[Script][04-03-10] MarCon Ship Onboard Computer System Interface : [ V2 ]

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mark_a_condren
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Post by mark_a_condren » Sun, 24. Jan 10, 13:56

Thanks Cycrow, its already done.

Have already made it to use Hotkey manager if installed and my hotkey install and unistall if Hotkey manager is not installed.

Am going to include this as option in OP when new version ready for download.

Thanks for the link anyway, cos then i could have used it if i hadn't already.

MarCon

Nho
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Post by Nho » Sun, 24. Jan 10, 14:13

mark_a_condren wrote:New version coming soon!

I will be releasing V103 in the very near future, about 1 week.
Great! I haven't seen any bug using your script so far, but I haven't used all functionality yet.

A request: It's probably not feasible, as it appears in many other mods... but is there a way to make "disappear" the lines in between the different commands in order to be able to jump straight to the next command when using the down arrow.

Not sure if I was clear...

Anyway, it's a nice tool, and I am using it a lot

mark_a_condren
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Post by mark_a_condren » Sun, 24. Jan 10, 14:34

Nho

If i understand you correctly, what you want is to skip over blank lines in menus rather than them being selected as you arrow down a menu (blank lines aren't selected).

I'm not sure if or how can be done, but will look into it, can see how it would make it better.

And, as you are the first who is using it to give any feedback, THANK YOU.

i'm glad you haven't found any bugs or wierd bahavour , and glad you like it. There is quite a bit hidden behind that front menu when you go looking.

Im working on a manual for it but until then, any how to's or what does this do, just post here and i'll answer.

MarCon

Cycrow
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Post by Cycrow » Sun, 24. Jan 10, 16:13

theres a command to create a menu section.

this basically puts a gap between 2 options

its a new command in 2.5

mark_a_condren
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Post by mark_a_condren » Sun, 24. Jan 10, 16:26

I know the one your talking about, its a nice way to layout menu's and break them into groups or areas (however you want to look at it).

I might try that and see how the menu comes up.

If you look at the menu pics i have up you'll see i've already used it quite a bit.

I think it was a great add to the 2.5 SE.

EDIT:
I'll try putting the headings back into Menu Headings and put each item into its own menu area, that will keep it opened up a bit (it looks cluttered with no spaces between) but wont have the blank lines you have to scroll over to get to the next item.

MarCon

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Valkyrie004
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Trying it

Post by Valkyrie004 » Sun, 24. Jan 10, 17:09

I'm about to try it out. It looks fun and useful. I'll post here again on how it went. I'll try every menu if I can. lol


Ooo! and ... I like the colours! ^_^

mark_a_condren
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Post by mark_a_condren » Sun, 24. Jan 10, 17:40

Valkyrie004
I'll try every menu if I can. lol
Good luck :o and any feedback would be welcome.


MarCon

Nho
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Post by Nho » Fri, 29. Jan 10, 07:44

Hi MarCon

As you are asking for feed back, I have come to some thoughts on your script.

About the diplomatic panel, I'm interested to see what you will put into that. One thing that could be very useful is to be able to know faction relation between each others.


About the ship detail option. I think it could be nice if it was linked to the vanilla menus*. For instance, the weapon section of the ship detail panel could lead to the weapon manager (g). If we could manage our whole possessions from your interface (I mean with links to the vanilla menus) then it would really be a central computer interface instead of being "just" a kind of information scanner.

An other thought: we have this option to get details on any ship anywhere. That's very useful, but shouldn't you restrict this a bit? I mean, make this available only when you have this or that installed on your ship (eg freight scanner or a Marco analysis scanner)


In general, I'll prefer having to buy special wares in order to get the full functionalities. For three main reasons: I don't like it when it's easy, the "upgradability" adds a purpose (I have to roam the universe to find this ware because I want to be able to do that) and it is more realistic.

Oh, and the renaming option. Simple and very useful. I would like to be able to change more than just one word at a time tho (eg "Your ship" instead of "Your")

That was one guy opinion, but I hope it help. Keep up the good work!



