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[WIP] WarPad GUI Framework

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WarPad GUI Framework

The idea for the WarPad emerged from the need of a better GUI for the VON+ project. But if you do something do it right I thought and made an independent project of it. The aim of the “WarPad†is to create a high quality graphical user interface with a realistic feel to it for moders/mission makers to use. Three things I want to achieve are:

  1. The next time you need a gadget you won’t have to spend much time on the work of an outer shell and instead invest it in your awesome ideas
  2. Secondly, the “WarPad†shall allow running different scripts from different developers without much effort.
  3. And third, being able to run many different useful scripts without having a tons of added actions.

Videos:


Features[/hr]

Included and WIP features:

  1. A "realistic" looking GUI:
    • In Blender rendered interface, that has been adjusted to the Arma lightning.
    • Made very light despite its size. It should be less than 2 MB- probably arround 1.1mb at the moment
    • "Animated" buttons that can be clicked

[*]Night mode:

  • The interface gets darker with the time of day -depends on the sun's height (time of day/year), moon, overcast, works with some static lamps
  • Buttons can be lighted

[*]Flexible for gamers:

  • can be moved on screen
  • can be scaled - text can be scaled with the GUI size and independently of Arma's menu size
  • can be locked - if you want to make sure that you dont change the GUI's position accidently
  • can be pinned to the background - information can stay visible while moving
  • position of pinned and dialog form can be set different

[*]Flexible for Moders:

  • Possibility to add several independent Apps
  • dynamic Idc's for more independency
  • the dialog and pinned options allow a broader use
  • No need to change the base scripts - (still to prove in test :D )

[*]System features such as:

  • Home screen App that shows the links to apps
  • Status bar (app) showing different information - first implementation showing time and non-functional battery sign
  • Return functionality that allows going through a list of recently visited Apps
  • Setting the background color of your App through a function with some nice color changing effect if wanted

Future plans and ideas:

  • Improvements to the visuals
  • Improvements to the functionality and usability - the buttons P1-P4 shall be multifunctional to some extent, settings, shortcut buttons...
  • More ready to use base classes for the controls
  • Different colours for the WarPad to get some diversity for the eye
  • A battery drain modul - giving functionality to the battery if wished. Depending on the use drain changes and can result in not being able to start pad because of low energy.
  • A damage modul - flickering, broken screen ...
  • A news feed modul - an idea from KevsnoTrev
  • A tablet version - for apps that like to have more space
  • A light desktop version
  • A pdf documentation
  • A list of officially supported Apps . Well that depends on your recognition ;)

PS: If you have any ideas of your own what the WarPad should be able to do I'd be happy to hear your ideas or even work together to make this project shining :)


Download [/hr]

The "WarPad" is still under development and therefore a WIP. Dependencies, function names, workflow might change. Still I suggest you to try it out and if you like it to even include it to your mods, scripts.

Download recent Dev version 1.02

Terms of Use:

  1. The “WarPad Framework†is a combination of scripts and visuals (graphics). Both parts are intellectual property of its inventor (Kumeda). By using the “WarPad Framework†you agree to the following terms of use.
  2. The “WarPad Framework†may only be used in connection with the Arma Series.
  3. Use of the graphics:
    • a. The graphics may only be used as part of the “WarPad Frameworkâ€
    • b. As part of the framework you may use any graphics freely

[*]Use of the scripts:

  • a. The scripts my only be used as part of the “WarPad Frameworkâ€
  • b. The use for any other GUI than the ones of the “WarPad Framework†is not allowed, with the exception you want to contribute to the “WarPad Framework†project. You will have to get permission of the owner beforehand.
  • c. As part of the framework you may use any scripts freely

[*]Use of the “WarPad Frameworkâ€

  • a. You may integrate the “WarPad Framework†into any existing mods/scripts ect. If so, make sure to give proper credit to the author or the “WarPad Framework†project so that it is clear that the graphics and its functionality (scripts) are not your creation. You do that by commenting verbally or by text or providing a link the project site for any videos you make or where you provide download links to your work.
  • b. Make the use of the “WarPad Framework†visible in your scripts when they are supposed to be shared or made public as part of a greater release.
  • c. You may release simple applications as standalone applications using the “WarPad Frameworkâ€. If so references to the project in your scripts aren’t mandatory, however you will have to give credits (4.a).

