Comitis Reimagining

Post by **Marvin** » Tue Jan 25, 2011 4:20 pm

The Generic Mod Enabler keeps copies of every file that's replaced by a mod. If one mod replaces files from another mod, it warns the player of the overwrite ... but also makes a copy of the overwritten mod.

The only way you can lose (via deletion) a mod is if you don't remove the mods in reverse order. Other than that, you can swap different versions of a single file, laying the "modded mod" on top of a bigger mod package.

Siege · Post by **Siege** » Tue Jan 25, 2011 4:23 pm

Hmmm, I can warn the user on overwrite I suppose easily enough. Keeping track of every file is a little different I'll look into it.

Maarschalk · Post by **Maarschalk** » Wed Jan 26, 2011 4:12 am

From post: 100740, Topic: tid=7178, author=Marvin wrote: You can reconfigure your ship for more equipment slots ... it's not a cheat. You sacrifice CMs or crewmembers.

That explains why I never saw 8 equipment slots....
LOL....did not notice that, ofcourse I have a full loyal crew, and that is why I only have five available equipment slots. And CMs are one of the most important things to have in combat........

:P:P:P:P:P

Siege · Post by **Siege** » Wed Jan 26, 2011 4:16 am

I've been looking into this keeping track thing, it'll take some doing oddly enough but i think I have figured it out. In other words, if my idea pans out expect to see it in a few updates. There is other stuff i want to include as well so I'll be sharing my time on that as well. And ofc also getting new site up and running, see sig. I already track the files being copied, i just need a way of checking them before the copy, warning the user and then keeping track of the over write to then refresh afterwards. Tricky oddly enough but i think i can do it.

Post by **Marvin** » Wed Jan 26, 2011 7:15 am

The warning is just to let the player know some of his files will be changed. But they're never deleted. It might also warn if the player tries to uninstall a series of mods in the wrong order ... I don't know. I always uninstall in the opposite order of installing. And that's one function I'm not about to test to see if it works.

Siege · Post by **Siege** » Wed Jan 26, 2011 7:17 am

Files are only deleted when the mod is uninstalled from being current. I currently don't keep track of the order of installed mods, tbh i didn't think I needed to. I figured you want two mods that over write the same filename then only one can be active at a time anyway. Then you can always just reinstall the previous mod was my thinking.

It's worth noting that a copy of the mod is always kept in the MODS folder, safe and sound unless you physically delete it.

[Edited on 26-1-2011 by Siege]

Post by **DaveK** » Sun Jan 30, 2011 8:37 pm

Hi

I'm finding the screen very useful - it's much easier to monitor shield strength and I can do the trekkie "shields at 45% captain (except that I am the captain of course!). I even realised that I don't have to wet myself if the shields start to glow red when plummetting through an atmosphere (shields don't drop below 98%)

The fuel is easy to read and I can feel smug looking at the list of fulcrum torpedoes (all eleven of them) I'm transporting to sell at a tidy profit

(and I can also see my happily expanding bank account in digits).

Similarly I can look fondly at the eight bits of equipment I'm carrying that until recently I only dreamed of having (does any frame allow more than eight - I want a canon booster as well as a canon heatsink!)

There is just one glitch

and that's the cash graph); because it keeps rescaling every few minutes (so it seems) it's going up and down like a yoyo, so I can't get a feel for the rate that I'm earning money or how much I've made this session - at the moment it look like a saw tooth edge and is almost level - and yet I've trebled my money! The up and down obviously comes from buying goodies and then selling them at a profit and using some of the profit to buy more goodies (and repeat). The graph is occupying 1/6th of the available screen space but isn't really helping.

Could you (and if so would you?) scale the map at the start of a session and then leave the scale alone - that way regardless of how much people have they would see their account mirrored in the graph. If I have a long session of money making then I may well "top out" and hit the top of the scale, but what the heck - if it is a problem I can just quit the game and then relaunch (and get a new scaled map)

At the moment the scale is 183.5 million max and I have 182 million the bars start at 6 (there is only room for one digit) drop to 5 jump to 8, drop to 7 jump to 9 - yet I've been plodding backwards and forwards buying and selling at a steady rate.)

Thinks: what is the graph actually showing? If it is my balance then why is the bar labelled 9 . . when I have 180million+ or if it's a rolling average of the change in my fortunes then why is the max value 186million when I can only make about 25 million max on a good run?

I think that the untility is ace - thanks very much for creating it - I just want the icing on the cake

edit ps: I love the site as well - it has a ton of potential!:):)

[Edited on 30-1-2011 by DaveK]

Siege · Post by **Siege** » Thu Feb 03, 2011 1:15 am

Okay quick question here, looking at things i can do to make this program more useful and one of the ideas i had was a sort of MFD (Multi Function Display) creation language. It wouldn't be hard to learn, more of a simple layout script or perhaps ini file, you could have several of these in a 'profile' which would be placed where you wanted, showing the graphics you wanted. I would make it so you could add gauges and text and load images etc, and i was going to experiment with masked forms (In other words the form would be transparent around an image) and a way of keeping those windows ON-TOP no matter what. This would hopefully be optionally defined by the script as it were.

