Post by LordAmaury in Some questions and a thank you :-)

Viewing post in Some questions and a thank you :-)

Thank you very much for your answer.

It's almost working for my particular usage. If it can help below is a link to the files I edited, I've done nothing more than creating a "ui_scaling" variable in LogInterface.c with my own value (2.0 as a base for working). Then I just edited interface files with some copy / paste of your own code or just by adding ui_scaling multiples to scales and sizes. The result is really good but I only tested it on my own monitor with my resolution, it certainly must be adjusted to support any resolution.

Files here : Link to the files

I did it this way because I don't precisely know what is the value returned by this line :

float fHtRatio = stf(Render.screen_y) / 1080.0; (I assumed it was 1.33 with my resolution (1440 / 1080) wich was still too small)

After working a bit on that I think it should be possible to detect a proper ui_scaling factor depending the user resolution as a base like you already started with fHtRatio variable. It should even be possible to add a simple menu for the user to let him choose what UI scale he wants to use if the base scaling isn't satisfying (x0.50, x0.75, x1.0, x1.25, x1.5, x1.75, x2.0), and this for any mods supported by the Maelstrom Engine.

Below are some pics with the UI almost done for Land and Sea, tomorrow I'll edit WmInterface.c.

Land :

Sea :

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ChezJfrey4 years ago (1 edit)

We probably duplicated some work here, LOL. I did something similar for the Land, Sea and WorldMap and if you want to try the files, they are here: https://mega.nz/file/j1EXzYhC#l_msNecCG42iah5cHdLK5wDIEBauMoxbu2w8CuUwY-M

However, given you were not satisfied with 1080, my version will still be too small, but I centralized the number for the ratio calculation, so it only needs to be changed in one spot.

Near the top of the BattleInterface.c file:

#define BI_COMPARE_HEIGHT 1080.0

Change that number to maybe 800.0 or 900.0? Let me know which number you think looks better and I will probably just use your preference in the upcoming update. Later, I will add an option to allow adjustment on the options screen.

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LordAmaury4 years ago (1 edit)

Hello again,

you are right about the duplicated work but it's not a problem, you are the real dev here :-). The new version you produced works almost fine for everything. There are still some things to adjust :

Land : Battle damages and ennemies health bar doesn't scale properly
Sea (Very minor) : Hour is a bit truncated (depending of the month I think), adjusting H position a bit will solve it.
WordMap : The top right interface doesn't scale properly
WordMap : Location names are too small, as you will see in screens I can't read the name of Bridgetown and Barbados is just enought big to be readable but a bit bigger would be better.

I did a bunch of screenshots with different values for BI_COMPARE_HEIGHT : 800 / 900 / 1080 so you can see the difference. I also did it with a resolution of 3840x2160 for people playing with a 4K monitor. According to my personal taste, I think 800 is the better, it looks almost the same as my previous tweak 2.0 factor wich is achieved with a value of 700.

Here are the Screens

I guess the bigger is the resolution the lower should be BI_COMPARE_HEIGHT. I also edited dialog.ini file for the dialog box as I wasn't able to read people names. It might be a bit more difficult but I also think it should be possible to dynamicly adjust values used depending of the resolution.

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ChezJfrey4 years ago

I did notice the one point you brought up with the upper right on the World Map and I have already addressed that one. It required a modification to the Maelstrom Engine so it will now accept a "resizing factor" for that part. You won't be able to see that until I update Itch with a new engine and there is one additional small change to the worldmap.c that will then solve that problem, when combined with the updated Maelstrom.

I suspect the other points might require similar engine modifications as I don't believe any of these things were meant to scale like we want. I will further investigate the battle damage and health bar and World Map location names.

I also agree that sometimes the concatenated string for the date/time is sometimes too long, so we should probably move that H position.

The reason I chose the comparison method is so that we can alleviate a user need to adjust this scaling, if we find a good baseline measurement. However, I will probably still add an option for people that still might want a different result; I found during this process that I actually prefer things a little smaller and it would be nice to still allow some sort of manual tweaking, without touching script code.