[*]The term of use might change at a later point. If so, all given terms of use given at an earlier time become invalid and the recent term of use have to be applied. Should any change result in you not being able to use this Framework anymore, please contact the author (Kumeda) .

[*]If these terms don’t allow the use of the framework feel free to contact the author (Kumeda).

[*]8) Any scripts/graphics that are not part of the the “WarPad Framework†are rightful intellectual property of the third party that created it. I Kumeda hold no rights to them and therefore any terms of use stated here do not apply to them and have to be provided by its inventor.

[*]Have lots of fun using the WarPad!!! And give report on any bugs, ideas or feedback if possible.

Older Versions for download:


Officially supported applications[/hr]

As mentioned under features this will depend on the community. I’d like to have a list of supported apps. Under supported applications I understand that the development of these apps follow a set of given rules to allow an easier installation for an end-user. This will include that with each official app there are no IDC’s or Variable collisions. That means that the naming of functions, variables or anything that is globally available in the space of the WarPad must follow a rule set. This will not only reduce collision with apps running on the WarPad but also other possible external scripts. The aim will be that official apps only need to be copied to the mission’s folder and only a link to the home screen needs to added and then simply run.

As far as it will be possible I will grant some extra help for official app’s what covers the graphical issues when needed, or even extending some of the WarPad functionality if it is possible and fits the designe.


FAQ[/hr]

How is it possible to show different Apps with the WarPad ?

This is possible through the use of control groups

The structure of display is like that:

A Main control group itself contains itself control groups. Each of these lower level control groups contains an App. Because you know the identifier (IDCs) of these groups you can show or not show a specific group through the ctrlShow command. This also allows to turn every control group invisible at once through the on/off button of the WarPad by simply setting ctrlShow of the main control group false (not showing).

How do I know the position of the screen of the WarPad ?

The WarPad has the pre-processor commands called AppScrPosX, AppScrPosY, AppScrPosW and AppScrPosH that are returning the position of the WarPad's screen. Hereby are AppScrPosX and AppScrPosY the X,Y coordinates of the upper left corner in ARMAs positional system and AppScrPosW and AppScrPosH obviously the width and height. You won’t need to use AppScrPosX, AppScrPosY normally as the App is a control group inside the main control group. Therefore the control group of any App starts with X=0 and Y=0 already.

How can I change “sizeEx†automatically with the GUI’s size?

For this you can use the pre-processor command WpadTextSize(_value). It does multiply the momentary size factor of the GUI by the given “_valueâ€. You can use this command also for other numbers than sizeEx.

How do I get width and height for my control so that both lengths are the same?

You need to multiply either the height with 4/3 or the width with ¾ by the opposite coordinate value. For example you have placed a control with x=0.5*AppScrPosW and y=0.5* AppScrPosH. The top left corner of your control is in the middle of the WarPad’s screen. Now the control shall span over the rest half of the screen to its right and the height shall be as long as it is width. For that is w=0.5*AppScrPosW and h=0.5*AppScrPosW*4/3. Shall instead the control span over the rest of the screen’s height and be as width as long h=0.5* AppScrPosH and w=0.5* AppScrPosH*3/4. Be aware that in the latter case the control will go over the border of the screen. As result scrolling bar will appear at the bottom.

What is the difference between the control groups WPAD_Transp_ctrlGroup, WPAD_Screen_ctrlGroup and WPAD_Screen_ctrlGroupY ?

WPAD_Transp_ctrlGroup is a control group for which no scrollbars will appear while for WPAD_Screen_ctrlGroup it does and for WPAD_Screen_ctrlGroupY only the vertical scrollbar will appear. Use the last group if you only want to use the vertical scrolling or you placed a control that goes over the middle of the screen because the horizontal scrollbar might appear even if you havn’t gone over the border of the group.

Where do I put my apps?

All apps should go inside the folder /mission Folder/WarPad_FW/Applications/<UserTag>/<AppName>

Because apps from different users might be added later it is good to create a folder with the creator’s abbreviation/tag and inside it a folder with a distinctive name for the app (because you might add later other apps!). This is especially important if you want to create and share your own apps later for the WarPad.

You should register a scripters tag at OPEC. As you can't use something like modders namespaces this is the only way I know to prevent collisions with other modders functions or variables.