* and not only the ship detail panel

mark_a_condren
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Post by mark_a_condren » Fri, 29. Jan 10, 10:26

Nho
As you are asking for feed back, I have come to some thoughts on your script.
Thanks, it's a bit hard to know if there is anything that needs work without feedback. I developed this script for myself, it just started as the inventory tracking scripts, i could never remember were i left everything. Then i added this and then that and before i knew it, it had turned into the monster...i mean the menu system it is now. It sort of had a life of its own and i just had to hang on for the ride :D .
About the diplomatic panel, I'm interested to see what you will put into that. One thing that could be very useful is to be able to know faction relation between each others.
The area "Public Relations" i was using for some user options, but i was still having problems with it at release so i took it out while i worked on it. I just put the CLOSED into the info page so the link went somewhere. I hadn't given any thought to tell the true in regards to relations between Races :oops: . But, it would fit into there under "Public Relations" quite well really wouldn't it. Ill see what i can do. I might put "Options" under an options heading (That would be a novel idea).
About the ship detail option. I think it could be nice if it was linked to the vanilla menus*. For instance, the weapon section of the ship detail panel could lead to the weapon manager (g). If we could manage our whole possessions from your interface (I mean with links to the vanilla menus) then it would really be a central computer interface instead of being "just" a kind of information scanner.
I would love to implement this, however i don't believe its possible to link to Vanilla menu's from menus created with the Script editor. HOWEVER, if im wrong and someone knows how to do this, please let me know...it would open up a lot of possabilities.....Cycrow ?
An other thought: we have this option to get details on any ship anywhere. That's very useful, but shouldn't you restrict this a bit? I mean, make this available only when you have this or that installed on your ship (eg freight scanner or a Marco analysis scanner)
In general, I'll prefer having to buy special wares in order to get the full functionalities. For three main reasons: I don't like it when it's easy, the "upgradability" adds a purpose (I have to roam the universe to find this ware because I want to be able to do that) and it is more realistic.
Like i said i built this for myself at the start so i didn't put restrictions into it. This was part of the "Public Relations" bit that i removed for the release. I was working on needing to fulfill certain criteria before some function became available. In the top right hand corner of the menu you will see "VIP Access Granted" this is part of that system, but does't do anything in the current release. (now you know why thats there :D ) I havn't done much more in that area as YET !! I might even tie it into the Race Relations bit you suggested yet. :twisted:
Oh, and the renaming option. Simple and very useful. I would like to be able to change more than just one word at a time tho (eg "Your ship" instead of "Your")
Ummm... have you tried changing more than one word at a time ? :o It looks for the exact string (word(s)) that you enter and then replaces them all with your replacement string, this can be a single letter or multiple words. You can replace "Your Baldric Miner" with "Silcon Mining Terran Rust Bucket" if you want. But be quick, as this has been changed in the upcoming version update.
I have noticed that due to the slow text input requirements it is easy to make a typo in either of the text inputs, and if you were changing a large amount of names this could lead to a whole lot of mucked up names (NOT GOOD). So i have put in some checks in the next version. these check that the text you have put in to change from is a whole word or words, (cant check what you want to replace it with because i have know idea if what is there is what you want or not). If you put in "You" instead of "Your" to be changed to "MarCon" (as example), everthing you chose to change that has the letters "You" will be changed. this may result in "Your Baldric Miner" becoming "MarConr Baldric Miner", notice the "r" at the end of MarCon.
As of the next version this won't happen. If the text you enter to change ie, "Your", doesn't have a space after it it will be considered as NOT a whole word and will not be changed. So putting in "You" by mistake will not change any names, unless you have "You" as a whole word in the name somewhere. You can however still change multiple words at the same time, just make sure they are whole words, must have a space after it / them. (Damn i hope this is making sense !!).
The renaming operation now ends with a list of all the property that was in your search criteria ie, All M6's, and the ones that had a change made are highlighted in Green, had to put color in there somewhere :D, its also doing some checks in the background but i hope you never know, cos you will only know if something goes wrong...you will get <<<ERROR and the ship ID code will be red also to indicate the problem ship. It does a double blind check on the ships old name, new name and its ID code before and after the change, to make sure it the same ship. if anything doesn't match you will get the ERROR now, before you had no idea. Unfortunatly any errors you will have to check any fix manually, as i have no way of checking WHY it went wrong, only that it did.
That was one guy opinion, but I hope it help. Keep up the good work!
Thanks for the feedback, really. Keep up the good work!
Any more you can think of ?

MarCon

Nho
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Post by Nho » Tue, 2. Feb 10, 17:51

mark_a_condren wrote: Ummm... have you tried changing more than one word at a time ? :o It looks for the exact string (word(s)) that you enter and then replaces them all with your replacement string, this can be a single letter or multiple words. You can replace "Your Baldric Miner" with "Silcon Mining Terran Rust Bucket" if you want. But be quick, as this has been changed in the upcoming version update.
You are right. It works perfectly. I should have miss-tipped the last time.
mark_a_condren wrote: Like i said i built this for myself at the start so i didn't put restrictions into it. This was part of the "Public Relations" bit that i removed for the release. I was working on needing to fulfill certain criteria before some function became available. In the top right hand corner of the menu you will see "VIP Access Granted" this is part of that system, but does't do anything in the current release. (now you know why thats there Very Happy ) I havn't done much more in that area as YET !! I might even tie it into the Race Relations bit you suggested yet. Twisted Evil
Any restrictions you put in would be very welcome by me ;) X3TC tends to be a bit too easy in my opinion. As for what you plan to add, it sounds very promising.