Since the dialog size is in a .ini file, this is going to be a little trickier and might also require some magic inside the engine to handle as well, but I haven't yet settled on a good way to deal with that yet, because it's handled so differently than these relatively easy changes we've been working on, but I will keep it on my list to figure out.

Thanks for your help and input about suitable measurements.

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LordAmaury4 years ago

You are welcome, if I can help you in any way I will.

Thank you for your kind help with this, I'm looking for your next update then.

I hope that you will extend this tweak to all mods while it will be complete, they will all benefit from it I think as I encountered the same issue with Carribean Tales and City of Abandonned Ships.

I have other "technical" ideas to try / suggest like AZERTY keyboard detection and Controler Support but one thing after another. Also as you have already ported the engine to DirectX 9 do you also think to somehow continue and port it to newer DirectX versions ?

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ChezJfrey4 years ago (1 edit)

All of our current tasks, including the battle damage/health bars are now scaled.

I did apply the rescaling to COAS, GOF 1.2, GOF 2.0, GOF 2.5 and ERAS 2. I have not yet done POTC or CT, though I will probably do them soon.

Awhile back, I did merge together some of the XBOX controller code that I found into both the ERAS scripts and the Maelstrom Engine. I did some brief testing and if you are playing ERAS, and it detects an XBOX controller, on the options page, you can toggle an option to use the controller. However, it is only partially supported right now, in a "testing" phase. I wanted the ERAS original dev and my collaborator, known as MK to test it, but he has not yet done so. Right now, if the XBOX controller option is enabled, only some of the Sea commands are mapped and so far, they look like they work; I wanted MK to decide what controller buttons/triggers should map to the available Land, Sea, WorldMap commands. So right now, it only partially works. If you want to take charge of making those decisions, that would be great...there are just too many available commands, so only a smaller subset of the controller buttons/triggers can be used and the rest of them would still have to remain on the keyboard. For instance, the "hotkeys" for player loading balls/grapes/knippels/bombs are 1,2,3,4 and all fleet ships loading the same are 5,6,7,8, plus all the navigation, plus all the sail commands, launching battle interface menu, telescope/spyglass, camera movement/rotation, etc....just too many for the few controller buttons. The way I envision this can happen is only if keyboard, mouse and controller are used together, with the controller being mapped to the most common controls. So that is how the current dev for XBOX controllers works right now where it can respond to the keyboard, mouse and XBOX inputs all at the same time. Not sure if this is desirable, so it remains a tentative development until I get feedback from someone that tries it and suggests/recommends modifications to make it workable.

Edit to add: It does not work with PS4 controllers (they have completely different input)...I downloaded an opensource C++ library for converting PS4 input to act like XBOX input, because the original engine was designed only for XBOX, but I have not yet tried it or figured out how to incorporate it yet.

As for DirectX upgrades...I wanted to port to DX11 at the least, but I am not a graphics programmer; I know C++, but I do business integration/accounting type programming. When I first started this, I read through upgrade instructions for porting DX8 to DX9 and it was relatively simple because DX8 and DX9 are so similar that you didn't really need much understanding of the graphic principles. However, when DX10 was introduced, they removed "flexible vertex format" (FVF) idea from their library and also removed "vertex lock/update". The engine heavily uses both of those concepts and they would have to all be changed to a newer method and that requires understanding better how it all works and also requires writing individual shaders for all the current parts that use FVF "pipeline" during the replacement; I don't understand enough about the graphics to do this and I also don't have the time necessary because I do this solo and have a regular job. So it is very unlikely I will ever be able to upgrade past DX9 by myself.

At this point, it might be best if you start engaging on Discord because it is a little easier for me to respond because the Itch forum format does not always notify me of new replies and it also not a very intuitive format for keeping track of current discussions...I saw your name briefly over there, but you want AWOL when I was about to PM you :)

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ChezJfrey4 years ago(+1)

Update: All is fixed except Land battle damage/healthbar.

Sea date is moved to avoid truncation.
World map labels/icons are scaled now.
World map upper right wind gauge and food/rum display now scaled.

I will proceed to track down the damage/health code.

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