Old Information[/hr]

Original older Text:

As part of the ongoing development of my VON+ i did plan a redesign of my GUI. I always found that a good and believable interface is essential for immersion. It came to my mind that it woud be nice rather than having one specific GUI it would be great being able to use different scripts with one GUI. In that way i designed an interface with a rather big scree. And that how it hopfully will look ingame (still WIP)....

I present THE WarPad X100 an electronic helper for every modern soldier!

The WarPad is light and has many ports to connect your external gear too either by wire or wirless. The WarPad comes with 4 quick action keys that will allow you for example to save a configuration of your app. The quick action can be either saved application wise or on a global scope. Options of your apps can be easily acessed with one click through info button. If it becomes dark at night switch your WarPad to night mode.

(so much the general idea .. also some ideas might be not make it into the final product!)

...i still have to figure out if cutting and reasambeling parts of the image does work as I hope for. But if it works out my plan is to make this GUI available for everyone to use. The term of use will be that the skript your running with it will come as application for it and that i know about it :D so that the whole system can be made as streamlined as possible and is able to run many different apps.

I believe there are many posssibllities what kind Apps could be run. For example an App for recuitment, an App for maps and planning, an App to send information to other users (for example an pickup app that sends your location to a pilot...) all these function could be bundeld into one GUI acessed through the home menue (like with modern mobile phone). Of course i wont be able to do all these applications on my own. With this thread i want to get an idea if there are some developers who are interested in this project and might think about developing or porting their scripts for the WarPad at some point. So please give your feedback.

As i dont plan to make the images officially available until the "framework" is working and has some proper "How To" I want to make the GUI available only on a privat basis as soon as the basic build is done (very limited functionallity of GUI/Framwork). If you already want to start to develope on your WarPad App before offical release please get in contact with me.

Take care

Kumeda :yay:

Edited by Kumeda

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i'd like to pick your brain with a couple questions, being aware that its still early in the development...

  • will multiple apps be able to simultaneously run; aware of their focus?
    - {if so} how do you see notifications from unfocused apps being handled?
    - app-to-app/app-to-everyapp communications/notification standard?
    - {if not} are apps forced to exit upon home-screen or other app being opened?
  • is/will this be an actual object you pickup? (example, take off enemy body for intelligence, sabotage/dissemination of misinformation, etc)
    - will apps 'installed' on a player be persistent in MP?
  • will there be a bluetooth accessory watch?

how much of this is conceivable, and how much would be expected to fall to external scripting?

personally i think that with a bit of foundation/RFC work this could be an extremely powerful mission tool...hate to say, more background work = easier, quicker implementation and development :\

anyway, looks awesome! can't wait to see what you have going for developers

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Very interesting and promising work. I'm working on something very simliar but probably not to the same scale of work, more focused for PO3.

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dr_strangepete thank you for your questions.

As you said this is all early work. My problems are at the moment more of a esthetic kind. I will try to give an idea of that (to not bore anyone to death... just scip this part if you like ). First of the GUI is just a frontend as image overlayed over your screen. As I want the GUI mainly script based (for the beginning) it is essential to keep the size as low as possible. I try to achieve that by cutting the image into pieces in a best way possible and throwing out the screen part. One of the problems that comes with cutting seems to be that while assembling the GUI background there are situation where are free spaces of 1 px (properly) between the slices are generated. This is bad as I want the GUI to be scalable and freely movable ingame and I still try figuring out a way to work arround that (I believe partly overlapping images will work arround that propblem). One other "problem" with graphical GUIs is that while looking shiny at day they are even more shiny at night what is not a real problem but I found to be "improvable". My idea to improve that still needs to be tested ..and even than change of sourrounding luminosity could only be tackelt by using a 3D GUI like the compass. Yet unfortunately I havent found much on HOW TO make a 3D GUI to go into that direction.. . Than I also want the GUI to be flippable from portait to landscape (extra work).. and again I havent found a function to rotate or flip images. Maby someone knows how to do that if not it will mean extra images and more download content :(.

Also there shall be a way to dock the GUI to the background and vise versa (Dialog <-> Resource ) .. that shall allow to let the GUI open so that it can be used for example as GPS.

And very importand will be how I can show different apps on screen without editing anything of the main graphical backbone. I believe using controle groups might work .. if not use of several dialogs would be needed but for that I would need to know how to tragg 2 dialogs at the same time.

