if I have to. I did get the crash alert after closing the game the first time I tried it, but it never repeated in numerous tries so I figured it was some sort of "settling in" process of some sort. I tried it again twice just now with no crash. Are there plans to integrate the new window into the game's Windows pull-down to allow turning it on and off? Buddha Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TonyE Posted September 27, 2008 Author Report Share Posted September 27, 2008 Sorry for not explaining the grander plan. It is my intention that this will replace the in-game unit window entirely and provide the template for coding a new scenario editor and eventual replacement of the Group window as well. We have the need for the Unit window replacement (due to Zoom levels/ASW prosecution) and it also happens to be the easiest map window to replace so I ran with the idea. Yes, I'll get it added into the windows list sooner or later (probably sooner since you've asked). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TEPonta Posted September 27, 2008 Report Share Posted September 27, 2008 Tony, I definitely like the idea of a unit window like this for more control of ASW. A better SE will be appreciated as well. Please say we'll be able to change the land colors in the final version the way we can now in the game. It's probably just me, but I can do without the green we have now. Buddha Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TEPonta Posted September 29, 2008 Report Share Posted September 29, 2008 Tony, One more small thing. Are there plans to enable display of NTDS symbology in the new window? Having used it in actual practice for years, I really prefer it to the styalized icons. Thanx, Buddha Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TonyE Posted September 30, 2008 Author Report Share Posted September 30, 2008 One more small thing. Are there plans to enable display of NTDS symbology in the new window? Having used it in actual practice for years, I really prefer it to the styalized icons. Yes, actually this is a great task for one of you Look in your Graphics subdirectory of HCE and you'll find GR_ICONS.BMP. Now look in the UnitWin\UnitIcons subdirectory, you'll see that the UnitWin\UnitIcons are just pieces chopped out of GR_ICONS.BMP. What you can do to help me is chop up the NTDS symbols in the same fashion. They should each end up being 16 x 16 pixels. As for naming, if the stylized one is named HR.bmp (Helicopter, Red), name the NTDS one tHR.bmp (tactical display, Helicopter, Red). Aircraft carrier will be tCB.bmp (tactical display, Carrier, Blue). That will save me the effort of needing to do that, I'll write the code that makes use of them Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
noxious Posted October 4, 2008 Report Share Posted October 4, 2008 Just took it for my first ride. Wow. Hadn't noticed it's a global map, etc. Very very nice. Now, features request : mouse wheel zoom, and faster than the buttons. Customizable colors, as already mentioned of course. A working stay on top checkbox : I don't want it to stay on top, and well it does NTDS Symbols : wouldn't you have new NTDS symbols, higher res, even in vector format (.svg) ? There aren't that many to do... But all said in done, very nice, I like how it bodes well for the future. Cheers !! One more small thing. Are there plans to enable display of NTDS symbology in the new window? Having used it in actual practice for years, I really prefer it to the styalized icons. Yes, actually this is a great task for one of you Look in your Graphics subdirectory of HCE and you'll find GR_ICONS.BMP. Now look in the UnitWin\UnitIcons subdirectory, you'll see that the UnitWin\UnitIcons are just pieces chopped out of GR_ICONS.BMP. What you can do to help me is chop up the NTDS symbols in the same fashion. They should each end up being 16 x 16 pixels. As for naming, if the stylized one is named HR.bmp (Helicopter, Red), name the NTDS one tHR.bmp (tactical display, Helicopter, Red). Aircraft carrier will be tCB.bmp (tactical display, Carrier, Blue). That will save me the effort of needing to do that, I'll write the code that makes use of them Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TonyE Posted October 7, 2008 Author Report Share Posted October 7, 2008 Just took it for my first ride. Wow. Hadn't noticed it's a global map, etc. Very very nice. Now, features request : mouse wheel zoom, and faster than the buttons. Customizable colors, as already mentioned of course. A working stay on top checkbox : I don't want it to stay on top, and well it does NTDS Symbols : wouldn't you have new NTDS symbols, higher res, even in vector format (.svg) ? There aren't that many to do... But all said in done, very nice, I like how it bodes well for the future. Thanks, pessimism ahead so