Admin GUI

[JestersDead]

Bear and I talked about setting up an admin GUI to take all admin functions out of the scroll menu, and add quick access to common admin functions through button click, instead of debug window commands.

I'm working on understanding the GUI system now, and I'm looking for feedback on what functions everyone would like added to a GUI.

So far I have:

Safe start end Display number of units Mission end (success) - WITH CONFIRMATION POPUP Mission end (fail) - W/ CONFIRM Simplified item spawning for JIP PVP kill tracker (who killed who) CIV kill tracker Global message window Mapclick teleport

Anything else you'd like to see? I'll keep updating the original comment as items are added .

[Beardozer]

Who killed Who tracker for PVP. Civilian casualty tracker Click map teleport Suck it Flowers button. (random text on everyones screen)

[GRUBES]

Upboat times 1000 for Suck it, Flowers button.

[JestersDead]

Kill tracker for PVP shouldn't be too difficult. I already have a script in my current mission project that adds a "killed" event handler to each unit, and the rest is just display and formatting.

Civ casualty tracker is similarly easy.

Click map TP will be tricky, but eventually it should be doable.

I was thinking instead of a "Suck it, Flowers" button, we could just have a global message window. Type whatever in the box, and click button. Then you could tell everyone to suck it.

[Beardozer]

SITREP! How is it coming along?

[JestersDead]

My current mission project, which will be finished today, has a lot of features directly applicable to the GUI.

Civ kill tracking - basically done Total unit count - done Mission end buttons - done (will set up ending #'s 8+9 as default. PvP kill tracking - still problematic due to CWS death handling. Map click teleport - not yet started, but may not be as difficult as originally thought.

I'm considering releasing a barebones version to be incorporated into the next GPF release and further updates will be in the form of a mod.

On Jul 18, 2014, at 9:14 PM, Beardozer notifications@github.com wrote:

SITREP! How is it coming along?

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

[Beardozer]

YES i want to play with it man!

[Beardozer]

Also, if you make your project a repo on git hub we can help you and what not, task us some stuff maybe!

[GRUBES]

Doesn't even need to be its own repo; we've got a repo for missions already. Upload the source and pbo versions there.

[JestersDead]

UPDATE!!!

FINISHED: Safe start end - Finished, still needs a quick test on the server to make sure it works Mission "WIN" - done (added default end mission call #8) Mission "FAIL" - done (added default end mission call #9) Unit counter - done (figuring out structured text within a dialog was harder than I expected)

WIP: CIV kill tracker - Should be fairly easy after figuring out the structured text in the unit counter.

Spawns - The idea here is to have the ability to spawn in some assets at mission start, or in progress to make tougher missions playable with smaller groups. For example, spawning in a Marshall in a mission designed for 15 players, when there's only 5 in session, or spawning a mortar on a hilltop when we don't have enough players to deploy a true mortar team, etc. Should the spawned equipment be set up to be air-dropped in for immersion and realism, or just magically appear next to the admin? It could be set up to be optional either way, but that's more complex. Maybe a V2.0 feature. I've finally figured out how to make a working list box so we have a clean multi-line, scrollable selection box. All that's left to do here is figure out how to convert the clicked line selection into code. Maybe another couple days to get this one cracked.

JIP - This one is directly related to the spawns menu. Once that one is done, I can copy/paste the dialog setup and just change the code. This one will be set up with various "loadouts" for our JIP sessions. Admin just clicks the weapon, and every player has their weapons removed, and replaced with the new weapon.

Teleport - Haven't started on this feature yet. I'm trying to finish the things I (sort of) know how to do before tackling the unknowns of moving map display and converting click coordinates to a spawn location. I'm anticipating this one will be challenging.

POSTPONED: PvP stats - Postponed until AGM is implemented. I need to see how it handles kills, etc to proceed. If it handles kills the same way CWS does, this feature may not be possible.

[stevos758]

NICE!

Dude I want airdrops! That would be sick! You might be able to somehow use IGI load. I believe that has airdrop abilities.

Nice work jester!

[JestersDead]

Yeah airdrops are pretty hawt. You don't really NEED IGI load to do it. It's cool, but for dropping things like Marshalls, there's no helo in game that should be able to haul an IFV. There's also the possibility of conflicts if IGI is disabled in the mission. I could add a cargo plane flyover sound effect and just spawn the unit on a chute in the air. Can give it a random X,Y distance from the admin for randomized drop location, but that can cause issues with some things. You don't want your mortar to land in a valley or next to a house where the rounds will impact terrain instead of target.

I think what I'll do initially is have vehicles and ammo crates airdrop in, and things like mortars will just spawn in to "simulate" carrying the tube to the support location.

[Beardozer]

Good work jester! Are you ready to test this thing sometime this weekend?

[JestersDead]

I hope to get the listbox scripting figured out tonight. If that happens, I should have a working version that includes everything except the map click teleport and the PvP stat tracker ready for testing by Sunday after session.