As you can see I am far off from thinking deeply about app integration however I will try my best to answer from my stage.

1) will multiple apps be able to simultaneously run; aware of their focus?

What do I mean by "Apps" ? Well they are a collection of execution functions and functions for displaying it on the WarPad. So Apps are basically functions therefore there is hardly any simultan execution but rather good managment needed. At the same time, yes I think function should be able to run even if you go to another "app" for example through some kinde of (event)handlers or spawnd functions. Communication between apps/functions very much depends on who does write them. Someone who does write several apps will surely be able to let them "communicate" with each other. Also as you might know the language in arma isnt object oriented it is therefore hard to do some kind of abstraction that could be used for example as handler for communication between apps. I dont know surely but in another language like Java this might be different.. however every script that does not run on the same level would not be able to use this advantage (sqf<->java ?). On far bigger problems with many different scripts is actually to make them not "communicate" with each other. On example is that two scripts uses the same variable (space).

2) is/will this be an actual object you pickup? (example, take off enemy body for intelligence, sabotage/dissemination of misinformation, etc)

Well a real object like as an 3D modle would/will only be sufficient if this projects comes as addon/mod rather as an script. However you could verywell attache an Action (addAction) menue to an fallen enemy and do some sort of intelligence exange of any kind that is allowed through BIS provided functions. It very much depends on the scripts your running.

3) will there be a bluetooth accessory wach?

If bluetooth still exist in 20xx WarPad will ofcourse ship with it. A Watch to connect to...maby ;) But what will you need still a watch for if you can just run your fancy BigBen Toweclock App :P

I would not overrate the "framework" part of this project. I will try to make it as usabable as possible and if there are ways I know or you know that could be used to make GUI development easier I will try to expand the collection of funcitons/ect. to speed up development. And of course the other part of this framework is the functionallity and look of the GUI itself. One thing that is surely possible is to bring with this GUI also a collection of usable images like arrows or symbols what could greatly help to make the look of the WarPad more uniform and reduce the diskspace/upload/download volume. Also giving some proper introduction, links and help to how to add your frontend for your scripts should help alot ;)

I believe that if this should work out as I hope too the very point is the possibility to run different scripts and have a good overview and acassibility to them instead of having, at the moment many actions added to your menue in Arma because of having many scripts/apps installed (this would be just an overkill atm).

@ roy

thank you :)

I liked Patrol Operations it will be interesting to see whats coming with PO3 ;)

PS: The screen ratio will be exactly 3:4 (4:3) !

Edited by Kumeda

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Hi there,

as i havent posted any news for some time now i decided to give a short post on what I have achieved so far. As i havent kept the status tracker in the top up to date because it takes to much time i will rather do it that way from now on.

Well the first sample of my GUI you can see in my first post I had sliced inside PS and put back together in ARMA3. As i already mentioned there is some problem with putting sliced images together as they tend to have gaps. I solved this problem by overlapping the images and could save some valuable space. I already have now added the functionality of free scaling the GUI. Also it is now possible to pin the GUI to the background. The Difference between dialog and resources is that while you have opend the normal dialog you can click at the dialog but you cant move meanwhile. With this option you are able to use "apps" that are supposed to run while moving arround. The next step will be implementing the possibility of swapping the GUI from portait to landscape view and bringing in the buttons so that they react on mouse down action. After that i want to look into how to make the GUI adapt to the time of day because there is no darkening of the GUI with the daylight. My idea is to overcast the GUI with a transparent dark grey color in several layers. Turning on and off the layers can be managed by a function than depending on time (maby weather and moon).. so far my idea.

With all that scripting im very interested into making the GUI look great of course.. so that everyone can enjoy using the WarPad and of course your scripts which shall run on it. As i found my initial work good but not good enough i decided to redo the GUI picture i made so far. The best way to do that in my opinion is to have an actual model of the WarPad. So i gave the great programm Blender a try and remoddeld the Pad from my initial 2D Image. Honestly i havent done any 3d work for many many years (i believe it must be over 7 years now since i played with C4d ) so it took me quite some time to get where im at now but im very proud of it and decided to show it off now. For copyright safty i had to lay some text over it :( sorry about that, but in the full release it will surely come without it :D

UVIcnYG.jpg

http://imgur.com/delete/J4v4oxafekEQ3qj

Well you could say its a load of work to to a 3d model for what becomes a 2d Image in the end again.. but I would not have been able to make it look more reale otherwise.