Anyway, after a few hours more playing, nothing new came to my mind. I will wait for your next release, hopefully, and gice you some more feedback!

mark_a_condren
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Post by mark_a_condren » Tue, 2. Feb 10, 18:16

Nho

Just so i have some idea of a direction (everybody is different and hard to know) what were your thoughts on restrictions. Maybe include neeed for advanced sat in sector and a police licence for sectors race? This will give me some ideas from the perspective of someone who doesn't like everything handed to them on a plate.

And, the diplomatic relations have been incorperated into the next release.
You can choose any of the races (Min of 2) to check thier relations to each other. Races are chosen from a race menu, and you can choose from 2 to All races. However, i have removed Race.1 and Race.2 from the Menu selection screen, I don't believe these will have much relevance to many users.

Also. Basic station financial management.

And, a Main Menu style change, Option to remove blank lines in main menu and use the new menu sections to break it up a bit, settable from the options menu ( yes there now is an options menu :o ). Option will allow you to use new or old menu styles. :D

MarCon

Cycrow
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Post by Cycrow » Tue, 2. Feb 10, 18:23

mark_a_condren wrote: I would love to implement this, however i don't believe its possible to link to Vanilla menu's from menus created with the Script editor. HOWEVER, if im wrong and someone knows how to do this, please let me know...it would open up a lot of possabilities.....Cycrow ?
it isn't possible to open up normal menus, the only one i know of that you can is the ships command console. but that is very clunky and difficult to implement

you basically fake a callback from an incomming question to divert it to the command command, this doesn't work from a normal menu however.

mark_a_condren
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Post by mark_a_condren » Tue, 2. Feb 10, 18:47

Thanks Cycrow.

It's a shame you can't do this reliably, like i said, it would have opened up a lot of possabilities. Oh well, can't have everything.

Thanks for the info though.

MarCon

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Post by EmperorJon » Tue, 2. Feb 10, 19:09

Yes, things would be so much easier if you could link to jump menus etc.
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I'm Jon. I'm mostly not around any more. If you want to talk, please message me! It's cool.
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Nho
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Post by Nho » Tue, 2. Feb 10, 19:09

Hi MarCon

Restrictions: Advanced sat in sector seems to be the more realistic, it could be needed for getting detail on any npc ships. I am not a great fan of deploying sats every where tho. There could be an other option: some ship upgrades, like freight/bio scanner, and/or the Marcon Analysis Software.

For the relation between races, police licence sounds good: If you work for the police forces, you should have access to the relations of this specific race with the others*. And maybe the highest rank with this race, in addition to the police licence, will give you some more goodies: Strength of the faction (sectors, military outposts, fleets).

I hope this helps. Can't wait to see the new milling ;)


* But then it would also mean that if you have Argon police licence, you can check Argon relation with Borons, but not the relation between Borons and Split (you would then need Boron or Split L)

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Post by mark_a_condren » Tue, 2. Feb 10, 20:03

Nho

I don't want to make everything to complicated, though, sheeeez, you should see some of the scripts behind the menu.

I'll have a fiddle and see what i come up with.
There could be an other option: some ship upgrades, like freight/bio scanner, and/or the Marcon Analysis Software.
Marcon Analysis Software. i think would need a mod to bring the new ware into the game properly and for it to be for sale at whatever locations. I'm trying to stay away from mods (and i don't know how :D ) and just keep it as a script. the Bio scanner and such is an option though.

I'll also look into the higher rank the more info side as well.

And thanks for your suggestions and feedback by the way, appreciated.

How much of the script **read features** have you used and tested may i ask?

MarCon

Nho
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Post by Nho » Wed, 3. Feb 10, 11:35

Hi Marcon
mark_a_condren wrote:
How much of the script **read features** have you used and tested may i ask?

MarCon
Not sure what you are relating to. I have used all features except for the "discard freight" one. Some just for testing, others I use regularly while playing (ship detail, renaming tool, search derelict, search inventory).

