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Heroes Community > Heroes 5 - Modders Workshop > Thread: [MOD] MMH5.5 In-Game SkillWheel
Thread: [MOD] MMH5.5 In-Game SkillWheel This thread is 7 pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 · «PREV / NEXT»
magnomagus
magnomagus


Admirable
Legendary Hero
modding wizard
posted May 23, 2016 10:58 AM

The kingdom overview also slipped my mind, but this screen actually needs to be very speedy because it is used for fast town building.

I have ideas, but I don't think you like them and we cannot be 100% sure they fix the issue:

1. Make 2 universal skillwheels instead of 24. Each with 14 entries will fit exactly my current 3x9 scheme + one extra for necro leadership.
Perhaps at least you could do a tryout and delete 22 wheels see what happens to the speed.

2. revisit my previous idea and investigate if there is at least a theoretical possibility to have those 3000 files edited in automated process to remove the icons and have them in the background. I know it will be uglier, but in my opinion the xazardous skillwheel is nice enough.
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Antalyan
Antalyan


Promising
Supreme Hero
H7 Forever
posted May 23, 2016 04:12 PM

I might have misses something but why cannot the skillwheel be the part of hero screen?
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Ereinion156
Ereinion156


Adventuring Hero
posted May 23, 2016 05:14 PM

As far as I remember there was the problem of far to long loading times when opening the heroscreen. But wouldn`t there be the possibility of just adding not the whole skillwheel, but only the part showing the type of heroes the hero belongs to.In my understanding that should shorten the loading times quite a bit.

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thGryphn
thGryphn


Promising
Famous Hero
posted May 23, 2016 11:17 PM

I'm onto a new skillwheel file system design that should drastically (about 10 fold) speed it up.

If I pull this off, it's gonna be one of those moments: why didn't I think of this before! lol

Hang tight


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thGryphn
thGryphn


Promising
Famous Hero
posted May 24, 2016 01:54 AM

@magno: Even with an extremely stripped down version of the SW, the level-up screen borks the saved game files. I'm as baffled as it gets. It might be something very simple to fix, evading me, idk... but for now, I will drop the level-up screen and focus on the hero screen, which is going to be fine with a fast SW...


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thGryphn
thGryphn


Promising
Famous Hero
posted May 25, 2016 02:12 PM

Alright, here's an update, and it's not good news:

1) The new filesystem idea I talked about just did not work. The idea was to use common files across classes but given that there are text links to skill descriptions, the game requires different references to successfully display and hide those descriptions, which means having to use different files for each class, which brings me back to square one.

2) Currently I'm using the scaling method for the skill/perk icons, and I suspected that the scaling process might introduce some time overhead. I was wrong. I tried using direct textures (yes, by editing all those ~3000 files, but Notepad++ is just incredible), but there was absolutely no reduction in SW loading time.

3) Finally, I did what magnomagus initially suggested: I removed all texture references from all skills/perks. This way I could create proper backgrounds (which would take days of labor) and what you would see would be just the highlights. Funnily, it backfired: loading time actually increased by a full second! Go figure...

Conclusion: the loading time has nothing to do with the textures, but rather has to do with the sheer size of the SW: about 20,000 files!

I have yet another idea to reduce its size Let's see...

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magnomagus
magnomagus


Admirable
Legendary Hero
modding wizard
posted May 25, 2016 04:21 PM
Edited by magnomagus at 16:31, 25 May 2016.

Xazardous skillwheel seems to have 4700 files, but I don't really remember if it had any LAG, since that would still cause 1~2 sec right?
maybe there is a hard limit you went over.


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thGryphn
thGryphn


Promising
Famous Hero
posted May 25, 2016 11:40 PM

magnomagus said:
Xazardous skillwheel seems to have 4700 files, but I don't really remember if it had any LAG, since that would still cause 1~2 sec right?
maybe there is a hard limit you went over.




That one works with mouse-over, mine works with on-click behavior. Another difference is that he displays the descriptions directly, and I do a little trick to combine and center the skill name and description. These are the two notable differences but I don't know if they contribute to loading time...