Take care

Kumeda

Edited by Kumeda

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No big news yet.. just some side infos and a screenshot on the WarPad.

After last report i changed the renderer for the GUI from the normal renderer to cycles what is an raytracing rendering engine and produces supposingly more realistic looking images. The change of the render engine took some effort as i had to get a better understanding of the material creation. The next thing was to have a proper lightning for the scene and is quite crutial if not even as important as texturing... if someone doesnt want a steril looking image. After some experimenting and use of an HDR image as background light i found it sufficent.. therefore sliced and put the gui finally together again. Here i give you the first ingame screenshot for a better idea. The screenshot is taken at 1920x1080 .. so if you have the same screensize have a look in full screen mode :)

A very nice aspect about a rendered GUI is that it is alot easier to make different skins with it ... so theoretically it would even be possible to make a little different looking GUIs. :D

Take care :cool:

Edited by Kumeda

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Great Idea, Can see this working for realism units...

Such as..

Situation updates in text or Via map updates

Orders

Text messages?

Video Messages?

The possibilities :P Will be looking out for this one, Great work!

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After quite some time I did some work on my WarPad again.. there are still no big jumps yet but I have done some improvements. Basically these are

  • Making a new render with improved lights and camera focus/distance settings of the GUI (again).. for now i won't change this anymore XD
  • Improving and revising all scripts I had done so far. As part of this I also had to make the decision to leave out the possibility of flipping to landscape mode too. I had to do this because there is just not enough time to implement this and I am not quite sure yet if it will be added later or what might be easier (when all scripts work nicely) rather make another GUI that is not in portrait but landscape, like a tablet for example... but no promises yet.
  • As part of the general script improvements ... making the scaling alot smother and quicker :)
  • Making the buttons finally pushable!
  • The menu for toggle of sizing & dragging, locking, saving GUI position for a pinned GUI and closing got some nice graphics
  • Implementing the shadow mask for darkening the GUI with the time of day. At the moment the function regulating the transparency only works depending on the day time and is only executed when the GUI is opend. Further improvement could be made through checking moon visibility and how strong the fog is. Also the mask is of a smaller size in (pixel) than the original resolution of the gui what leaves some white borders, where it doesn’t overlap.. i will have to make the mask bigger but this won’t have much impact on the file size of the mask if it works out.

I made you two videos demonstrating these basics functionalities. You can download these videos from Mediafire. The first one is at day showing me pushing the buttons and the second video at night giving an impression on the shadow mask and going through the functions of the top menu (quality is not as good as in video 1!).

Video 1

Video 2

(also you can watch them now on Youtube, see frontpage )

Any ideas and sugestions from your side are welcome :) have fun watching and good day

KUMEDA

Edited by Kumeda

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Looks great. I think having an interface like this that developers can work with without having to go through the laborious task of developing their own display/dialog is a fantastic idea. I, for one, could definitely use something like this.

Suggestions:

  • battery level drain over time, dead screen (non-functional buttons) when battery is dead and replaceable batteries
  • background screen light for night missions like indiglo
  • global variables that can be displayed on the screen such as:
    • WARPAD_MAIN_DISPLAY
    • WARPAD_SUB_DISPLAY_01
    • WARPAD_SUB_DISPLAY_02
    • Developers could then output from their scripts values with those names that could then be picked up by your warpad script.
    • If the variables weren't present, then the warpad could display 00 or -- or something similar.

    [*]I love the buttons, but I would think about designing a "HELP" page so that the buttons functions could be revealed to the user depending on the app being run.

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  1. battery level drain over time, dead screen (non-functional buttons) when battery is dead and replaceable batteries
  2. background screen light for night missions like indiglo
  3. global variables that can be displayed on the screen such as:
    • WARPAD_MAIN_DISPLAY
    • WARPAD_SUB_DISPLAY_01
    • WARPAD_SUB_DISPLAY_02
    • Developers could then output from their scripts values with those names that could then be picked up by your warpad script.
    • If the variables weren't present, then the warpad could display 00 or -- or something similar.

[*]I love the buttons, but I would think about designing a "HELP" page so that the buttons functions could be revealed to the user depending on the app being run.

