Particle's Projects

[HeatherL]

21 hours ago, Particle said:

It does not go in your addons folder!

What is an addons folder?

[(Designer)Particle]

dlupdate is the recommended one.

 

I apologize my terminology might sometimes sound a little strange here, but it is sort of standard in WOW and many other games to call game modifications "addons".

[HeatherL]

That's OK, I'm just a little technologically impaired.  Thanks.

Would it be possible for this mega hack to include the option to choose which color, or none, to apply to the panels, etc?  Does that make sense?

[(Designer)Particle]

Omg I would love that!  Unfortunately no... I have to make every single graphic that you see, as a .png file (basically a 256 color bitmap) so that is what takes so long there is probably around 1000 different graphics for each version I have made, the purple and the green one.

 

Someone asked earlier if it would be possible to make some kits so people could make their own colors for this, but I seriously doubt anyone is going to want to try it.  The amount of work it will take will be... a lot.   But, having said that, as with any mod, everything I have done is a .ztd file (zip file) that you can open up and see what I did.  The blueprint is there.  Some things will be easy to alter, like font colors... because that is done with code.  Other things will require you to get very creative in your graphics editor.  But if anyone wants to try it, I will be glad to help them.

 

For my part, I have in mind to try some other color combinations, but I cannot do it right now.  I must move to other things for awhile.  This has been a labor of love, but I'm ready for the next project.

[Fern]

Making your own is not something I would recommend for those who don't understand the programs as my guess is it would be very easy to make a mistake and mess something up.

[(Designer)Particle]

Yeah there is that.  :)

 

Like I said I seriously doubt anyone will even want to try it.

[nana_nytowl]

I just found this (thanks to Cricket giving me the link) and it's AWESOME!!! 

 

You are SO talented.

 

Keep up the great work!!!

 

[(Designer)Particle]

The purple version is finished, and Cricket has the test version.  Both UIs are exactly the same code, exactly the same graphics, except for the colors of course!

 

So I'm on the home stretch now.  I'm going to stagger the releases by a week, just to make my life easier.  All my boxes are checked off, everything is in the ztds... just a last round of testing to do, and this project is done!

[nana_nytowl]

On 6/28/2020 at 8:12 PM, Particle said:

Ok, now some notes about this thing.  First thing you might notice is that I changed the game options, they are all in one panel, and you can access them from the start page.  This is kind of nice, but a few of the things just won't work while you're in the start menu, like for example, you can't change the volume for the start menu while you're in the start menu, for some reason it won't actually change the volume until after you leave the start menu and come back, but still, enough things worked that I think it makes for some quality of life.  Mainly you can switch to windowed mode, or change screen sizes from the start screen, so that is super nice.

 

Because the file options used to be on the game options panel, but they just wouldn't really be appropriate in the start menu, I have moved those to the help panel, so now you can access those from the floppy disk button, in the main window, and also you can access the game options from the little gear button.  The reason I did it this way instead of just making a new panel for file options is... I can't just make a new panel.  The game won't really let me do a lot of things, to be honest, it is very rigid about what can function in these layout files, BUT... I figured out a few tricks here and there, and moving the file options to the help panel was how I am currently dealing with this.  You can bring this panel up with f1 at any time, so it does seem to me to be the best answer for where to put the file options.

 

So I made this screenshot (below) a little while ago to show cricket some things... #1 was to redo those buttons but since that is done, let's skip to 2.

 

2.  Sometimes the little icons here have a green background.  I will be working on fixing these icons to have transparent backgrounds.  For now, don't worry about that.  Most of the icons from dinosaur digs and marine mania have transparent backgrounds already.

 

3.  There are a lot of fun things I can do to still make things look better.  For example:  this building icon is kind of ugly, and has always bugged me.  Because I had to make it with a pink background, I could actually change it to be anything I want now.  So what kind of building should I use for that?  Ice cream stand?  Drink Stand?  Anyways... I'm mentioning it because it is an example of more I could do if I want.  I have a whole list of things like this to work on still.

 

4.  Down here at the bottom, you can see the money color is still green.  That is because I couldn't figure out how to change that color.  The game engine makes that one text green every time at startup.  Also, game messages get colored red/green sometimes and I can't change that.  I was able to change 99% of things, but still there is a few things I just can't change.  The green bars near the money though, I can change those, but they are 3 colors, red when low, yellow when in the middle, and green when high, so changing that color scheme requires something that matches the screen and still makes sense.  I haven't messed with those yet but I might.  So there are some things I can't change, and a few things I just haven't changed yet because they make sense the way they are.  Again... This is not a finished mod, and I may figure more things out or change things as time goes on.

 

 

If you happen to actually play through the old scenarios, the first few have screenshots of the old UI.  I think I will fix that eventually, but just for now beware.  Also, I haven't tested all the scenarios with the new UI, although I did test the first 3.  In the next week or 2 I will be playing through all the scenarios, just to make sure there are no issues there.

 

That's it for now, feel free to ask any questions or report any issues, I'll be checking in a lot for the next few days in case things come up.

 

I actually like it with the money amount in green. It's a nice contrast and much easier to read (for me anyway.)

 

[nana_nytowl]

On 9/17/2020 at 3:43 PM, Particle said:

dlupdate is the recommended one.

 

I apologize my terminology might sometimes sound a little strange here, but it is sort of standard in WOW and many other games to call game modifications "addons".

 

ANOTHER Tekkie that plays WoW??? Awesome..

 

What realm and what faction are you?

 

My hubby and I play both factions. But my heart is Horde and he's a traitor. We play mostly on Grizzly Hills, Proudmoor and Thrall, but do have some on a couple of other realms.