Particle's Projects

[(Designer)Particle]

Carlos today got back to me, and what he found was a bug in my program.  I had figured that people may have already changed their resource path in the zoo.ini file because Jay specifically gives instructions to do it when using his mapmaker: http://www.ztcdd.org/DG/index.php?topic=5356.0

Of course I use that mapmaker, so I had seen that before.  Also Jay is absolutely correct about how it simplifies everything when you put the mapmaker in its own folder.  I just wanted to take it a step further, and make it all even easier, by having it so you can easily set up and remove path folders in zookini.  I had all this working but at some point I left out one important line, and so the program wasn't inserting the path from zoo.ini into the textbox properly, and so this made it so when carlos saved his changes, it failed to carry over the entire path from his original zoo.ini.  That was a stupid mistake, but it should work fine now.

 

So let me just explain how this should work.  The default line in zoo.ini for the path looks like this:

 

path=./dlupdate;./updates;./xpack2/loc;./xpack2;./dupdate;./zupdate1;./xpack1/loc;./xpack1;./zupdate;./loc;.

 

Jays tells people in his instructions for setting up the mapmaker to change it to this:

 

path=./mapmaker;./hacks;./dlupdate;./updates;./xpack2/loc;./xpack2;./dupdate;./zupdate1;./xpack1/loc;./xpack1;./zupdate;./loc;.

 

That is what Carlos had done.  Now when Zookini loads his zoo.ini it should look like this:

 

 

 

Now the way Jay says you can load/unload the mapmaker is to change the foldername in your file structure to "mapmaker-unused", and you can still do it that way if you like.  But if you are just wanting to do it in zookini, you can change the resource path to ./hacks; and save the changes, and the mapmaker folder will now no longer be loaded at launch.  Change it back to ./mapmaker;./hacks; and it is loaded again.

 

I use this for all sorts of things like I have a moose folder I use for the club, and if I want to load it up at boot, I change the path to ./moose;./hacks; and that is just one example.  I hope that clarifies for everyone what the Custom Resource Path is for, and why it is there.  :)

 

Edit: and Carlos just sent me a note saying everything is working fine now.  I uploaded a new version in the original post, version 0.7, which fixed the bug, so if anyone else has any issues or bugs with the resource path, please let me know.

[carlos franco]

Friend you have explained it in such a simple and clear way, that is exactly what has happened, now I am doing very well zookini.

Thank you for this great contribution.

[Ryuwoo]

I knew about Zoo.ini, but I didn't know what Update Rate and Draw Rate meant, so I didn't touch them, but now I can . Thank to you, particle.  

 

And zookini is an easy and convenient program. It's great. It's easy for novices to use.

[(Designer)Particle]

Obviously it has been awhile since I posted anything in here.  For that, please accept my apology... due to boring reasons I went afk for a few months, but I have been back for a little while now and working very hard on a project that I think you guys are going to like.  I should have a test version for you guys to download in about a week. 

 

The story behind this mod is that, as you guys know, I made a UI hack called bigger menus, then I made another called bigger panels, and by that time, I had altered over half the UI templates in the game, and I knew that I was about 50% done with a full UI replacement mod, the only question I had left was, could I do the rest?  So I had put some effort into this idea last year before going afk, but really I had not realized a final concept at all.  I did have a few discussions with other designers about if it was even possible to do a UI replacement, and if so, what would that be in concept.  But in the end, I was not sure of how far I wanted to take it... I felt that bigger menus and bigger panels were pretty decent quality of life upgrades for the time being, and so I had put this aside to work on other projects.

 

When I came back a few months ago, for a variety of reasons, I had prioritized this project as the one I wanted to work on the most, and so I did a version of this mod that I called the rough draft.  I still didn't even know what my overall goal was, but I just wanted to figure out what was possible.  So I began to piece it together, and I showed Cricket some screenshots.  She said she liked the greens that I had chosen but she would do it in purple.  I was like: wut.  She said yeah I like purple.  I was like:  "Purple?".  She again, repeated very politely:  "Yes purple is what I would do."

 

I sat and mulled that over for about 10 minutes and then I realized.  She was absolutely right.  Purple!  So I asked her to send me some of her favorite purple colors, to give me a starting point.  She sent me some.  I asked her what she would name this "theme".  She told me either "Purple Rein" or "Lost Amethyst".  Well, I personally am a huge prince fan, but... we're going with "Lost Amethyst", because  something about that just hit a nail for me.  Before any purple haters freak out, I just want you to know the green version will be hopefully be released at the same time as the final purple version,   But I chose to go the purple route for testing, because I really think this shows the difference between the old UI and my new one the best, by totally switching the color scheme up.  So without further ado, a preview of the "Lost Amethyst Total UI Replacement Mod".  (I hope you guys like it... fingers crossed...)

 

 

[(Designer)Particle]

I hope you all are ok with waiting a few more days for the test version.  This is a huge project, a total labor of love, and I've put in hundreds of hours on this just to get to this point.  I have about 30 buttons left to do, but EVERY THING ELSE IN THE GAME IS PURPLE!  Cricket and I have tested the rough draft, and now a test version of the test version of the purple version for a few days, it is all working so far.  I want to get this thing to work with every mod that has ever came before, so that will be a main goal of this project, 100% compatable with older mods if possible.  The entire thing works just fine in 800x600, but it is really designed for 1024x768 and higher, and of course it looks the best in widescreen.  But you can play the game just fine in 800x600, with some minor overlaps of the panels.  I will of course have more screenshots coming soon, just keep in mind this is a work in progress, and we're about a month away from getting it published still, so things could change (and knowing me they probably will).

 

Ok, time to get to  work on those last buttons.  You can see in the screenshot, the tabs on the buy panel are still green.  They need to be purple.  :)

[(Admin)Cricket]

You have done amazing work on this project!!    It has been a pleasure being your tester. 

[(Admin)Savannahjan]

Wow!  That is looking fabulous!   So glad to have you back and coming up with more genius ideas.  You simply cannot go wrong collaborating with our lil' Cricket.   

 

[(Designer)Particle]

Yes Cricket has great design instinct.  Ever since I joined she has been giving me little helpful ideas when I needed them.

 

 

Also I should give credit to Khaydar for the floating bars on the main screen.  We had a discussion one time and he pointed out that when the UI spread on larger screensizes, there was a lot of deadspace on the bars that just covered up the zoo.  Although at the time I didn't really think too much of it, as time went by I realized what he was saying was true.  In 2001, when they designed this original UI, most games only came in one screensize, so the fact that they designed the game to work in 3 was pretty cool.  But nowadays, it is pretty standard to float the bars instead of just expanding them.  So I played around with floating the bars and the minimap panel and I really like it better that way so thankyou Khaydar for that suggestion.

 

So a few more screenshots, keep in mind these are jpgs of the UI, so they are not exactly the same as it looks in game, but pretty close:

 

 

Sometimes it is good to do the side by side comparison.  The old animal plaque:

 

Purple version:

 

So what you can see there is that these are not just recolors of the old UI, I'm rebuilding every panel from scratch by hand, one pixel at a time (So to speak).  I'm doing the best I can to make this look and feel as good or better than the original, if I can, but it is not easy.  I'm used to having the ability to work in millions of colors, with lua scripting and other modern modding techniques.  Life in 2003 was not so simple.  But, it is sort of a fun challenge...

[(Designer)Particle]

 

[VNDragonV2]

Wow. I assume you have to skin every button one by one? And I take it that the green version would use the same color as Zookini's UI?

Also, do you plan on making a UI template for other to customize other colors as well?