Location?

[AVGWarhawk]

Where is the location of the textures for the interface in the game....meaning the fun little buttons we press at the bottom of the screen:hmm: I have seen them once but for the life of me can not find them again:oops:

[Ducimus]

data/menu/gui if memory serves me correctly, or somewhere there abouts.

[AVGWarhawk]

That is it! Thank you sir!

[AVGWarhawk]

Now, this is what I'm ATTEMPTING to do:88) . With the added buttons on the interface, they lack a little picture of what the button does. I want to create a picture of the function. Say for instance, the button for weather is blank. I want to create a picture for the button indicating it is the weather button. Right now it is nice to have words pop up for what it does but these blank buttons could use a picture in it. How would I associate the buttons with the pictures I create? Is is possible? Do I sniff to much glue?:roll:

[Digital_Trucker]

How would I associate the buttons with the pictures I create? Is is possible? Do I sniff to much glue?:roll:

I asked myself the same question when I started playing around adding buttons and did a lot of :damn: until I got it figured out. As far as associating the icons with a particular button, there is a basic array of icons on the ...Data\Menu\Gui\Layout\HUD.dds file. They are on the right side of the graphic. The icon section (enlarged for clarity) that I used on my MHSMC looks like this:

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b173/digital_trucker/sh4/Icons.jpg

In the ....Data\Menu\Cfg\OrdersBar.cfg file, where you define the buttons used on the HUD, you will find a line for each button that looks like this :

Button2IconRowColumn=1,2

This is the icon reference for the crash dive button. As you can see it refers to the first row, second column of the array of icons. There are 9 rows of 21 columns that you can use for icons.

The trick with the icons is that the areas that you want to show up on the button must be part of the alpha channel and the parts where you want the button to show through must be deselected in the alpha channel.

If you are using Photoshop, go to the Select menu bar option and select "Load Selection..", then chose Alpha 1 (which should be the default) and you will see selected all of the parts of the icons that show up on the buttons. Then you can use the add selection tool to add the portions of any new icons that you want to use.

[Ducimus]

You don't have enough button icons man. I think you need a few more! :lol:

[Digital_Trucker]

You don't have enough button icons man. I think you need a few more! :lol:

I think so, too, but I'm running out of places to put them:rotfl: . I added an 11th HUD station just to make room for more, though.:o

[Ducimus]

Im glad im a keyboard user, all those clickable buttons would confuse the hell out me. :rotfl:

[AVGWarhawk]

How would I associate the buttons with the pictures I create? Is is possible? Do I sniff to much glue?:roll:

I asked myself the same question when I started playing around adding buttons and did a lot of :damn: until I got it figured out. As far as associating the icons with a particular button, there is a basic array of icons on the ...Data\Menu\Gui\Layout\HUD.dds file. They are on the right side of the graphic. The icon section (enlarged for clarity) that I used on my MHSMC looks like this:

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b173/digital_trucker/sh4/Icons.jpg

In the ....Data\Menu\Cfg\OrdersBar.cfg file, where you define the buttons used on the HUD, you will find a line for each button that looks like this :

Button2IconRowColumn=1,2

This is the icon reference for the crash dive button. As you can see it refers to the first row, second column of the array of icons. There are 9 rows of 21 columns that you can use for icons.

The trick with the icons is that the areas that you want to show up on the button must be part of the alpha channel and the parts where you want the button to show through must be deselected in the alpha channel.

If you are using Photoshop, go to the Select menu bar option and select "Load Selection..", then chose Alpha 1 (which should be the default) and you will see selected all of the parts of the icons that show up on the buttons. Then you can use the add selection tool to add the portions of any new icons that you want to use.


Yep, I have photo shop. I will give this a try. I suspect I can create my button pictures on this .tga and then make the association to the new picture? You stated 9 rows of 21 channels. Perhaps I can not add more channels or rows.?

[AVGWarhawk]

My mistake, I have MS photoshop. I can do cropping and such but this Alpha 1 is not present. :down:

[Digital_Trucker]

Im glad im a keyboard user, all those clickable buttons would confuse the hell out me. :rotfl:

I'm the opposite, pictures work better for me than keys. And sh4speech does the clicking for me on voice command, I don't even have to remember where the button is (although I pretty much do). Besides, with my, at times, shaky hands, I have a better chance of staying on the button when I make a click than I do hitting the right key after I scratch my head for a week trying to remember the keys:oops:

But, that's the beauty of having both keyboard and mouse interface for the same commands. You use what works for you.