  1. Possible, but probably only after official V1.0
  2. Kind of planed and should be part of official V1.0
  3. Can you maby give an example in what cases that could be useful? Because as far as i imagine there shouldnt be any limitation to what you can display in your own App? All predefined globals might be only good if you know what type of var you expect. But if an App does overwrite this it could mean serious problems.
  4. Good idea, however the need of an help dialog will very much depend on what can be done with the outer buttons, I do have ideas but can't say that it will work as I hope.

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maybe i'm saying something heretic, but could it be connected with the UAV terminal, for allowing the commander (or any other player) to see what the UAV operator is watching?

Or in general connect it with any other camera?

Sorry for any english error.

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Hi everyone,

After a long break I started working again on the WarPad System. So i thought i give a little heads up what’s going on.

  • I have started bringing some order to the mess i produced so far. This is mainly for the introduction of the App-System I try to implement now step by step. The App-System as it is now works through nested grouped resources that means simply... there is a group in a group. The main group contains all the other groups. The lower level groups each represent one application. The ordering of these groups works at the moment like that:
    Main Group ->
    1. ...Your Apps
    2. Home Screen
    3. Status Bar

    This system ships with some very need functionalities:

    1. the X and Y coordinates for your App are always beginning with 0, 0. Through pre-processor commands you easily get the screen width and height of the hole screen or X,Y,W,H values if you don’t want to use the complete screen but the screen with some space to the border. So that means you can easily position you buttons, images... inside the screen.
    2. If you have something that is bigger than the screen groups can automatically display scrolling options.
    3. It is be possible to switch on or off the different groups and displaying the App that you want to see. That means every App will likely have a predefined set of functions you have to adjust like "fnc_show" or "fnc_hide" and after that these functions only have to be added to the controlling functions of the WarPad framework. For example a picture with a button to the Home Screen is added which fires the fnc_show function of your App and the fnc_hide of the others App.
    4. For adding an Icon (Picture Button) to the HomeApp there is a pre-processor command available ..so I’m still working on it/ the HomeApp.

    However the system has a very, very small downside. For resizing the GUI the main group needs to be disabled, as sizing every group and resources would be a hideous task and after the sizing the GUI needs to be closed and restarted/redrawn. This is no big deal but turning elements of the GUI invisible after start results in a little flickering effect. I did look into a way to circumvent this ... but the only way I see this working is if it would be possible to disable/not show all elements from the beginning. For example if you have a group and you start the display I need to be able to start the group as not visible by default but this doesn't seem to be possible. Also the "CreateDialog" doesn’t allow showing one dialog above another without turning the parent one invisible for some reason...this is also a reason I decided to use the grouping technique. Maybe someone has an idea on that topic :)

    [*] As you see from the points above I started working on the home App that is there for displaying the links. But i also added a very rough implementation of the "Status Bar" that shows in the top right corner a battery ^^ and the in game time. If you create a App on your own you can decide whether to use the status bar or not. Again there will be pre-processor commands that will give you the right screen area values X,Y,W,H so that you don’t draw above the bar.

    [*]Because of the showed time in the status bar I had a look into how the time can be updated. For that I am using now the "[] spawn while {Group is visible}" statement. The same way I am also updating now the shadow mask. This way the GUI brightness will be adjusted even if it stays open for a longer time.. for example if you pin it to the back :o.

    [*]If the development goes on that well as right now (no promise), it might be possible that an early version is going to be freely available this/next month . If so, this version will not be official because many functions are still missing, it will be there for testing and feedback and allow you to start creating your apps.

Take care

Kumeda

PS:

@Rinka

It depends on what is possible inside Arma, so unfortunately i can’t answer your question as I simply don't know. ;)

Edited by Kumeda

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It is time ....for the next phase in development

I made a new video

you can download it here

or watch it here (low quality stream)

Also you can now download the recent dev version Alpha-1.0.

Here is a list of some things that have been added:

  • Button icon’s overlays with pushing effect
  • A layer above main screen for a “display†effect
  • Added image as “background effectâ€
  • Turning light of button icons on and off
  • Structure for integrating “APPs†(grouped dialogs)
  • Home-screen “APP†for adding a visible link to your APP
  • Status bar showing the time (and battery status this is not functional so)
  • Return button that will bring you back to the last apps used
  • Shadow mask changes over time when “WarPad†is open or pinned
  • Switching “WarPad†on and off

Be warned as this is still early in development things may change or specific things don't work yet! However feel free to try and use it and report back any problems, ideas, wishes....

