More small features to ease accomodation

Usability and UI have been the primary focus for some time now. This time in a short way: player titled save games, better game slot info in load menu, colored icons for the populations of world map loaded from 32-bit depth 9x9 sized .ico files, busy screen for economy updates with multiple randomly chosen images, very basic scenario support with an intro text displayed in the new StoryPartDisplayWindow (scrolling, fading in). Also I've further tested under Windows Vista 64 bit, no crashes luckily.

Next two thing is addition of Calendar to the World Map and integrate content. Then release! :)

Extendable Tooltip box system and easier to use combat window

Polishing the UI is still the focus for a few days more. The addition of tooltip box is finished. Till now the character creation dropdown lists for Races and Professions got tooltip texts. It's quite easy to extend the tooltip system to most of the UI elements later if needed.

Another new feature made in: a new set of checkboxes were added to the turn act window (combat), which are reflecting if the given character's choice for action is valid or not for the turn. That way the player is able to spot which character's previous action is not doable in the current round, making it easier to see what's left to be set before starting next combat round.

Optimized text rendering READY!

Till recently I always were a bit uncertain how the previous 2D text rendering might work out on the long run. On screens with dense windows the FPS counter dropped down a bit too much for my taste. There are two different text rendering ways used in the game - one was used for the bottom log, the other for all the UI. The true type font renderer was used for all the UI elements - that renderer was creating a separate quad for each letters in a text. The monospace (bitmap based) text renderer was much nicer and more performant -- but it's working with its own font bitmap format only!

I looked at it and found that if I was able to create my own bitmap out of the current UI ttf font (Vinque), I could replace the slower method and use the low poly version instead. So two things followed by a big refactoring of the UI elements changed the whole UI into a faster performing sweetness. :D

First, I overrode the jME Text class (shape responsible for 2D texts) and thus overrode the default font bitmap path too. Second, I used FontForge to tweak the ttf font into a monospace font set exported into a new ttf set and using 'convert' of ImageMagick converted it into a bitmap. A little tweak with GIMP and voila, there goes the Vinque font and TextureState based font rendering of jME tuned for jClassicRPG. :) After that, a tideous process of reviewing all the UI element and window codes came. But it was worthy! On my Intel gfx card it can even double the FPS on the character creation screens! Saving a lot of polys and also scene graph elements, that's quite understandable. :)

Top button row icons ready, Character creation improved

Still working on the UI part, this time a lot of minor fixes and polishing of the mouse input was going on. Finally I decided to not wait for the top button icons to be contributed, instead 'do-it-yourself', created them by modifying different free icons or painting it myself. I hope you like it. You will be able to click them with the 'pointer mode' mouse, swap between the different windows - that is quite comfortable. :)

The other major upgrade is of the Character Creation part. Following the idea of TheAncientGoat @ freegamer, I changed the profession selection process. Instead of letting professions be chosen after tweaking the attributes to unknown minimums, now player can select a profession which automatically sets the minimum attribute levels that are required for the given profession. This makes it a lot more easier to select a profession. The other change is on the skill setting page - added a Reset button, which will reset the skill value set to the original values.

Next I can move back to enhancing the map. After that I will integrate the new 3D content (made by tidbit & TheAncientGoat). That done a test release is due - so there'll be a new release before moving on to the next chunk of bigger development goal (story/dialog/commerce system).

Fixing Windows mouse issues, Vista 64 bits note

I have just fixed two issues related to Windows + the new mouse input. First, cursors under Windows rather be 32x32 or displayed corrupted - googled it up after a series of experimentation in Gimp with no success. Now all cursors resized to 32x32, to let it work as fine as under Linux. Second, main menu mouse input didnt work under Windows - solving it was to prepare the code for Windows specific file path separator. All committed into SVN repo.

MysticSkript visited us on IRC chat and told about a problem related to running latest release under Vista64bit. I figured out just today that the solution right now is to use x86 (32-bit) Java installation if you want to run the previous release. (SVN version should work with 64 bit Java and Vista64 tho' I haven't tested it yet.)

Enhancing the UI experience

Now that mouse support is in, I have looked at the possible ways to use the mouse over the default ways of input on the keyboard that are now already possible by using the mouse. Of two major thing the first to have a ButtonRow on the top of the screen, which let's the player toggle the different windows and to start/stop camping (resting). The second thing is to let the player use the character portraits to raise the Inventory or Character sheet for the given character. Both of these are now in the SVN repo. Check the screenshot! :) I plan to add unique image buttons for the top ButtonRow's instead of the text. Also a nice background for the strip. Nicely done contributions for these two would be mostly welcome! (The image buttons for: MainMenu, Map, Camp, PartyOrder, Behavior [party members background skill selection for use while walking in normal mode], Act [do things like use an item, drink potion], Search [look for opening a door, trap, chest]. For size, look at the screenshot.)

[Updated] Mouse support READY!

Currently I have narrowed down my attention to the process of providing full mouse support for the UI. I've added mouse event processing to 70% of the UI elements already, and also cursor replacement, different cursor types for normal/scrolling/tuning values etc. Still more is to be done, the remaining UI element classes awaiting, along with the addition of new Close signs for the windows that lack them, reviewing the UI mechanisms of the already present windows. And of course more and more testing. :) Things are in SVN, so anyone interested can help in testing as well.
Update: spending some more hours on the matter today, now it's time to announce: the mouse support dev is completed and committed to SVN!