Included in Build Interface Screenshots for Ships

[Pieter Boelen]

It can't hurt to leave the refShip.all lines commented out for the time being, but we do need to re-enable them later on.
After all, it's used also sometimes for putting crew on ships and for the battle interface icons.

Please see attached file. I think I managed to do a very quick fix on pictures.ini that should save you the trouble of manually redoing the coordinates.
The wondrous world of using Alt in Notepad++ for rectangular selections!
Also included is a little trick of mine that, if the cheatmode is enabled, will put EVERY SINGLE SHIP in the Shipyard Ship Appearance menu.
Additionally, every ship shows it's ID rather than its description with cheatmode on.
That should speed up the checking work, don't you reckon?

Of course I also added in the offset fix. Hopefully these files help you get underway quicker again.

 

[Armada]

Please see attached file. I think I managed to do a very quick fix on pictures.ini that should save you the trouble of manually redoing the coordinates.
The wondrous world of using Alt in Notepad++ for rectangular selections!

Oh . Er, you're too late, I did that earlier.
Well luckily it didn't take too long, but if ONLY I knew that trick sooner...
Besides, I found time to complete the whole image collage; THAT took a while, though.
But it was worth it. It's really quite fascinating looking at all our ships in one picture! Shows a huge achievement for the Build Mod.
All that's left for that now is to spilt the image again and update a few individual screenshots for newer ships.

Also included is a little trick of mine that, if the cheatmode is enabled, will put EVERY SINGLE SHIP in the Shipyard Ship Appearance menu.
Additionally, every ship shows it's ID rather than its description with cheatmode on.
That should speed up the checking work, don't you reckon?

Now THAT is the best idea I've heard all day! Thanks for that!

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Sorry about that; I didn't find time to try the Alt trick earlier. ops2

Here's one more picture for the cursed Crimson Blood that I don't think we had yet.
This is not miklkit's fault though, because this ship is only initialized instead of the cursed Black Pearl upon a certain choice in the Jack Sparrow storyline.
Otherwise, the ship doesn't exist at all.

 

[Armada]

Brace yourselves, gentlemen!
Testing has shown a 100% success rate; the interface screenshots work- all of them! :warr
The game now truly has a whole new atmosphere about it. The shipyard looks so very vibrant with these no-longer-generic images!
I'll upload the files (version 1) tomorrow afternoon sometime.

Just one thing, but it's debatable: the ship type name sometimes obscures the image in the shipyard, so it's hard to distinguish between hulls on some small ships.
Apart from that, it seems poor old HMS Endeavour was the only ship not to get her own screenshot. Aww. :cry
However, I'm yet to add the images for the new US and FR Victory variants, plus Poseidon and Surprise (film version), plus update pgargon's recently fixed ships' images.
So we're nearly there.

P.S. Thanks very much for making all ships appear in the shipyard, Pieter; that proved invaluable for efficient testing!

EDIT: Ah, thanks for flagging that image up, too. I'll include that when I can.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

That sounds great! It's been a pleasure seeing a few of these pictures ingame now and am looking forward to having all.

I'm glad to hear that the Shipyard Ship Appearance trick is useful.
I figured if I'd override refShip.model for all ships to be the same, then they'd all appear, which is what I did.
It's one line of code but I thought it'd be useful.

As for the ship type names, maybe we can do with having less and shorter different type names, especially now that we've got screenshots.
At one point we decreased the amount of type names to prevent confusion between dozens of different types of ships,
but then we increased the number again for historical accuracy and being able to distinguish between ships.
But we don't need them to distinguish between ships anymore, because the screenshots now do that quite clearly.

What about the Ship Appearance menu now? It shows a ship description that was intended to describe the colour scheme.
However, now that we've got screenshots, we don't really need that anymore. So what else could we put in place instead?
We could give every ship type in common.ini a description of characteristics and history and display that instead.
However, that doesn't make much sense being in Ship Appearance and, if anywhere, should be in the main Ship Purchase menu.
After all, you'd use that information to decide what ship to buy and not what colour you want.
Not to mention, it'd be the same for all available repaints anyway.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Alternatively, we can move the ship text up and the ship class number down; that would free up the hull as well.
See attached shipyard.ini file for an example; put in RESOURCE\INI\NEW_INTERFACES .
I also moved the left/right triangles a bit so they no longer obscure part of the selected ship.
I'm not sure if it's an improvement, but it's worth thinking about, I reckon.