[JestersDead]

Listbox has been figured out. Now comes the tedious task of typing out all the code for the spawn scripts. Getting this UI element sorted out wraps up the JIP and spawn menus.

Here's a quick vid of the equipment spawn menu in action. Scroll through the list (when there are too many items to display a scroll bar will appear) and double click the item you want.

http://youtu.be/Aeiyo_s0quw

[GRUBES]

Love the progress so far!

An interjection: Things like air drops and spawning assets, along with many other things, can be accomplished with a Zeus module attached to the active admin or activated through the admin GUI. If you spawn a Marshall up in the air with Zeus, it magically gets a parachute and falls nicely to the ground. Not trying to pee in the scripting pool, but more code inevitably means more bugs to fix and more maintenance to support, which may not always be desirable.

[JestersDead]

I don't disagree that Zeus is a far easier solution than the GUI, but how many missions do we have that have Zeus enabled? Maybe 2 or 3? The GUI works no matter which mission we load up, it doesn't matter which slot you choose to play, and it allows you to very quickly select from a handful of functions.

I just added features that were requested. I also created the files with neatness in mind, so everything that the GUI needs to operate, except for a couple #includes and one or two script calls, will reside within the s\GUI\ folder. If it's ever desirable to remove the GUI we can just delete the GUI folder and those couple calls, and it's like it never existed. And eventually it will be a mod, so it should be even easier.

EDIT: Well, I just read the change log for the new release candidate, and see that the admin will have Zeus enabled by default.... Nice. I was not aware of that one. Disregard about 75% of this lol.

[GRUBES]

Nice! Do not mistake my Zeus suggestion for completely undermining your GUI work. I think this thing looks awesome and has freaking unlimited potential.

[JestersDead]

No worries man. I was just confused by the Zeus comment. I don't know if the notifications show edits, but I edited my last comment after posting. I didn't see that Zeus functions were being added to the admin in this release until like 2 minutes after I posted that last comment. The work I did on the spawn menu isn't wasted either, since the GUI elements I had to figure out for it will be used for other things as well.

SO.... Since unit spawns appear to be a redundant feature with the implementation of Zeus to the admin player, is there anything people would like to see replace the spawn menu? I have a big button with no function now.

I still have a global message function on the wish list. That could probably replace the spawn menu without too much difficulty.

[JestersDead]

Nearly done!

The JIP spawning is done. When the JIP menu is selected, a list appears with one selection of each weapon in the game. Double click the one you want, and every player has all weapons and ammo removed, and it gets replaced by the selected weapon with a few mags. Still needs testing on the server, which I can do tomorrow before, or after session.

I removed the unit spawning function and replaced it with a global message function. Now you can open that menu and type anything in the box, and your text will appear in the center of the screen for every player. Pics, you say???

The safe start ending feature didn't seem to work when I tested locally today. I'll have to look into that one a bit more.

CIV kill tracking is still a WIP, I hope to get it wrapped up tomorrow.

[JestersDead]

I changed the global message to use hints instead of the message appearing center screen after testing with Flowers. The middle screen text was distracting, and interfered with sights. It was also hard to read under some conditions.

After testing on the server briefly with Flowers we found a few issues. When I opened the menu, it was visible, and usable by all players. This was due to calling the menu via radio trigger for testing. It has been changed to an action menu call that's only visible to the logged admin, which resolved that issue. Once all of the features are functional, I'm planning to change the menu call to a key binding. Hopefully this will allow use of the menu even after dead.

There's also locality issues with the JIP menu. When a weapon is selected, only the admin gets the desired weapon and ammo. Other clients seem to only get ammo. Further testing will be necessary, as we only had about 20 minutes to test it before session on Tues.

Teleport works flawlessly. Yes, something just worked with no issues. Shocking.

Mission start button does not work. Has safe start been changed? The only safe start options I see now are time based, with no option to end it early (we had the "start mission" menu option in BSMF). I don't know that this feature is even that important since we don't really use safe start very often anyway. Thoughts? Is it worth spending time on?

Civ kill counter should be functional, but needs testing on server to make sure there are no issues with the event handler.

During editor testing, I noticed odd behavior with the kill tracking, which makes me think the PvP tracking may not be reliable. About 50% of the time if I shot a CIV, the hint that is supposed to say "Unit A killed by Unit B" would display "Unit A killed by Unit A". I haven't found any specific cause, but it seems to happen more frequently when I fire full auto, or if the CIV is running. If the EH is randomly spitting out false info, then kill tracking more complex than "number of kills" may not be possible. I haven't tested this with mods disabled yet, it could possibly be AGM that's causing the false "suicide" reporting. A possible workaround would be to add a line of code that checks for a "suicide" report from the EH, but making that work reliably no matter what factions were being played is probably more trouble than it's worth. I'll be cutting PvP tracking from the initial release. I'll add it back in later if I can get it to work reliably.

If I can get the JIP stuff working by this weekend I'll dump the current version in the DEV branch so you guys can play around with it and give feedback,

[GRUBES]

Sounds like you're doing great work! Keep it up