Now the thing is, that's a lot of work, I've created a dead stupid scripting language before so i have the code for parsing laying around somewhere but I don't want to go ahead and do this if people won't use it, or don't want it. It would essentially replace the current UI for the most part and allow a fully customizable user interface to be created. I would make the 'language' easy to understand of course and add some documentation as well as a few other tweaks I'm currently toying with. It would also get rid of the cash graph i suppose but other than being a pain in my a-urm bum, it's not that useful.

So please, tell me what you think here. I know i can create this but the question is should I?

Siege · Post by **Siege** » Thu Feb 03, 2011 1:20 am

Right the cash graph is weird, it actually works on the percentage of what you earned/lost, the upper value is always 1% more than you have, so it does scale everytime your money does, this is to stop it from every showing more than 100% of cash and thus messing up my layout. Frankly for the good it does I think a text descritpion may be more useful, showing gain/loss rather than a graph, it was just a flight of fancy of mine and boy do I wish I'd thought heck no lol. so while it does show 9 it's actually showing 99% probably for the most part and when you money goes above a certain value it will pretty much always show 99% thus making it ineffectual to say the least, it will almost certainly be removed i'm afraid, it was an experiment - nothing more.

Unless of course a Delphi programmer wants to help me scale it better, Atollski tried but for some reason the results were the same either way i calculated the bars.

Anyway see my above post about a possible exciting new direction for the UI which could make the graph utterly redundant anyway.

p.s. Sorry for the delay getting back to you been busy for the most part and actually playing the game some as well

From post: 101291, Topic: tid=7178, author=DaveK wrote:Hi

I'm finding the screen very useful - it's much easier to monitor shield strength and I can do the trekkie "shields at 45% captain (except that I am the captain of course!). I even realised that I don't have to wet myself if the shields start to glow red when plummetting through an atmosphere (shields don't drop below 98%)

The fuel is easy to read and I can feel smug looking at the list of fulcrum torpedoes (all eleven of them) I'm transporting to sell at a tidy profit (and I can also see my happily expanding bank account in digits).

Similarly I can look fondly at the eight bits of equipment I'm carrying that until recently I only dreamed of having (does any frame allow more than eight - I want a canon booster as well as a canon heatsink!)

There is just one glitch and that's the cash graph); because it keeps rescaling every few minutes (so it seems) it's going up and down like a yoyo, so I can't get a feel for the rate that I'm earning money or how much I've made this session - at the moment it look like a saw tooth edge and is almost level - and yet I've trebled my money! The up and down obviously comes from buying goodies and then selling them at a profit and using some of the profit to buy more goodies (and repeat). The graph is occupying 1/6th of the available screen space but isn't really helping.

Could you (and if so would you?) scale the map at the start of a session and then leave the scale alone - that way regardless of how much people have they would see their account mirrored in the graph. If I have a long session of money making then I may well "top out" and hit the top of the scale, but what the heck - if it is a problem I can just quit the game and then relaunch (and get a new scaled map)

At the moment the scale is 183.5 million max and I have 182 million the bars start at 6 (there is only room for one digit) drop to 5 jump to 8, drop to 7 jump to 9 - yet I've been plodding backwards and forwards buying and selling at a steady rate.)

Thinks: what is the graph actually showing? If it is my balance then why is the bar labelled 9 . . when I have 180million+ or if it's a rolling average of the change in my fortunes then why is the max value 186million when I can only make about 25 million max on a good run?

I think that the untility is ace - thanks very much for creating it - I just want the icing on the cake

edit ps: I love the site as well - it has a ton of potential!:):)

[Edited on 30-1-2011 by DaveK]

Siege · Post by **Siege** » Sat Feb 05, 2011 2:17 pm

I'm currently in the process of re-imagining the entire application and while I'm at that I'm also in the process of porting my development efforts over to a different language. Comitis is actually programmed in Delphi 5 which is more than a little aged, in fact it's ancient as languages go so I'm learning a new language that I brought some time ago and is constantly updated and kept fresh which still allows me the licensing that I had before, in other the freedom to release applications as I see fit without monkeying around with pro versions and the alike or other expensive licenses.

The up shot of this is that Comitis is having a face lift and I'm rethinking the way the application presents information. it does unfortunately mean a couple of the existing file formats used by the game won't be compatible but I'm working as hard as I can to limit that as much as possible.

So updates will take me a while to begin with as I'm currently recoding everything from scratch in a brand new language i don't know that well at all, so it's slow going.

Thanks for your patience, hope to have something on v2 of Comitis for you to mess with shortly.

Post by **DaveK** » Sun Feb 06, 2011 9:44 pm

Hi

sorry in return! - I've just got back from a SciFi convention!

