Thread: Panel File IDs
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Unread 10-27-2008, 04:33 PM
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Supermax Supermax is offline
The Undying
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Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Winnipeg, Canada
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One thing I find that has been limiting me in my UI designs is that the user's screen resolution isn't offered to us in some sort of variable. We have the math done, but by forcing the average user (or new user) to go into the XML document and input their screen resolution and do the math limits our demographic. Our UIs are all of a sudden being downloaded only by code-savvy people or folk that have the time and commitment to go into the tutorials and learn how to do it.

Mini-bars are very popular. My Mini-bar is different from, lets say, LM's because I use code to manipulate the bottom toolbar and he doesn't. Now obviously this is no attack on LM but what I'm trying to say is all his manipulation in his Mini-bars are done via images as opposed to mine which are done with code and images. What I mean is, players wanting to use LM's Mini-bar's are able to just: download, extract, and play. This is how it should be; although that limits developers. To use my Mini-bars the process looks a little more like this: download, extract, open .xml, adjust to player screen resolution, save, and play.

From what research I've done, .xml can call on variables. So this is what I propose:

Let's say I am attempting to adjust the Mini-bar to fit a 800 x 600 px resolution. The Mini-bar, instead of being 800 x 600 px wide to fit the screen, is only 450 x 100 px. Let's say that the player's x resolution (800 px) is a variable named xresolution. If we were able to code it so that the xml was able to do the math itself and the game could call in the skin without having any user interference (save selecting the skin from the options menu.) It would preferable look something like this:

<PanelFile ID="toolbar">
<Element ID="ToolbarField" X="(xresolution-450)/2" Y="(yresolution-100)" Width="450" Height="100">
</PanelFile>

That way the game would automatically center the Mini-Bar and from within that PanelFile we could adjust the other elements accordingly.

Does that make sense? I hope so.

Last edited by Supermax : 10-27-2008 at 04:37 PM.
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