I'm experimenting on that last idea I had, and it's promising. It seems like it's going to work. It just takes a bit more labor but if it works as it should, it should reduce the loading time by 8 to 9 fold.


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thGryphn
thGryphn


Promising
Famous Hero
posted May 28, 2016 11:54 AM
Edited by thGryphn at 11:54, 28 May 2016.

Great news: That last idea on compacting the skill wheel really works!

As I work on implementing it, I started considering changing the description-display behavior from on-click to mouse-over.  

Here is the deal with it:

1) With on-click behavior and the new compacted file system, there is a non-fixable bug in that as you change from one heroclass to second, it remembers the last perk button clicked for the second heroclass, but it fails to display the description, so you have to click on it again. It's a little annoying, not excessively so but still.

With the mouse-over behavior, this is the normal behavior, as in, to display the description, you have to have your mouse on the desired skill/perk anyway.

2) With the on-click behavior, once a skill/perk button is clicked and the mouse moves elsewhere, it is hard to visually convey to the user which button was last clicked so that the user clearly understands which skill/perk the displayed description belongs to. I am currently using a highlight but it's really not 100% effective.

This means, the value of having the description continuously being displayed without being affected by mouse movements (which was why the on-click behavior was used in the first place) diminishes.

Mouse-over behavior means, the user directly is aware which skill/perk button the mouse is on, and therefore which skill/perk the description belongs to.

3) Along the same lines as the second point, a typical user would open the skillwheel during gameplay to rather quickly read on the skill descriptions and see the skill relations, not for a prolonged time during which a static text display would have been preferred.

4) You have to mouse-over to click anyway So, a direct mouse-over behavior saves the user a click.

5) I haven't tried it yet, but it's possible that the mouse-over behavior will resolve the level-up-screen-gamecrash-after-loadsavedgame bug, maybe even the adventure-screen-bugged-skillwheel-after-loadsavedgame bug. This remains to be seen...

6) I saved the best for the last: Mouse-over behavior makes it easier for me to implement the new file system and it potentially can speed up the skillwheel further.


So, unless there is a terrible user-experience issue with the mouse-over behavior that I've overlooked, I'll do the change.

Let me know what you think, thanks!


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Antalyan
Antalyan


Promising
Supreme Hero
H7 Forever
posted May 28, 2016 03:07 PM

@the Gryphn

My priority is to have skillwheel which does really work (and does not corrupt save files ofc.) in the game. How it looks like is not so important for me.


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magnomagus
magnomagus


Admirable
Legendary Hero
modding wizard
posted May 28, 2016 03:20 PM

@ThGryphn: Sounds good, you convinced me strongly in favor of mouse-over.

I have just released RC7a, my apologies for making changes to the skillsystem again, I want to call the skillsystem final ASAP, since it will give me some peace of mind too, but unfortunately stuff kept coming up.


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thGryphn
thGryphn


Promising
Famous Hero
posted May 28, 2016 04:48 PM

Antalyan said:
@the Gryphn

My priority is to have skillwheel which does really work (and does not corrupt save files ofc.) in the game. How it looks like is not so important for me.




Don't you worry, breaking the saved game files or slowing down your gaming experience are both red flags, and that's why I've been spending additional hours days to deliver something that can make it into MMH5.5.


magnomagus said:
@ThGryphn: Sounds good, you convinced me strongly in favor of mouse-over.

I have just released RC7a, my apologies for making changes to the skillsystem again, I want to call the skillsystem final ASAP, since it will give me some peace of mind too, but unfortunately stuff kept coming up.





You don't have to apologize at all
I'll play catch-up with the new perks and descriptions but shouldn't take much time. There may be some bugs leftover in my files but we'll hunt them down duly...

Please let me know though if there is anything else cooking

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Gidoza
Gidoza


Famous Hero
posted May 30, 2016 04:01 AM

magnomagus said:
@ThGryphn: Sounds good, you convinced me strongly in favor of mouse-over.

I have just released RC7a, my apologies for making changes to the skillsystem again, I want to call the skillsystem final ASAP, since it will give me some peace of mind too, but unfortunately stuff kept coming up.





