Transport Tycoon Forums

Greetings.

My next step is to build a terraforming interface. To do that however I need a set of icons/cursors/pictograms to do so.

I need the following elements

Title Bar
Close Button
Raise Corner Of Land Button
Lower Corner Of Land Button
Free Rise Corner of land Button (mouse wheel rises/lowers land)
Buy Land Button
Clear Land Button
Land Ownership Sign
Accept Changes Button (remember 'surveying' we were discussing!)
A tile highligtht texture
Land Corner highlight dot
Cost display label
x1, x5, x10 and x50 radio button*
x1, x2, x3, x4, x5, x6, x7 radio button**

land up cursor
land down cursor
buy land cursor

I said before that each element should have sizes that are multiplications of 16.
Forget that rule

Each element can have three states:
inactive
mouse press
mouse hover

Each element can be animated in every state.

NOTE - a button is composed of a background and its pictogram. Try to use the same background _style_ and different icon pictures if you can.

How to deliver:

Each element has its size set with the background size - have that in mind, so if your button is 34x45 then its background is 34x45, its picture is 34x45, each animation frame is 34x45.

Take a look how the button in the latest alpha was built

How to achieve translucency - simple: provide an image where BLACK sets what is translucent and WHITE sets what is opaque.

Delivery:
Image format for translucency file is either: PNG, GIF, BMP or TGA
Image format for picitures is: PNG, GIF, BMP, TGA or JPEG***

Best option is if each image is an RGBA TGA.

If you have any questions - post them here

*the terrain height map is very precise - around 10cm/step. This means that to achieve proper precision we need a mode to magnify the clicks to have sensible speed of rise. these settings set how many units each click is going to rise.

**during terraforming this sets the maximum difference between two land corners is set here. Engine allows maximum of 7 units.

***JPEG is discouraged

NOTE: the style you set here sets the style of the default menu. Winner takes it all - pioneer law!

Hello.

I've been working on the graphics recently, so I have most icons/cursors/components done and I can finish it quite soon. But for now I have some questions:

Your tool list doesnt include "level land tool" Did you forget about it or arent you going to implement it? I'd quite miss that tool

How exactly is "free adjust tool" going to work? Like you just place cursor over a tile corner and rotate the button to modify it? And will this tool be able to adjust multiple tiles at once like LOMO-adjustment tool? Id do it this way: the "free adjust" tool modifies one corner by default, but using "Ctrl+Mousewheel" one could set the area to be modified.

Also pls check my idea about visual guides for terraforming.

Uzurpator wrote:...multiplications of 16. Forget that rule

Phew!
EDIT: Whoops, I made the quote wrongly...

Nothing is set in stone or cast in iron . I just want to make a basic land modification interface and then move along. The interface can (and surely will) be expanded later.

The free level works like this:

Hover the dot over a corner of land. Mousewheel up will now rise the land in that corner, mousewheel down will lower it.

A preview - and some more questions.

There are "Buy Land Button" , "Land Ownership Sign" in your tool-list. What is the "land ownership sign"?

You want to use radio button for setting the impact of terrain adjustment tools. I think it would be better to use a slider or a box with number and +/- buttons. These could be adjusted by placing cursor over them and using mousewheel.

Also - how should i make various-size elements, like pannels? Should I just make it one image at certain size or separate images for corners and sides?

What do you say?

If you look at your mouse pointer on your PC, notice how it has a very dark outline, with a bright inside. This contrast means you can see the cursor no matter what colour or pattern the background is. The mouse pointers you have there are consistently grey, perhaps we could have a similar contrast?

Steve wrote:The mouse pointers you have there are consistently grey, perhaps we could have a similar contrast?

Right

I like cursors and icons, gui windows not so much
dark outline is way better than wihtout

SHADOW-XIII wrote:I like cursors and icons, gui windows not so much
dark outline is way better than wihtout

I agree, It all looks really good, but a small dark outline on the window would look a bit better.

An00bis:

Radio buttons can be made with what I already have, while a slider needs coding.

'Buy land' is a tool which allows the player to 'buy' a tile :> once bought a tile has a small plaque denoting ownership displayed on it. Just like in TTDpatch

Icons look splendid as of yet.

If I can also suggest trying different angles of the main cursor ... I wonder how it will look, maybe a little bit better ?

That's a big vague. I assume shadow means aligning the left hand edge of the head of the cursor, with the vertical axis. Much like the classic pointer.

Another Preview

Sorry everything takes me so long, it isn't so much work.
I added the black outline as some wished. I also tried to make the edges of the panels black, but that didnt look good.
I could render and post the graphics right away, but there are still some design things unsolved:

1- The "level land" tool is not included because Uzurpator didn't list it in his first post. He said that he wants to do a simple interface now and expand it later. But for me, a level-land is a basic tool and I think its easier to decide about it now than redesign part of the interface later.

2- I forgot to ask what the "surveying" feature is exactly. Can you explain pls?

3- there are "Buy Land Button" and "Land Ownership Sign" in Uzurpator's tool-list as SEPARATE tools. Does it mean a player can buy a tile with one tool and place a ownership-sign on it with another tool? I haven't played TTDpatch Uzurpator mentioned, so I don't know. I just included one tool for (O)TTD's purchasing feature - all tiles player owns automatically have a sign.

Note: Buttons on the left show the mouse-move-over higlight.

WOW! That really looks good! About the outline though, maybe not black, how about a dark gray?

Perfect.

The land purchuase window from OTTD is the same as in TTDpatch - a tool which you buy a square of land A bught tile displays a small sign in company colour. And that sign, cursor and icon I need

The survey mode, is a mode, when you first 'project' the changes on the terrain without paying a dime, and when you are happy with them, 'apply' and the changes you have projected are applied to the terrain at once, at a cost displayed in the window.

Here are the bitmap exports of the gui. TGA format. I didn't do the material scripts yet, maybe next time.

Dloaded it Looks very good. Cannot really promise when it will be completed, but will be used for sure.