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Just an artistic issue
« on: January 03, 2003, 09:03:52 pm »



Well, I have read the bug fix rapport and i?m content.
But the release version on SC2 is, if
I may say, plain ugly. Especially the menus are horrific (rather goofy) when compared with the menus of the original sc2 diskette or CD version. They fit in the game much better and give it a look of somewhat greater quality. I don?t even want to bring up the in orbit wiews with those STUPID LOOKING icons. Then there were no oscilloscope but that has now been taken care, thank gods. And what about the intro and the credits. i suggets that you should take the original ones for the 3do scinematics will arise many furtive thoughts.

I suppose nobody wants to redo the menus, so im asking someone to give a facelift to the colour of the flagship name font. It?s currently brownish. This makes me feel unconfortable. I dig up my 75MHz laptop with IntelDX4 processor and started SC2 and indeed font of the flagship name is GOLDEN (yellow shaded with orange)

I just wonder. Why cant peole ever keep to the spirit of the original version (Look what happened to SC3, though the script for it was allmost foretold in SC2).  How can playing the rerelease be a nostalgic experience when some tonttu-men go messing it up.

Im no whiner, nor am I a berliner, but come on, most of you agree with me in this, don?t you.    
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Nic.
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Re: Just an artistic issue
« Reply #1 on: January 03, 2003, 10:00:06 pm »

I'm torn on the issue of a "true-blue" recreation of the PC version.. I fired up my old copy (thanks DosBox!) and puttered around, the PC planet stats screen looks much, much better than the 3DO one, but the new planet navigation (and the zooming into orbit!) is so much nicer than the PC version, I can't in any capacity recommend changing it at all..  It's been stable (for me, at least) since the 0.1 release, and that says alot..

Also, the lander reports on the PC version ("they killed all three of the Lieberman triplets!") were blue, the 3DO reports are green, which is easier to read.  Easier to read is good.

But after using the PC menus, I'm thoroughly convinced that the 3DO menus are junk; the PC menus allowed one to see all the options they had in front of them at-a-glance, (and had a nice, retro, STARCON-style look to them Smiley) the 3DO menus require one to cycle through them to see all the options, and don't even have the usual added benefit of "looking really cool" to compensate for reduced functionality..  Why was this done?  Was there a large amount of complaints about the PC-style menus in the Sega Genesis version of STARCON or something?

But seeing as the project mandate is a "straight port of the 3DO version" I doubt any, um, "hybridization" of features is any priority, ESPECIALLY since the current pieces I have aesthetic issues with don't crash the game Smiley  Perhaps after 1.0 we can start looking into breaking things that used to work fine..
« Last Edit: January 03, 2003, 10:06:57 pm by Nic. » Logged
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Re: Just an artistic issue
« Reply #2 on: January 04, 2003, 06:56:00 pm »

I agree... the PC's menu interface was the easiest to use. I also miss the easily identifiable planet statistics (the icons are a little hard to decipher), but the zoom feature is a great boon.

Well, I eagerly anticipate 1.0...
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Re: Just an artistic issue
« Reply #3 on: January 05, 2003, 09:26:05 am »

Well, just FYI, I got sick of the symbol-based course-scan statistics too, so I added support for the PC version (use text for stats).  I just committed it, so it is in the latest CVS (you need to use '-a' on the command line to enable)

(Assuming I didn't mess anything up too terribly)

I may tackly the menus too (they also bug me), but that is quite a bit more work, so perhaps not.
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Re: Just an artistic issue
« Reply #4 on: January 05, 2003, 10:48:08 am »

Yeah, I ranted about the menus in some previous post as well.

The text was blue?  You sure?  I could have sworn it was green--at least in some PC version.
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Re: Just an artistic issue
« Reply #5 on: January 05, 2003, 12:36:36 pm »

Quote
The text was blue?  You sure?  I could have sworn it was green--at least in some PC version.


Yeah, it's blue. A light blue (cyan, even) on a blue background. I also consider it vastly superior to the current menu system.
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Re: Just an artistic issue
« Reply #6 on: January 05, 2003, 07:04:50 pm »

Quote
The text was blue?  You sure?  I could have sworn it was green--at least in some PC version.

I'm looking at it right now -- "Report From Surface", in blue.

Memory is funny -- I remembered it as green, too.  But I also remembered the planet lander as working completely differently in the PC version than it actually does..
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Re: Just an artistic issue
« Reply #7 on: January 06, 2003, 07:03:14 am »

Another update:
 I just commited an implementation of the PC menus to CVS (use '-b' on the command line to enable them).  You will notice that it isn't yet identical to the PC (specifically the menu hierarchy is the same as for 3DO not the PC).  Changing that will require a bit more work, but  the initial implementation is pretty complete.

See the TODO for all the known issues with the PC menus.  If you find any others, please let me know.

As for the color of the lander messages, that isn't worth implementing until we have a nice configuration mthod that lets you custmize which parts should be 3do, pc, or custom (i.e. wasting a cd-line option on it would be dumb).  I have no idea if such a tool is planned for 1.0 or not  tho.
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Re: Just an artistic issue
« Reply #8 on: January 11, 2003, 01:02:44 pm »

*sniff* but... but... I LIKE the 3DO interface!  Cry

Sorry, speaking as a person who (unfortunately) never got to really play the PC version of SCII, I really got used to the 3DO interface and the way it worked.  Being that I still own and use my 3DO AND have SCII for it, I guess I don't ahve much room to complain if things change too much, but I figure the menu system ain't all that bad really. Not to mention you can just hit a button and it doesn't bother with all that "scanning" it has to do and skips right to the results.

I dunno.. Maybe if I had gotten used to the PC version first it would have been different.

just my 2 cents Smiley

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Re: Just an artistic issue
« Reply #9 on: January 12, 2003, 04:41:22 am »

Okay I lied.
  I implemented the PC fonts.  This changes the ship name to use gradiated colors (like 'FUEL' and 'CREW'), changes the fonts in the status menu fro "CAPTAIN", "CREW", and "FUEL" to match the PC, and does most of the lander-text message correctly (it isn't actually a solid color text, but alternating light-blue, dark-blue pixels), and on a textured background.
The lander still looks funky, as the window isn't really the right size, and the Lander font isn't correct (for either PC or 3DO)

Also, I changed the cmd-line interface to the pc options (so -b, -a, and -e no longer exist):

now do '--<op>t=pc/3do'
where <opt> is one of:
 music
 cscan
 menu
 font

This is only availiable in CVS.

Also, you'll need to update your content directory, as some files were changed in content/lbm and content/ipanims

« Last Edit: January 12, 2003, 07:47:23 am by PhracturedBlue » Logged
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