If we do the text moving, we might need to do it for the "four images" screens as well.
Not sure how that works though, so that'd need to be figured out.
We could also decide to do it only in the shipyard interface,
because that's the most important place for you to be able to tell the difference between ships.

Also, I noticed that indeed in Ship berthing, the new ship pictures are not yet used and display sea instead.
I'll try to figure this out at a later point; should be possible,
but apparently the coding is a bit different from the other ship image uses.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

This is great news!

 

[Armada]

As for the ship type names, maybe we can do with having less and shorter different type names, especially now that we've got screenshots.

It's not so much the length of the names, just the position of them, really. (as you seem to have fixed, now )
It was particularly bad for the cutters; the entire hull was covered by the word 'Cutter'! :

What about the Ship Appearance menu now? It shows a ship description that was intended to describe the colour scheme.
However, now that we've got screenshots, we don't really need that anymore. So what else could we put in place instead?

Uh... I don't know, really. Perhaps a reference to any nation-specific paint schemes (especially the ones which aren't as clear)?

Alternatively, we can move the ship text up and the ship class number down; that would free up the hull as well.
...
I also moved the left/right triangles a bit so they no longer obscure part of the selected ship.
I'm not sure if it's an improvement, but it's worth thinking about, I reckon.

It is an improvement if ever I've seen one! Much better.

If we do the text moving, we might need to do it for the "four images" screens as well.
Not sure how that works though, so that'd need to be figured out.

That's a good point, as it looks inconsistent with the text moved above in the scrolling menu.

Also, I noticed that indeed in Ship berthing, the new ship pictures are not yet used and display sea instead.
I'll try to figure this out at a later point; should be possible,

Well luckily that menu isn't hugely important, but I guess it does need addressing all the same.

 

[Armada]

OK guys, here is the Interface Screenshots Mod V1, ready for download!

http://www.pyratesah...eenshots_Mod.7z

Once downloaded, extract to your main game folder.
Start the game, then press F11 if you load a savegame, OR just start a new game for the changes to take effect.
Enjoy and don't hesitate to give feedback!

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Aye! Aye! Experienced Captain. :shoot:

Shouldn't it be called V15 or so by now? :j2

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Wow! This really brightens up the shipyards and stores. Great job mateys.

The colors look at little flat to me. If I would have known that I could have turned up the colors to compensate. What it looks like on my 19" @ 1280X1024.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

There is a possible problem with the ship to ship transfer screen. Some of the pics are mis aligned and I've been getting ctd's there also.

This pretty cool and I'm looking forward to getting farther in the game and seeing the larger ships. :2up

 

[Armada]

There is a possible problem with the ship to ship transfer screen. Some of the pics are mis aligned and I've been getting ctd's there also.

There's always something that gets forgotten. Thanks for pointing that one out!
It's just highly likely we missed the related file out, so we can easily remove the offset when we find it.
And hopefully that should iron out any CTD's, too. :?

As for the version, I've called it V1 because it's the first official release.
But that's not hugely important, of course.

Oh, and great job yourself for providing the images in the first place!
But flat colours can be changed it there's really a need. There are some more vibrant ones I noticed during testing, though.
Weirdly, though, your screenshots made me feel a bit dizzy... I guess that's because I'm more used to seeing it in widescreen. :wacko:

 

[Hylie Pistof]

It's the darker colors that I can't tell apart. I noticed it most in the trade brig. There is a green one and a blue one and I can't tell them apart. Or is it purple? :?

About the ctds. I used to be able to change officers almost everywhere. Not anymore. I tried it on the dock and ctd. In the store and ctd. I went back to the ship and tried it in the harbor and ctd. The shipyard seems to be the only place I can change officers from commanding a ship to shore now.

Those screenies made you feel dizzy? :eww Are the squares uh, square for you? I have a 24" @1900X1200 that died a while back and have been unable to repair, but because of the distorted screenies I keep seeing, I'm not sure I WANT another widescreen.

