Close to the current. Also... I was considering doing the CMI "panel" style inventory display and having it toggle with the "i" key or something. My one reserve is that the panel would cover the character, so you get "headless" dialogue when the character talks in response to an inventory item.

Is it possible to make all dialogue appear at the bottom of the inventory panel when its open? How did CMI get around it when it had subtitles switched on?

Oh, and how about clicking on the player character to bring up the inventory? As well as a hotkey like 'i'.

Speaking of dialogue placement, it would be cool to have an option for dialogue to appear over the characters (the way it is) or at the bottom (ot top) of the screen, like subtitles in a movie.

Out of interest, how is dialogue placed within Lassie? Are there dialogue_x/ dialogue_y values or something to determine positioning on the screen? Like could you set a default dialogue position for the whole game (i.e. bottom of screen), and then set individual positions for characters throughout the game if you wanted a more traditional 'speech bubble' style... then all text could display at the default position (bottom of screen) when the inventory panel is open, or during cutscenes, and revert to case-specific positioning during normal gameplay?

Hey there Lassie community, I'm C.J. and a new member, I'm not the techy/brainy type, so I probably won't have a lot to contribute :oops: But I did some stuff for the SuperSheep GUI con-*test*-('"), I hope it's okay if I post the links for them here? NigeC encouraged me to enter, so if you think they're rubbish, you'll know who to blame :wink: This next bit is some explanation as to what you'll be looking at, allthough you'll probably won't need it (I hope :) ) SuperSheep GUI’s 1: Cursors, inactive (transparent, neutral, blue, green) Cursor, active (red) 2: Arrows (transparent, neutral, blue, green) 3: Inventories, closed (transparent, neutral, blue, green) Inventory, opened Inventory, red to indicate active. Circle turns red when cursor is over it, when clicked inventory opens. Corner parts turn red to indicate there are more items on that side of inventory than shown. 4: Fonts 5: Verb disk, active and inactive icons, when the cursor is placed over an icon it changes to the active icon. 6: Dialogue, top and/or bottom bits turn red when there are more questions on that side then shown. Some GUI sets have more than one type of dialogue “thingies” (sorry, I have no idea what they’re really called :oops: ), but that’s just because I couldn’t make up my mind and decide which ones I liked better :) . That’s also why there are so many “variations on a theme” with every set...lol. I'd almost forget the actual links :D http://www.cj.nigecstudios.co.uk/GUI1Simple.png http://www.cj.nigecstudios.co.uk/GUI2Triangle.png http://www.cj.nigecstudios.co.uk/GUI3BullsEye.png http://www.cj.nigecstudios.co.uk/GUI4Cross.png http://www.cj.nigecstudios.co.uk/GUI5Clover.png Thanks again for the webspace Nige! :wink:

Wow, CJ. Welcome to community; those are beautiful! Thanks for submitting! I can definitely see some variations of these being included as the engine's default chrome set. Also, you've pitched some very interesting interface models that we'll put to panel discussion. I wonder if you could start us off with a bit more detail about your inventory concept. It looks like it could be a very cool idea, but right now I'm a little foggy on its context. Where / how does it exist during standard game play? How does it frame the screen while opened vs. closed? I think you've got a good concept there but I'm still not picturing it. Off the bat, my vote in this suite includes... Cursor: Bullseye. I think this is the most unique cursor concept, and fits a game model very well. I think this would be improved by keeping the bullseye center blank during standard mouse movement, then having the center circle fill in on object rollover. Overall, I really like this concept. Directional: Bullseye again, though I almost think the lower circle wrap is even a bit too much. I think this would be a great element with just the arrow locking onto that lower circle. Action Selector: Cross. Really nice appearance, and I think the icons are fantastic. They're extremely subtle and "classic" adventure. They meet the criteria of being genre-less so that they could fit with a comedy, horror, or drama mood. I would say that the open mouth and closed eye still need a little help on visual clarity, but otherwise, the icons are clean, clear, and identifiable. I think the cross presentation is the strongest... interestingly enough, I think the Bullseye selector (which is the most like the current Lassie component) is the weakest here. Inventory / Dialogue menu... I'll hold off on comment here.

wow thats some really nice stuff there! I agree with you on the bullseye one Greg. Just... please, pretty please, pretty PRETTY please... dont use Comic Sans or Papyrus ANYWHERE in the Lassie engine :P

Papyrus was used in Handyman Wanted :oops: .. Welcome CJ.. glad you FINALLY made an appearence lol :P

Oh, as for fonts... I would definitely favor Tekon out of that list of CJ's. I've always rather liked Tekon actually, it's got a clean and legible appearance while having a slightly playful (but not over the top) edge. Its a nicely designed font.

I hadn't expected anyone to respond so soon! Thanks you guys, I'm glad you didn't think they were rubbish :wink: The inventory: I used screenshots from What Makes You Tick to figure out where everything was supposed to go and how large/small they had to be, I don't really remember if any of the other Lassie games had black bits above and below the screen, I guess I just assumed they did :oops: When the inventory is closed it would be in the left corner underneath the screen (which was black in WMYT?), although on the right or in the middle might also work. When you place the cursor on the little circle of the inventory (and only then) it will turn red, if you click it the right part slides to the right to fit the width of the screen. The inventory keeps its neutral colour until there are more items in it than can be shown at once, in which case the colour on the right inventory part turns red. If this red part is clicked the inventory strip scrolls to the left showing the rest of the items, if there are even more items the inventory part stays red, until you've scrolled all the way to "the end of the line" :) So when there are loads of items both the right and the left inventory part are red (except for the little circle). The inventory strip (is there a technical term for it? :oops: ) is slightly transparent, although I have a feeling not transparent enough, but that's beside the point :wink: I'm not very good at explaining stuff, but I hope it's a bit less confusing now :D The only alternative I can think of is to have Nige make an animated version :P Right back at ya Nige...lol To be honest I don't really like the action selectors, but they were the only ones I could come up with :oops: The icons are the same in all the AS's, but I think I forgot to change the fill to black and remove the outline strokes on the ones in the Cross AS :oops: , and I've noticed the white gradient I used on top of all of them also makes them less clear than they might be. <grin> Sorry if I picked really bad fonts... I had to pick five, so each set would have its own font, but I didn't really put much thought into which font goes best with which GUI :wink: There's probably loads of fonts that are much better, these came with Open Office, so I figured they'd at least be free to use :)

I really suprised no one else has entered :? I'm hopeless at designing user controls hence why i convinced CJ he should have a go

Hmm... i fully intended too but between coursework and cousins weddings havnt had a chance... will maybe take a look at it tonight if i get a chance but i doubt i'll come up with anything to beat CJ's offering :D

No worries... while this isn't panning out to be much of a con-*test*-('"), I'd still like to put this topic (and the designs that were generated from it) to discussion. And we've got time for discussion. I've taken a step back from the fun visuals of the SuperSheep player and gotten rolling on the nitty-gritty of core data... and I'll be at this task for a while. I feel really good about where the SuperSheep player was left at, and I'll be circling back on this UI stuff when the data requirement is resolved. In the meantime, I guess I owe CJ something. Even without being voted for, he's provided what would clearly be the "winning" entry. CJ... what would you like? I could get a T-shirt or something made up and mailed to you if you like, but I make no promises when you'd get it. Maybe a better prize would be something like sneak-peak status on SuperSheep development stuff.