[Digital_Trucker]

Yep, I have photo shop. I will give this a try. I suspect I can create my button pictures on this .tga and then make the association to the new picture? You stated 9 rows of 21 channels. Perhaps I can not add more channels or rows.?

Don't create any button pics on the tga or they won't show up in game, you need to work on the dds file. There's only room on the graphic for 9 rows of 21 columns, but there is pleny of room for adding icons (even on my overpopulated one). How many icons were you wanting to add?

I'm not familiar with MS photoshop. Does it have the ability to select portions of the graphic and save/load a selection? And does it work on dds files? If you don't have the tools to put the icons on the graphic, you could just design them to the correct dimensions, save them in jpg format and send them to me and I could put them on a stock HUD.dds file that you could use just for the icons by changing one line in the OrdersBar.cfg file (which you're going to modify anyway to add buttons).

[AVGWarhawk]

Hang tight, I will get back to you on this!

[AVGWarhawk]

Ok, the circled buttons are blank. I was looking to have something there other than a blank button. Heck, even a nice black dot would be fine.

http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q62/avgwarhawk/SH4Img2007-12-05_200807_578.jpg

Such a nice interface from Oakgroove and the added buttons are great but I would like something showing up on the blank buttons. What do you need from me to accomplish this? This little bit of work can also go into the other great interface that has the nice clean brass work as well!!!

[Digital_Trucker]

I just need to know which mod the extra buttons came from, or if you could zip up the ....\Data\Menu\Gui\Layout\HUD.dds and ....\Data\Menu\cfg\OrdersBar.cfg files, host them somewhere and send me a link I can get the icons on there and make the change to the OrdersBar.cfg file to allow you to use any HUD interface without losing the icons.

[AVGWarhawk]

Hooray, I figured out Filefront....there is hope for me...not much but some. Here is the link to the two files:


http://hosted.filefront.com/AVGWarhawk1

[Digital_Trucker]

:rotfl: Filefront can be a bear to work with sometimes. I'll snag it (if Filefront isn't malfunctioning:o ) and get back to ya in a few.

[Digital_Trucker]

Edit: These files had problems. The corrected files are available at this post http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showpost.php?p=716247&postcount=30

AVGWarhawk, you can pick up your modified files at http://files.filefront.com/AVGWarhawkrar/;9219960;/fileinfo.html

I'm assuming this is for a mod, so just deactivate the mod, place the HUD1.dds file in the same folder as the HUD.dds (...Data\Menu\Gui\Layout in the mod), place the OrdersBar.cfg file in the folder it came from in the mod (....\Data\Menu\cfg) and reactivate the mod and you should have the icons that were missing from those two buttons. You'll also be able to activate any HUD mod that doesn't change the OrdersBar.cfg file without losing your icons.

I used my "overpopulated" HUD.dds for your HUD1.dds, so that if you wanted to use any of the icons on it, you could just set up your button in the OrdersBar.cfg file and point to any of the icons on the HUD1.dds.

Let me know if you have any problems with it.

[AVGWarhawk]

DT, you da man!!!! Worked like a charm:rock: I can not thank you enough! My orders bar is beautful and so full of buttons with pictures on them. Again, thanks for working with it and walking me through it. Beautiful, just beautiful.:up:

[kylesplanet]

Ok dang it now this is going to have to be made into a mod for OakGrooves wonderful HUD. I have never got the weather report installed correctly so I don't even have a blank button to fix. This would be a very helpful mod to dummies like myself.:88)

[AVGWarhawk]

It works man! I use RFB that added the extra buttons. This fix by DT added the nice pictures on the buttons. The orders bar fix went into the RFB folder for it and the HUD.dds went into Oakgrooves part of it. Worked fantastic:up:

[AVGWarhawk]

http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q62/avgwarhawk/SH4Img2007-12-08_191804_828.jpg



A thing of beauty. There are some mods I can not live without. Oakgrooves orders bar is one of them. Now with DT's fix. It just got 100% better:rock:

[AVGWarhawk]

DT, I just added this thread to the 1.4 compatible mod list under Oakgrooves link for his textured orders bar mod. I'm sure there will be others who would like to have the completed orders bar look. :yep:

[Digital_Trucker]

DT, you da man!!!! Worked like a charm:rock: I can not thank you enough! My orders bar is beautful and so full of buttons with pictures on them. Again, thanks for working with it and walking me through it. Beautiful, just beautiful.:up:

DT, I just added this thread to the 1.4 compatible mod list under Oakgrooves link for his textured orders bar mod. I'm sure there will be others who would like to have the completed orders bar look. :yep:

I'm glad to know that I'm not the only one who likes plenty of pretty buttons to click on :arrgh!: . Glad I could be of assistance to you and any others that use RFB.

