The new transparency options

[White Rabbit]

When the new transparency options were added, a very nice feature was sadly removed, and I would like to request to have it back. That feature was having transparent station signs in its own "transparency category", namely that no matter what your transparency options with trees or buildings were, transparent station signs would remain isolated and unaffected.

As you can see, the current system is too inflexible and forces me to play with large, blocky station signs and only have them transparent together with all the other stuff.

[Wolf01]

wait one or two days for the patch, i have it done, but devs are quite busy and i prefer to not stress them so much

if you can't wait, the patch is in the development section in the first post of the transparency options topic

[XeryusTC]

Heh, I also ran into the same problem, it feels really strange to see a blocky station sign. But I run in transparent mode most of the time now as I can keep key things visible and things like trees and buildings invisible. Maybe something simular will solve your problem until it is fixed in trunk.

[White Rabbit]

Was this ever addressed, or has the change been reverted? Station names are still blocky (and have been for a while now, I presume).

[Ben_K]

In my opinion, I hope they never revert the new transparency options as I find them invaluable... however, I'm pretty sure that I use the transparent station signs myself?! Its a separate option, like the town names, under the config drop down thingy.

[XeryusTC]

Was this ever addressed, or has the change been reverted? Station names are still blocky (and have been for a while now, I presume).

Set signs to invisible, or rather transparent.

[LordAzamath]

hmm.. Still don't get what are you talking about.. r12025

[Roujin]

He wants (and I can kind of understand it since I feel a bit the same way) a possibility to keep the station names "transparent" = smaller and less view disturbing all the time, even when the other stuff is set to opaque, without having to fiddle in the transparency window.

Just like before this whole transperency window was introduced - iirc back then there was a seperate setting for these signs, and it would just stay at what you set it to, while 'x' toggled the transparency of all the other stuff.

And since the station signs is something I think you don't want to change all the time if you toggle transparency but set it to one style you like and keep it like that, the old way it worked was nicer. I think that's exactly what White Rabbit meant aswell.

Understand it now?


Hey, that's an idea for a new patch I could make. How about making CTRL-clicking available for the transparency window - it sets a lock to the option you CTRL-clicked on, so it won't get toggled with 'x' anymore.

[Roujin]

Instead of what I should be doing (learning for my exam) I made a little mockup:

I've drawn the lock myself - I'm not experienced in pixel arts, so if I (or someone else) decides to really code something like this, maybe someone else could make a better lock sprite.

the lock

lock.png (256 Bytes) Viewed 3913 times

CTRL-click on an option "locks" it to prevent it being switched by pressing 'x'

lock mockup 1.png (2.72 KiB) Viewed 3914 times

after pressing 'x', only the non-locked options have switched.

lock mockup 2.png (2.73 KiB) Viewed 3914 times

In this example, I decided that I always want the station signs transparent, and always have the loading indicators displayed, even if I want to toggle all the other stuff. If I now press 'x', the sign option stays on true and the loading indicators option stays on false.


---
Before going heads first into this (me or someone else) we might want to talk to belugas who worked recently on transparency stuff and left some cryptic messages hinting at that he still has some stuff about transparency in the pipeline - for all that we know, he might be working on exactly what i'm imagining here...

Revision: 12022
Author: belugas
Date: 18:36:28, Mittwoch, 30. Januar 2008
Message:
-Revert(r12018): Invisible trees are now separate from the building concept.
So when you want invisible trees, just select the option of the same name in the Patch Options and toggle transparency of trees.
More to come on the saga of Invisibility. So stay tuned.

[White Rabbit]

Was this ever addressed, or has the change been reverted? Station names are still blocky (and have been for a while now, I presume).

Set signs to invisible, or rather transparent.

Do you mean like this (see attachment)? If so, that won't work, because whenever I press x, only the station signs are affected. I'd like to see them, as I wrote in the first post, isolated from other transparency options, just like they used to be (i.e. in 0.5.3)

He wants (and I can kind of understand it since I feel a bit the same way) a possibility to keep the station names "transparent" = smaller and less view disturbing all the time, even when the other stuff is set to opaque, without having to fiddle in the transparency window.

Just like before this whole transperency window was introduced - iirc back then there was a seperate setting for these signs, and it would just stay at what you set it to, while 'x' toggled the transparency of all the other stuff.

And since the station signs is something I think you don't want to change all the time if you toggle transparency but set it to one style you like and keep it like that, the old way it worked was nicer. I think that's exactly what White Rabbit meant aswell.

That's just what I've been writing about.

[Roujin]

Well I looked in the source code and the comments are still stating that the sign option should NOT be toggled when pressing 'x'. So now I don't know anymore if it was intended to change it or just a bug.

If it's the latter, I made a micro patch that shifts some bits here and there, resulting in the sign option being never touched by 'x', like before introduction of the transparency gui.


This is NOT what I wrote about before (the idea with locking) but a small fix. I hope though that if a dev sees this and he says the change was not intentional but a bug, it can be applied to trunk.

EDIT: patch removed because trunk now has the ability to lock the options.

[White Rabbit]

Thanks. It does just what I want.

[Roujin]

I have implemented the more sophisticated idea I made a mockup of. I will make a thread in the development section shortly. Here's a teaser (it's using the locks already in OpenTTD (indicating password protected servers normally) instead of including the lock i've drawn in my mockup.

Keep your fingers crossed that the devs are willing to include it to trunk

edit: as of revision r12102, the feature is in trunk! yay now you don't need small fix anymore, so i'll remove it from my previous post..

[Jump]

I have implemented the more sophisticated idea I made a mockup of. I will make a thread in the development section shortly. Here's a teaser (it's using the locks already in OpenTTD (indicating password protected servers normally) instead of including the lock i've drawn in my mockup.

Keep your fingers crossed that the devs are willing to include it to trunk

edit: as of revision r12102, the feature is in trunk! yay now you don't need small fix anymore, so i'll remove it from my previous post..

r12102 maedhros 2008-02-10 15:49:44 +0100 (Sun, 10 Feb 2008) 1 line
-Feature: Allow locking individual transparency settings so they will not be changed by pressing 'x'. (Roujin)


wheee.

Thanks Roujin

[belugas]

What? And nobody though of thanking Maedhros for that??

Well... here I do

Thanks Maedhros

Boring... tab-name completion is broken in ttforums...

[FooBar]

Boring... tab-name completion is broken in ttforums...

Should that be a feature then? Usually, in a webbrowser, tab skips to the next form element; as it should do.


Anyways, a very big thank you to everyone who made this feature possible:

Very Big Thank You!

[belugas]

Boring... tab-name completion is broken in ttforums...

Should that be a feature then? Usually, in a webbrowser, tab skips to the next form element; as it should do.

'was A joke...
Like...
Spending too many hours per day in IRC...
gaaaa... nevermind

[LordAzamath]

'was A joke...
Like...
Spending too many hours per day in IRC...
gaaaa... nevermind

This sounds like Belugas wasn't very much awake (as I now..)
BTW. I've tried that tab.completion too in other places than IRC and OpenTTD Chat

[FooBar]

'was A joke...

I can see the funnyness now I see that there was funnyness to see (errr...right ). I wasn't familiar with that type of tab completion stuff thingies

I'd better go sleeping now. It just doesn't make sense what I'm typing and all...