You may want to wait until I've criticized every individual skill before you do that.  

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thGryphn
thGryphn


Promising
Famous Hero
posted May 31, 2016 07:51 PM
Edited by thGryphn at 20:04, 31 May 2016.

Alright, one great news, one bad news:

Great news: The skillwheel is now blazing fast! It takes about half a second "the first time it loads in a game session" but it's instantaneous later on.

Bad news: I just couldn't figure out an easy way to overcome the level-up screen bug. The long way of writing a separate skillwheel crossed my mind but without knowing why the bug happens, I don't know what to do exactly...

I haven't given up on the skillwheel yet, but I think the great news saves the day

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magnomagus
magnomagus


Admirable
Legendary Hero
modding wizard
posted May 31, 2016 07:58 PM

Good to hear.

Quote:
Bad news: I just couldn't figure out an easy way to overcome the level-up screen bug. The long way of writing a separate skillwheel crossed my mind but without knowing why the bug happens, I don't know what to do exactly...


Not surprised, the xazardous has the entire wheel copied in the levelup screen, let me to make it the way it is now.

In any case since my simple buttons don't match the style of your wheel maybe 2 static pictures of 2 universal wheels can also suffice.
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thGryphn
thGryphn


Promising
Famous Hero
posted May 31, 2016 10:07 PM

magnomagus said:


Not surprised, the xazardous has the entire wheel copied in the levelup screen, let me to make it the way it is now.



Actually, he doesn't, he merely has a handful of extra files to reference back to the original wheel...

And that's the frustrating thing! I reproduced his way of handling the level-up screen and still I see the game crashing at loading a saved game.

By the way, I really stripped it down, only one class, not editing the adventure screen or the resource bar, etc. Still it crashes! So, it's not about the heft of the wheel, and so it may crash with your universal wheels idea too, unless I do something basic from scratch...

What on earth does the level-up screen wheel do to saved game files???


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magnomagus
magnomagus


Admirable
Legendary Hero
modding wizard
posted May 31, 2016 10:14 PM

Quote:
and so it may crash with your universal wheels idea too


Not if they are added like my current ingame manual. maybe we could also adjust my current trees to better match the graphical style of the wheel in the heroscreen, if no wheel can fit there.
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thGryphn
thGryphn


Promising
Famous Hero
posted June 04, 2016 02:37 AM

AWESOME NEWS! I solved all the problems!

After simplifying things down to do troubleshooting, I found what was causing all the crashes.

<ButtonGroupID>1</ButtonGroupID>

You see that "1" up there? It should've been a "0"! I mean, obviously! Everybody knows that! What was I thinking in the first place!! * insert plenty of sarcasm here *

Anyway, in plain English, the game has a problem with any button with two states because it's always trying to remember the last state it was left at. In that effort, it saves this information on the savegame files as well, but then somehow it cannot interpret this additional information successfully as it loads the savegame file, which causes all the crashes and bugs with the level-up and adventure screens, as well as the kingdom overview screen.

So, I designed a whole new skill wheel with this restriction (I seriously forgot how many times I did this, lol, sigh), and with a single skill wheel, it works anywhere in the game. Literally. It just a needs a full-screen window; place a button somewhere and viola.

Currently, I placed it at the regular hero screen, the level-up screen and kingdom overview screen. No crashes or bugs whatsoever

Oh, did I say it's fast?

I'm now catching up with the new skill changes and I'll post it once that's done...


@magno, others, should I place it at the adventure screen too (infused in the resource bar)? Any use case for the skill wheel at the combat screen?


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ldongder
ldongder


Adventuring Hero
posted June 04, 2016 02:58 AM

Very useful skill wheel ingame &#65292; nice work&#65281;

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thGryphn
thGryphn


Promising
Famous Hero
posted June 04, 2016 06:23 AM
Edited by thGryphn at 06:24, 04 Jun 2016.

New version posted!

Download: MMH5.5 In-Game SkillWheel RC1

@magno, I hope you like it, including my overhaul of skill descriptions

Please report here if there are any bugs, and share your comments. Thanks!

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