Does the rewrite mean that the offer of a scripting option is withdrawn? I think that it would be cool to be able to design my own "screens", especially if I could have more than one at a time.

:)

regardless, I'm looking forward to V2!

Dave

Siege · Post by **Siege** » Sun Feb 06, 2011 11:42 pm

Scripting option is going in anyway, I'll offer a special default profile that will mimic the design of the original Comitis application for those that aren't interested in their own designs. The new scripted option SHOULD if all things work out, do what you want there. Ofc it is entirely possible i won't be able to figure out how to do it, in which case i will blush a lot and hide

However I did something similar in delphi once so I SHOULD be able to do it in any good language, and this one is very good. It's updating the controls that will be difficult and to start with they might not be all that pretty to look at while I learn my way around this 'gadget' system.

Post by **DaveK** » Mon Feb 07, 2011 8:45 am

Siege · Post by **Siege** » Sat Feb 12, 2011 5:58 pm

I urge people to check out Comitis's new home, link to my personal website is in my sig. You'll find Comitis under Software unsurprisingly. Please do register and leave your comments, though it's not mandatory or anything

I'm going to post a log of what I'm up to on version two there as well to keep you all up to date rather than clogging up Vices' board.

Psycho · Post by **Psycho** » Sun Jun 26, 2011 5:20 pm

siege, your site link seems to be broken. i cant seem to get comitis anywhere...

any help would be appreciated

Siege · Post by **Siege** » Sun Jun 26, 2011 6:20 pm

Bear with me on that one, will upload to a new home soon. Just having to sort out a few things.

Krags · Post by **Krags** » Fri Aug 26, 2011 7:02 pm

whats the ETA on getting that link back?
I really would like to try your program

Atollski · Post by **Atollski** » Sat Aug 27, 2011 7:24 am

Try this?

Siege · Post by **Siege** » Mon Nov 28, 2011 9:33 am

Alright, I've been away for a while, had some stuff to deal with. Now I'm back and looking to update this application! Essentially the entire thing is going through a complete rewrite. I'm working in the features I was talking about before namely programmable forms, so that's going to take a little while. To sort out that I have to get down and dirty with some coding and there's going to be a little scripting language for you to learn. I'll keep it very simple and straight forward. Currently I am working the main UI and the idea is to have the same essential funcitonality built in, but already since I've switched languages I've lost the Pilot back up format, but I intend to have the functionality still. Anyway, now is the time to ask for features. I can't promise that I'll be able to get them in, but I can sure as hell try.

Post by **Marvin** » Mon Nov 28, 2011 4:35 pm

Well, I have only one request which isn't listed at the top of page 1:

A mod for the right-hand status screen. As it works now, you can cycle between two displays of the ship you've targeted. I'd like a third option ... one that shows the Nav map, maybe with zoom-in function (if not, then zoomed all the way out). For once, I'd like to see where I'm going, both on the map and out the windscreen, at the same time.

Siege · Post by **Siege** » Tue Nov 29, 2011 11:30 am

From post: 120423, Topic: tid=7178, author=Marvin wrote: Well, I have only one request which isn't listed at the top of page 1:

A mod for the right-hand status screen. As it works now, you can cycle between two displays of the ship you've targeted. I'd like a third option ... one that shows the Nav map, maybe with zoom-in function (if not, then zoomed all the way out). For once, I'd like to see where I'm going, both on the map and out the windscreen, at the same time.

Right well I think that's outside the scope of this program, because that sounds, (If I'm reading it correctly) like a mod to Evochron itself. I am not sure if I can create a module to do that within comitis, but I WILL check out the viability of that and see what I can do. To be honest the nav map is stored within the game itself and not easily accesable by me, or anyone, like the days of universe.dat. So I'm not sure what I'll be able to do on that one. But leave it with me and I'll try to do something.

Post by **Marvin** » Tue Nov 29, 2011 4:04 pm

If not an additional option for the right-hand monitor, then maybe a pop-up like Atollski's Nav Map mod ... where the rest of the screen doesn't go dark and where the pop-up can be moved so it doesn't block view of what's out the windscreen.

Post by **DaveK** » Tue Nov 29, 2011 4:32 pm

Welcome back siege

I wonder if Marvin is yalking about the same program?

Post by **Marvin** » Tue Nov 29, 2011 5:48 pm

It's called being focused.

Siege · Post by **Siege** » Wed Nov 30, 2011 4:24 am

I think I know what you're asking for, I'm just not entirely sure where to look for the navmap data to be honest. I'll have a look around. One of the things I would like to add is the ability to have panels that you can overlay ontop of the main screen that'll stay on top, BUT and this is a big but, (Excuse the pun) I have to find out how to region the forms etc to make this work, and or work with alpha channels which dont' work on xp anyway. So all good fun there lol. It'll be a case of wait and see if I'm able to on that one.