[Bill Nichols]

http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q62/avgwarhawk/SH4Img2007-12-08_191804_828.jpg



A thing of beauty. There are some mods I can not live without. Oakgrooves orders bar is one of them. Now with DT's fix. It just got 100% better:rock:


But there seem to be some strange icons on some of the buttons, see the circled items here:



http://www.subguru.com/HUDtest.JPG

The last one, for example, is supposed to be "Silent Running"

[AVGWarhawk]

You are correct Bill. I notice last night and was going to ask DT to see if he can assign the correct pic to the correct button. Might have opened a can of worms. DT what is you take on correct picture/button assignment?

[Digital_Trucker]

Well, what I did when I changed the Icon array was to compare the HUD file you sent me with the one I had already added icons to in order to verify that the icons were the same (except for the ones I had added). Unless I've gone blind (distinct possibility:p ) they were the same except that I had a pull down map icon in place of the gramophone icon. I put the gramophone icon back in it's proper place and made the changes to the OrdersBar.cfg file.

This brings me to ask a couple of questions:

1) Was the HUD.dds file that you sent me from RFB?

2) Did the buttons on Bill Nichols picture have any icons before the change?

I'm going to go back and review the stuff you sent me, AVG, and make sure I've not gone cuckoo yet. Will get back to you if I find out anything right away.

Edit : I'm going to review each and every icon assignment in the OrdersBar.cfg file you sent me and make sure that it points to the appropriate icon. I've never used RFB and don't know whether it used any custom icons or not, but the stock HUD.dds does not have icons for things like Silent Running (it uses the periscope depth icon for it). I had "ass-u-me-d" that, since the HUD.dds that I compared to mine was the same except for the added icons, there would be no problems with other icons. Apparently, this wasn't the case or the HUD.dds I compared to mine wasn't the one used by RFB. Anyhoo, I'll try to get it sorted out ASAP and get a corrected version uploaded.

[AVGWarhawk]

THANK YOU for taking the time DT. Seems like me and Bill are starved for this interface. I mean it DT, thanks, you could have said it is what it is. I appreciate you looking it over again:up:

[Digital_Trucker]

Not a problem, AVG, the "Dirty Birds" don't play 'till tomorrow night, so I don't know what to do with myself on a Sunday afternoon anyway:rotfl: .

I figured out the problem, just have to solve it now. I downloaded RFB and pulled the HUD from it to make sure I was working with the right graphic. It's different from the one you sent me, so I'm assuming that is root cause of the problem.

Soooooooo, what I'll do is to just add the necessary icons to the RFB HUD and everything will be good to go (as long as you want to stick with the same icons as you've always had, which is what I'm guessing you'd want to do).

[Digital_Trucker]

Okeydoke, this should do the trick. It's in JSGME format and has instructions for installation order. The previous file has been deleted from Filefront to avoid confusion.

Get it here http://files.filefront.com/RFB+HUD+mod+workaroundrar/;9225024;/fileinfo.html

[AVGWarhawk]

Beautiful. Downloaded and will see who she goes!

[AVGWarhawk]

Worked great but the read me is reversed. It says top load your mod correction first then the hud mod. I did and it did not work. I then loaded the Oakgroove hud mod followed by your fix. Button match with pictures:up: Again, many many thanks for taking the time to cure my pettiness with pictures. Hats off to you sir!

BTW, who are the dirty birds?

[Digital_Trucker]

Worked great but the read me is reversed. It says top load your mod correction first then the hud mod. I did and it did not work. I then loaded the Oakgroove hud mod followed by your fix. Button match with pictures:up: Again, many many thanks for taking the time to cure my pettiness with pictures. Hats off to you sir!

BTW, who are the dirty birds?

Easy part first, the "Dirty Birds" is a nickname (probably not used anymore) for the Atlanta Falcons.

Actually, after thinking about it, it shouldn't make any difference what order you intall them in, but it should have worked by installing my workaround first. I can't think of any reason why it wouldn't work unless the HUD mod you were installing changed the OrdersBar.cfg file. Well, as long as it works, I guess it doesn't matter, right? Enjoy!

While I'm thinking about it, I may make one for TM, too.

[AVGWarhawk]

The Falcons! My dirty birds are the Ravens. As many penalties they collect every game, not a wonder they are not called the dirty birds. Anyway, it is some of the orders have changed on the bar, like the different search patterns. No biggie as along as what I do have match the picture! Good to go. Thanks a million.