hold on tight. Mouse wheel zoom - I'm with you here, the trouble being the existing mouse wheel behavior being scrolling thru the units. I don't know if we dare change that paradigm. The right-click and drag a zoom box works well for zooming in but there is no similar facility for zooming out. Thoughts and opinions always welcome; with a little support I would strongly consider mouse wheel zoom and something like shift+mouse wheel to cycle between units. If the DLL Unit Window has focus z and x work but I realize that is missing the point of your constructive comments. Agreed on colors, just trying to replicate first, then expand, good to hear it from multiple people though. Hehe, parentage of windows I haven't completed and it may well be impractical to have seemless transition from a DLL created window and the native HC window. I'm still hopeful though. What you will get for sure is correct parentage. In the latest DLL up here the parent is the main HC window instead of the MDI parent. Once I straighten that out, the group window, message log, etc. should overlay the DLL unit window properly; just haven't gotten to it yet. Symbols. I did tests and simple vector icons result in a much more responsive product than the existing bitmap images. Two obstacles that stand in the way of SVG (which indeed happens to be my format of choice, actually working that angle for the Stratsims projects). First is crafting or adapting an SVG parser that will work well enough with Delphi (there is one that probably would work in this instance if we also made a drawing package with the same framework). Second is my faithful assistants, all of you, aren't likely given past performance to draw the symbols anyway. I'll probably end up chopping up the existing bitmap to get the NTDS icons rather than someone else doing that work so more of my limited time sunk in tasks others can easily do. So time and resources have led down the path of using what we have already and maybe down the road the alternative can be implemented. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TonyE Posted March 5, 2009 Author Report Share Posted March 5, 2009 New version attached (this must be used with 2008.058+ GE). Unzip the whole ball of wax with directories in tact to your HCE directory. (so that you'll end up with a HCE\UnitWin directory as well as the updated DLL in ExportDLLs directory. This is a very minor update and doesn't address any of the requested changes (sorry). What has changed: 1. You can now run multiple copies of this DLL if you want to zoom in on different action with different windows. Just make a second/third/fourth copy of the UnitWin1.dll file in the ExportDLLs folder. 2. The occasional crash upon exit of the game may be fixed, if you still get the crash with this version, please let me know. I'm cautiously optimistic. (attachment removed, newer version later in thread) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TonyE Posted May 9, 2009 Author Report Share Posted May 9, 2009 note to self from StalinTC regarding SBs in UnitWin, they don't disappear/expire when they should. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TEPonta Posted July 2, 2009 Report Share Posted July 2, 2009 New version attached (this must be used with 2008.058+ GE). Unzip the whole ball of wax with directories in tact to your HCE directory. (so that you'll end up with a HCE\UnitWin directory as well as the updated DLL in ExportDLLs directory. This is a very minor update and doesn't address any of the requested changes (sorry). What has changed: 1. You can now run multiple copies of this DLL if you want to zoom in on different action with different windows. Just make a second/third/fourth copy of the UnitWin1.dll file in the ExportDLLs folder. 2. The occasional crash upon exit of the game may be fixed, if you still get the crash with this version, please let me know. I'm cautiously optimistic. Tony, No crash on exit here. This is the first time I've tried this since I went back to XP from Vista though, so that may also have something to do with it. Buddha Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TonyE Posted October 26, 2011 Author Report Share Posted October 26, 2011 New version attached (this must be used with 2008.058+ GE). Unzip the whole ball of wax with directories in tact to your HCE directory. (so that you'll end up with a HCE\UnitWin directory as well as the updated DLL in ExportDLLs directory. This is a very minor update and doesn't address any of the requested changes (sorry). What has changed: 1. When there are many units, some of the range rings used to turn black, they should no longer turn black. Sonobuoys are still black since they are supposed to be. HCUnitWin1_20111026.zip Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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