 

[Armada]

It's the darker colors that I can't tell apart. I noticed it most in the trade brig. There is a green one and a blue one and I can't tell them apart. Or is it purple? :?

I see what you mean about the trade brig, and I think the blue one is blue and not purple.
As for the CTDs, I'll look into it.

Those screenies made you feel dizzy? :eww Are the squares uh, square for you?

Luckily I didn't feel THAT dizzy! :
But no, for me the squares are very slightly rectangular. And the writing is spaced out a bit more.
It just looked a bit odd without the slight distortion I'm used to. In fact, I swear your screenies look taller than they are wide.
However, the distortion doesn't seem to affect the ship or character models much, if at all! Just the interfaces, really.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

This is absolutely great, Experienced Captain and miklkit! Thanks a lot for both of your work on this project.
It will help a great lot to make the next release of the Build 14 Beta to feel a lot more polished than before.

Here's a couple of things noticed when looking at the screenshots, most of which you probably are already aware:
- caravel2 wrong coordinates?
- HMS_Endeavour picture still missing
- Cursed CrimsonBlood picture not yet added.
Note: need to add a line refShip.BigPic = "CursedBlood"; if you want to make her use a different name in pictures.ini.
Alternatively, just using name "164" with a different BigPicTexName will also work to make her use a different picture.

Also there's this to-do list for required code adjustments:
- New ship picture system support in Shipberthing interface
- New ship picture system support in F2>Ship>Ship-to-Ship transfer interface
- Move class and type texts in all interfaces to match updated Shipyard interface (could use list of all instances)

What interface are you getting those CTDs with? If ship-to-ship transfer from F2 or especially shipberthing, I didn't yet fix those for the new system.
It'll be very important to test the new system and check that its used properly in all instances and interfaces.
Also, we'll be trying to move the class and ship type texts as per my modification to the Shipyard menu,
but for that I could use a list of all places in the interfaces where there's ship screenshots used.

And indeed I've got the same impression when looking at those screenshots about the distortion.
I KNOW it's NOT distorted, but it looks like it because I'm also used to widescreen.

 

[Armada]

Here's a couple of things noticed when looking at the screenshots, most of which you probably are already aware:
- caravel2 wrong coordinates?
- HMS_Endeavour picture still missing
- Cursed CrimsonBlood picture not yet added.
Note: need to add a line refShip.BigPic = "CursedBlood"; if you want to make her use a different name in pictures.ini.
Alternatively, just using name "164" with a different BigPicTexName will also work to make her use a different picture.

For caravel2: oops, there were two digits swapped around.
For HMS_Endeavour: no image was ever made, and I don't think I'll bother until pgargon finishes his brand new version.
For Cursed CrimsonBlood: yes, I haven't got round to it yet. Sorry though, I'm not sure I quite understood what you said there about the coding... :?

And indeed I've got the same impression when looking at those screenshots about the distortion.
I KNOW it's NOT distorted, but it looks like it because I'm also sued to widescreen.

True, it's just how we've adapted to widescreen. Funny how looking back to a more square resolution seems 'wrong' now.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Attached file should fix the Shipberthing and F2>Ship>Ship to Ship Transfer interfaces to work with the new ship screenshots system.
Additionally, I hope I managed to cover the moving of the ship class and type description in all instances now.
Please install these files on top of Experienced Captain's latest release and test if it works and whether I missed anything.

Oops; typo fixed above. Should've been "used".

For the cursed Crimson Blood, just ignore my code comment.
Put another 164 in, say, SHIPS3 that is the Crimson Blood and set her to use SHIPS3 in ships_init.c;
that should be the easiest way to make it work.

 

[Armada]

Oops; typo fixed above. Should've been "used".

Oh! That would make sense; I didn't think of that. Made a fuss about nothin', I did!

For the cursed Crimson Blood, just ignore my code comment.
Put another 164 in, say, SHIPS3 that is the Crimson Blood and set her to use SHIPS3 in ships_init.c;
that should be the easiest way to make it work.

OK then, that sounds logical.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Aye! Aye!


EDIT: Only used once, but it worked as expected.