After seeing that neutrino was willing to use some code provided by rajamonni here http://forums.uberent.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=71&t=50356 (Which I left a bit of an arrogant comment in... ) It got me thinking, this being almost like a big community project and all, I was wondering if there's any particular bits of UI functionality that Uber would like to see prototyped by the community, and then possibly used if they like it? I'd be happy to work on a few things at no cost if it meant the chance of getting some kind of contributor mention in the credits should my work be used in the game. It's fun to work on anyhow so no biggie if it gets rejected. Would anyone else here be interested in doing a few Uber projects? And does Uber think this is a good idea? EDIT: Hell, it doesn't even need to be that interesting. Got a PSD design for the start page you'd like to see in working action? I'd cut that bad boy up.
I really like the toggle keymappings Cola_colin uses in his key mapper (which you helped initiate of course). Having tested ubers current (I know it's alpha), his seems more user friendly and polished.
We also have plenty of texture artists (myself, Nanolathe, I'm sure many others) that could do the actual image data for the UI. I also looked at the JS Knockout tutorial because I was curious, and it's actually really intuitive. JS also turns out to be formatted very similarly to Expression 2, which made it about 500% easier for me.
Hey Mushroomars... It's just occurred to me: We have basically the entire skill required for pretty much all modding in the Realm. Do you reckon we should start looking into getting 'minions working together on mods? I can make the necessary resources available for you all to collaborate on stuff...
If you haven't seen already, I'm actually working on a legged unit set right now. RCIX and I planned the unit set as a modular separate faction focused on mobility, versatility (an almost purely subversive faction - think Elfdar from DoWI except less broken).
The issue here is one of management and communication. You guys are already doing great work by experimenting with the systems as we build them. I'm certainly willing to look at code for specific things. The log volume thing someone here already was on though.
What you could do is have some way for the modders to see all the low-priority stuff that you aren't working on actively. Maybe in a google docs or something. We could mark our names on stuff we're working on and collaborate with one another to get little projects and code snippets done. I'm especially interested in the Spiral Function you have on the todo list, presumably for terrain generation. That and the metal distribution algorithm. It'd take small chunk of time to set up but it might save work in the long run, and some of us are looking for a bit of experience and fun along the way. It'd be great if we could directly contribute.
The same way an open source project is managed, in a haphazard and messy way. But seriously now, the same way the bug tracker is managed, delegate it to the community. I'd be glad to contribute a bit to the management of a community project, and I'm sure quite a few other people would just so they could get some credit for contributing to this awesome game. And the simple fact that you have responded to this topic tells me that you guys really are hurting for manpower right now. Please, at least try it out, it'd be maybe 30 minutes out of someone's day to set it up. If you venture nothing, you gain nothing.
They can't/shouldn't give out any source code. So anything we can do is limited to purely UI & JSON work, that isn't dependant on engine changes. That really doesn't leave much.
I'm not saying they should give out the source code, I'm saying they should keep a todo list of things that we might be able to do. It doesn't need to be directly integrated into the game. For example, an algorithm that creates spirals that look realistically wrapped onto a sphere, and exports points, lines and faces at variable resolutions would be useful. The UI work we've done already has proved useful, otherwise nobody would use it. Models and art could also be delegated to the community, though that might produce sub-par or unfavorable results, and I think we've covered the legal bits and bobs on that already.
No worries, well if something does come up let us know. Maybe someone there will think of a whacky idea one morning that you guys don't have the time to focus on.. In that case we'll be here eagerly waiting
This. The strength of modding has always been that modders can often afford to spend time messing about with interesting ideas that professional developers can't. If Uber had a short list of "Ideas we think are interesting, but we don't have time to focus on now", then i reckon a lot of modders would enjoy playing about with things and reporting the results. At the moment, we are quite limited in that we only have access to UI features. I think that the majority of mods at the moment tend to be implementing features that theres a strong chance uber themselves will add, when they get round to doing a pass on the UI. If/When modders are granted access to server-side files, i expect we will start seeing some much more interesting things. This would be a perfect opportunity for Uber to throw out a few ideas that they would pay attention to any experimentations thereon.
That would be nice. Actually we have access to change all visuals of game: effects, shaders, models and textures. We also have access to planet generator, so it's actually possible to start making own biomes and planet types.
I would love to see how the UI stuff they are working on turns out. The last two years my SDE job has transitioned over to full time JavaScript/CSS3/HTML5 development. Currently, I am building essentially high fidelity micro-sites and I wonder how much would be transferable to the front end system they are implementing. Some info here on their implementation: viewtopic.php?f=72&t=50277&p=770696&hilit=javascript#p770696 I would still like see what we can do the full use that system. Also, I wonder why they are suggesting Jquerry. That is great for cross browser comparability but isn't optimized for the web UI rendering engine they are using. Anyone know what web rendererer they are using (i.e webkit, etc)?
Uber use Coherent UI which is based on Chromium codebase. Actually it's Google Chrome for 99.9% and use all the same components.
Just found this older thread. It seems you guys have trivialized UI work. It's been a lot of work compiling the UI requests from the community. This sounds like a mountain of work the community is hoping to see.... https://forums.uberent.com/threads/unofficial-official-gui-discussion-thread.52055/ I wish I had coding skills and could make this happen
