RonHiler
04-26-2005, 05:21 PM
I've gone ahead and updated the milestone 1 list, it's more or less accuracte as of right now, although it won't stay that way for long.
I'm just about done with M1 now. I know it's been slower than it really should be, given that M1 is mostly about recreating a lot of standard windows user interface controls, and I have already done that in MD and Sov. However, in those programs, there have always been things that bugged me about the interface controls, things that didn't work *quite* right.
So I've taken what was there as a base, and really worked through them and fixed all the issues. Everything works perfectly now (well, there is one UI thing that isn't working exaclty right, I'll talk about it in a second). I'm officially done with scroll bars, radiobuttons, push buttons, and so on. The next thing on the list is edit boxes, which are hard, but the ones I have working for MD and Sov actually have very few issues, so I think those will actually go very fast, since that's one UI control where the work has pretty much already been done. Then I have to do drop down selection boxes, which are really not much more than a combintation of a read-only edit box and a selection box (perhaps with a scrollbar, but that's already built into the selection box class).
Then there's a little bit of file work to save the user preferences, and M1 is done!
Oh, the one glitch in the UI I can't figure out. It's the damn capital "W". It's cut off on the left side. This is a very old bug (you will see it in Sov and the non-windowed version of MD). I cannot for the life of me figure out why the hell it's doing that, hehe. Obviously, the capital "W" is the widest character in the alphabet, and somehow, for some reason, when the fonts are created, they are mis-aligning that one letter. Very odd. I'll keep working on it :)
I don't think it will take a whole lot longer to put M1 to rest. I haven't actually been able to work on Enzyme as much as I'd have liked, for all the usual reasons. But I'm entering a semi-slow period, so maybe it'll go a bit faster.
As for M2, I have a preliminary list. I'm going to try to keep the milestone lists for Enzyme very short (not the 800+ item lists we have for Sov). More like in the 25 range or so. Given that, each milestone will be pretty focused on one area. M1 focused on the initial screen, which essentiallly is asking the user what graphic settings they want to use (it was a good excuse to get a few of the common UI components out of the way). M2 is going to be all about the overall project screen, where you will set some very global varaibles (game paths, project names, things like that) and will give you the high level options (level design, script design, generator definitions, and so on). I'm thinking this will be in the form of tab controls (another UI component, but not a whole lot different from the "push button").
Ron
I'm just about done with M1 now. I know it's been slower than it really should be, given that M1 is mostly about recreating a lot of standard windows user interface controls, and I have already done that in MD and Sov. However, in those programs, there have always been things that bugged me about the interface controls, things that didn't work *quite* right.
So I've taken what was there as a base, and really worked through them and fixed all the issues. Everything works perfectly now (well, there is one UI thing that isn't working exaclty right, I'll talk about it in a second). I'm officially done with scroll bars, radiobuttons, push buttons, and so on. The next thing on the list is edit boxes, which are hard, but the ones I have working for MD and Sov actually have very few issues, so I think those will actually go very fast, since that's one UI control where the work has pretty much already been done. Then I have to do drop down selection boxes, which are really not much more than a combintation of a read-only edit box and a selection box (perhaps with a scrollbar, but that's already built into the selection box class).
Then there's a little bit of file work to save the user preferences, and M1 is done!
Oh, the one glitch in the UI I can't figure out. It's the damn capital "W". It's cut off on the left side. This is a very old bug (you will see it in Sov and the non-windowed version of MD). I cannot for the life of me figure out why the hell it's doing that, hehe. Obviously, the capital "W" is the widest character in the alphabet, and somehow, for some reason, when the fonts are created, they are mis-aligning that one letter. Very odd. I'll keep working on it :)
I don't think it will take a whole lot longer to put M1 to rest. I haven't actually been able to work on Enzyme as much as I'd have liked, for all the usual reasons. But I'm entering a semi-slow period, so maybe it'll go a bit faster.
As for M2, I have a preliminary list. I'm going to try to keep the milestone lists for Enzyme very short (not the 800+ item lists we have for Sov). More like in the 25 range or so. Given that, each milestone will be pretty focused on one area. M1 focused on the initial screen, which essentiallly is asking the user what graphic settings they want to use (it was a good excuse to get a few of the common UI components out of the way). M2 is going to be all about the overall project screen, where you will set some very global varaibles (game paths, project names, things like that) and will give you the high level options (level design, script design, generator definitions, and so on). I'm thinking this will be in the form of tab controls (another UI component, but not a whole lot different from the "push button").
Ron