Unfortunately I didn’t have found the time yet to write a little How TO but maybe you figure it out on your own until I do so.. Or ask specifically here so that I can answer any pressuring question.

Take care

Kumeda :yay:

PS:

Oh and please read the Term of Use .. this is a first draft so please report if you think there are problems with it ;) ty

Edited by Kumeda

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woo dancing banana time!!

this certainly made my evening, well done!

couple issues popped up running dev branch with -showscripterrors, WarPad_FW/WarPad/Macros/WPAD_ParentContols.hpp is missing semi-colons on lines 132 & 168, and also throws an error on WarPad_FW/init.sqf that default_DialogMode is undefined (its just commented out at the top). once fixed works no problem.

also, rpt shows error loading any of the UI sounds 'ca\ui\data\sound\onover.wss' onclick, etc...no sounds in game. ca\ was from arma2 right? i see all my sounds in a3\ui_f\data\Sound\RscButton (there are a few folders with button sounds in \Sound\)

Edited by dr_strangepete

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Thanks alot dr_strangepete

Neither did I know about the " -showscripterrors" command nor how to look into the rpt :eek:.. thats very good to know.

I adjusted the problems you mentioned quickly. I set the sounds to nothing however as I didnt like the clicking sounds from RscButton.

here is the corrected version

download Alpha V1.01

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Release of update 1.02

Changes:

  1. Changed the frontpage of this topic. You will find now some information about the ongoing development, futur plans and an FAQ. The FAQ will be updated and extended in the following weeks.
  2. Cleaned up files, all file together the size is now around 1.15 mb !
  3. Less blinking on load of the gui
  4. Pre-process command WpadObjSize(Scale) still available but for text it should be replaced by WpadTextSize(Scale). This will make SizeEx independent of the menu size of Arma and make it only dependent on the GUI size. The WarPad should scale well now over all screen sizes and menu sizes (I hope).
  5. New command for setting the background colour of your app: “[R,G,B,swap time,idc of group control] KEDA_fnc_App_setBgColorâ€. This function should be called inside your apps show function and after you set your app’s control visible. This functions takes up to 5 values with 4,5 together being optional. The swap time allows blending colors going from one app to the next, but you will need to give with it also the idc of the app’s control group so that the swap is stopped when your app isn’t shown.
  6. I improved the function regulating the shadow mask. The darkness depends now on the suns position, moon visibility, overcast and with some static lights (lamps) at night! (The calculated sun position is more correct for Altis atm. as it uses the geographical coordinates of Altis.. It does work well with Stratis so)
  7. New dynamic idc registration function “[‘Tagstring’, ‘IDCstring’] KEDA_fnc_getIDCâ€. This function takes two identifiers which you should always put in ‘ ’. Inside your dialog hpp you can use the pre-processor command str_getIDC(‘Tagstring’, ‘IDCstring’) to use it. If you need the idc of a control inside a script you will have to define following command at the top:
    #define getIDC(TAG,NAME) (with missionNamespace do {[TAG,NAME] call KEDA_fnc_GUI_getIDC;})
    Then use getIDC(‘Tagstring’, ‘IDCstring’) to get your idc.
    What this function does is to look up a tag ‘Tagstring’ and from that tag the second tag of an idc ‘IDCstring’ that correspond with a control. The first tags works like a namespace. So the idea here is that every developer should use his developers tag and a number after it to specify the app used. For example I use the Tag KEDA so I use ‘KEDA0’ for the first App, ‘KEDA1’ for the second…and so on. The second tag is than to identify the idc value inside the first tags namespace. If no entry is found an idc will automatically be created and returned. If the entry is found/exist only the idc is returned but nothing is created.
    This function will be powerful as it should allow us to create apps independently of each other without the need to know which idcs someone else used for his app. (as long as you use your tag!)

Download Dev 1.02

Take care

Kumeda :yay:

Edited by Kumeda

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Forward thinking Mr. Kumeda... Very Cool.

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Hi Kumeda, very nice job.

Are there any plans to have a blinking light in the corner of the player hud, sort of like a smartphone has now to indicate and incoming message or an app has updated info.

I am looking to expand the ninelines medevac into something like this or c-tab and its a better way of showing a call has been made.

This would be far better than just using groupchat or sidechat to pass on information

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