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Post by mark_a_condren » Wed, 3. Feb 10, 12:02

Hi Nho

I was just asking what features of the menu you used. Which you answered, thanks.

The 'Recycle Ships Wares' ("discard freight"?) is very useful if you are playing a Salvage game, combine it with 'NPC Bailing Addon' and 'Salvage Commands and NPC's' and you will be flat out keeping up. 'Recycle Ships Wares' makes stripping these ships a lot faster opperation, it can also be used on an opperation of any size. It alows you to transfer all of a docked ships cargo and equipment in one go and, if set, the ship will auto fly to just about any location you set. It alows you to skip any ship that you don't want to strip or just remove only one type of ware. You get a report at the end after all of the docked ships have been cycled through, if any have had wares removed it will list a total of ware amount, total avg value of recovered wares and variouse other details.

This may not interest you, but for the others reading this it's a bit of an explanation ( i'm bad, i haven't finished the full explanation to go in the OP yet, Its working out quite large :D ). Ill post it soon i hope as it explains a lot of what you can do with the Menu and how to do it.

EDIT: Just another Question i meant to ask you the other day.
If anyone who is using this my menu would like to reply thats good too.
Do you use the in menu info screens, and if so, are they helpful?
These can be found in the main menu by selecting any of the blue headings eg Navigation Divisision i , also any item in any of the menu's that has the blue i in the line has either more information or is a link to another menu for this object. The info screens give further information in regards to what is under that heading and what it does and how to use it.

MarCon

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Valkyrie004
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Post by Valkyrie004 » Mon, 8. Feb 10, 06:51

I really enjoy this interface as it has sooo many options, but at the same time its like there too many. lol

The only thing I found a little difficult is finding what I needed. It's sorted out pretty well in the first 2 menus, but after it becomes listed, which kinda makes it harder to find what you need. I love the colours though. lol

I love this script, its great. My own opinion is that if there was a [Simple] & [Complex] option. Complex would have all the thousands of options, but simple would be 1,2, or 3 clicks. I don't want to create any extra work for you though. :roll:

Maybe I'm just ranting a bit too much, but I love it overall. I tried to find any spelling mistakes or anything that you should be aware of, but I didn't find any. I didn't use every menu, simply too many to go through. :P

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Post by mark_a_condren » Mon, 8. Feb 10, 09:05

Valkyrie004

Thank you for the feedback, as always it's good to get and even better if it's good. :D
I'll try every menu if I can. lol

Good luck and any feedback would be welcome.
It seems you have made a valiant attemp anyway. :P
The only thing I found a little difficult is finding what I needed. It's sorted out pretty well in the first 2 menus, but after it becomes listed, which kinda makes it harder to find what you need. I love the colours though. lol
If by this you mean the main menu, the top 2/3 is more by group due to thier nature and the rest is a bit harder to group like that, however if you mean the results screens, i looked at a few diff sorting methods and i thought they were even harder to decyfer.

Any suggestions ? but i really don't want to implement a lot of diff sorting options, no joke, it would be a nightmare.
I love this script, its great. My own opinion is that if there was a [Simple] & [Complex] option. Complex would have all the thousands of options, but simple would be 1,2, or 3 clicks. I don't want to create any extra work for you though.
I'm happy about the first three words :D .
As for add the option for "if there was a [Simple] & [Complex] option", sorry, i really had to giggle at this, add more options to create less options, that sounds so much like something i would say. I know what you mean thought, the problem i see is how do i do it and what do i leave out ?
As for more work, that isn't a problem that stops me from trying to improve the script. It seems every time i do anything on it now its a lot of work, checking all the interlinked oarts work together and i havn't missed any.
In a failed attemp to make this a bit easier i got a program thats Supposed to product easy to read and follow flow diagrams of linked files. You beuty i thought, loaded it up, clicked create, and OMFG, thats supposed to be well laid out and easy to read? It was absolutly useless, the interlinks were to complex for it.! Ok, back to lots of bits of paper and a good supply of pencils and rubbers.
I tried to find any spelling mistakes or anything that you should be aware of, but I didn't find any
Hint ... Look for whats blue .. .. fixed in v3
I didn't use every menu, simply too many to go through.
Ummm ... should i tell you i've added some more in the upcoming v3?
1.) Basic station finacial management.
2.) "Diplomatic Relations Viewer", check your or any other races relations to each other, races are selected via the already included race selection menu.

Keep going, you'll get to them all eventually, well maybe. :D
Maybe I'm just ranting a bit too much, but I love it overall.
Me Too !

Keep up the feedback, thanks.

EDIT: for spelling :evil:

MarCon

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