Navigation Computer v1

Post about your finished mods here.
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Periculi
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Well whaddya know about that! It will work.

Yes, Periculi Innovations Corporation has once again found the means to achieve your greatest Transcendence modification desires.

Navigation Graphics (nav compy holographic display system) is on the project timeline!

There will be some restrictions. The map graphics may not be able to handle every possible configuration of a possible network. In a lot of respects this is still a very very limited method. Maps will need to be able to be plotted on a grid and connections between distant systems may not work out.

I will see how robust I can make this- for the regular game this is extremely easy. For the up and coming networks we may find happening in adventure extensions I can give no guarantees, although I can provide some guidelines to network building that will be compatible with the map graphic display.

In essence, a system could have a maximum of 8 gates to easily plot it on a grid, you see? Each link would go to the next square- perhaps some of the geniuses around here can help me to figure out better ways to represent a complex map.

For instance, we could base the display around a centered single node (the one you are viewing, which could then show it's connecting links in given directions.

For an overview of complex networks, we could try some experiments that went along the lines of the adventure extension providing some map helper data to create the map- for instance, perhaps a layer can be added that is the background and is just a graphic made to order for the network we are viewing, then the 'tiles' can be solid color blocks that get removed as the map is 'revealed' like in many primitive games where a 2D map is uncovered over time.

At any rate, I can probably do this.
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digdug
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If successful, Sheltem will need put together a psuedo-cult and raise a temple to my mod-nificence in Eridani. Agreed?
do the miracle, my Lord ! :D
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Periculi
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Testing results!

Tiling any number of images appears to be allowed. Multiple <Image> elements in the new <Display> element of dockscreens is allowed.

Code blocks in <Image> elements is allowed.

Image layering is allowed! This makes things much much easier. I was worried that the images wouldn't 'stack' but they do. This means that composite images can be applied on top of a background, for instance.

Here are my models for making this happen:

1) An 'auto-plotting' primitive graphic tiling display generator that would require the topology attributes tag to carry additional graphic placement information- this may allow multiple topologies to use the same basic graphic viewer. Systems in the network would be required to have links that can be plotted easily on a grid. The vanilla game is a perfect example of this type of simple system- 26-30 points in a row.

This would require following some fairly strict rules to get the viewer to display properly, and may seem too tedious for most mod makers.

2) A Star-Chart based viewer where the mod maker is responsible for creating the various maps to be displayed for the topology they design- this would probably allow a much better looking type of graphic display. In fact, this method would allow some awesome effects, such as breaking a large network up into 'charts'- this would then correspond to map data that you buy such as "The Eridani Branch" which showed 7=8 systems in any arrangement. The possibilities are endless with this model.

This method would allow some interesting results, but again it may be a little hard for beginners. I think I prefer this method as it allows more complex networks to be shown.

I suppose that getting any visual map is going to take some hard work by anyone willing to learn it. There won't really be any "easy, automated" system to doing this type of visual effect. But then again- it's not exactly a walk in the park to create a new playership either, is it?

I will try to get some examples up of what I am thinking here for you to view and try out. Putting the vanilla game into a nice looking map format looks to be very simple, and it is probably the easiest network design to test on- it's just a line if systems connected in the same manner.

I am very excited about the stacking ability of images in the dockscreens, and being able to place code in the Image element means a lot too-

*sniffle* (tear of joy) thanks again, George! Did you know that you had made this type of mod possible?
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Sheltem
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Periculi wrote:As for the improvements-

You want me to place event code in every station in the game to register them all for events and add an OnObjReconned to every one just to track "scanned" stations? Sorry, more trouble than it is worth.

And then to do the rest- I would need to set up a recurring timer that ate all the game cpu resources counting things. You think you got drag in a Dwarg heavy system? This type of tracking would bring things down to a snail's pace. Not going to happen.
I do not want you to mod that :P
You liked to here some ideas, I gave some to you, no need to be mean :)
Periculi wrote:"uncorrectly" is not a word.
I never understood why you use un, in, im, ... different forms of denial although my english teacher tried to explain it two times :D

Thanks, you may continue to correct me, especially with grammar, my Lord of mod-nificence Periculi ;)

As it looks like you can create a working navigation map, will you abandon this mod ?
regards
Sheltem

What do you think about the endless stream of spawns ?

What about modding wandering spawns which dont attack the player directly ?
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Periculi
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Abandon this mod?

No way. This mod is totally necessary for the visual effects to even work, works better than a visual only mod can currently, and basically is going to be able to be used on a much larger spectrum of adventure extensions.

The visual mod can only present the graphics that are prepared for it, as it is right now. This means that for any topology that wants to use it a graphic layer set must be prepared. This was not an easy task- for the Star Chart module I added to this mod over 160 individual graphic elements had to be hand positioned and coded to switch on and off when appropriate.

Do you think that many people would be willing to create that much work just to use on a single topology adventure that already took a lot of work to build? I don't. I think that I would prefer just to grab the Navigation Computer as it is- without the visual candy and go play and build adventure extensions happy in the knowledge that the nav compy presents accurate data on any topology without any more work to be done by me or anyone else at all.

The visual version can't do that, and I don't have the code tools in the game to fix it- unless George adds some drawing and image control functions, the visual mod is probably going to be limited to the vanilla game topology for a while.

I posted it on Xelerus, and the link is in another topic, so if you want to see how hard it was to do this- grab the mod, open Star Charts.xml and start reading.
F50
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I'll join Periculi's Temple cult.
Last edited by F50 on Fri Aug 22, 2008 10:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.
schilcote
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What happens if you fire a Stephinian Missile while this is working? Maybe we can have a competition to see who can make the most laggy mod?
[schilcote] It doesn't have to be good, it just has to not be "wow is that the only thing you could think of" bad
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Periculi
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Fortunately, this mod only functions in dockscreens. I haven't seen any lag at all. I used no timers and no huge lists- nothing but small script block to perform the list building to display the topology.

And you can't fire missiles in a dockscreen.

:lol:
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