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Zugg
MASTER
Joined: 25 Sep 2000
Posts: 23379
Location: Colorado, USA
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 Posted: Wed Aug 27, 2008 11:37 pm
New dockable Room Properties window
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I've been continuing work on the new mapper. I've gotten most of the main mapper window working now, and the last few days I've been working on the new Room Properties dialog. Here is a preview:
This window is dockable, so you can dock it below the mapper if you'd like. Also, the old room properties was a "data-aware window" which made the mapper slow if you speedwalked while the properties were open. The new dialog is not directly tied to the database, so it doesn't slow anything down.
You notice the familiar room Name, Description, and Notes field. The Text/Exits/Appearance/Other/Contents/Scripts tabs are now on the right as just icons instead of taking up lots of screen space.
The main new feature that you'll probably notice is the compass panel to the right of the room description. This is a "live" compass, in that it automatically enables the buttons that represent current exits from the room. Above the compass is the "short room id" value for the room. You'll also notice that this compass handles "non-standard" exits (like the "out" in the example). These exists are displayed as hyperlinks (separated by spaces) that you can click on to send that custom direction to the MUD.
I'll probably also add an option to hide the compass panel if you don't want it displayed all the time. The number in the lower-right corner of the compass is the room "key" value (used in the various %roomXXX functions).
Most of this new Properties dialog is working now. However, I have one other big improvement to make:
What if you display the Properties dialog *without* the mapper? In that case, the Properties dialog will display the result of any #TAG commands (or ATCP messages or MXP room tags). In other words, if you display the Room Properties with no mapper, it will still show the name, description, and compass exits for any MUD that is ATCP or MXP enabled, or any MUD that you set up #TAG triggers for, even if you don't want the full mapper.
Also, you can enable a "debug" mode that will show the results of the #TAG/MXP/ATCP map data even when the normal mapper is loaded. This should make it a lot easier to debug mapper configurations since you'll be able to see what is being sent to the mapper from your triggers.
This is still a "work in progress", so if you have any comments, feel free to post. I personally think this is one of the coolest things added to CMUD in a long time. Of course, I'm a bit biased ;) |
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Tech
GURU
Joined: 18 Oct 2000
Posts: 2733
Location: Atlanta, USA
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Posted: Thu Aug 28, 2008 3:27 am
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I like it. I like it alot. Question, will I be able to click on one of the greyed out compass directions to add a new direction entry, or to edit the room that direction connects to?
Also, because I want it, a reminder to include a way to programmatically define a room type. Great work Zugg. Keep it up.
[Edit] I also like the idea of preview the mapper configuration tags. |
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Asati di tempari!
Last edited by Tech on Thu Aug 28, 2008 6:07 am; edited 1 time in total |
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MattLofton
GURU
Joined: 23 Dec 2000
Posts: 4834
Location: USA
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Posted: Thu Aug 28, 2008 3:40 am
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| Quote: |
These exists are displayed as hyperlinks (separated by spaces) that you can click on to send that custom direction to the MUD.
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1)The compass. First, I assume the buttons will work like the NSE hyperlinks as well? Second, could you add some sort of indicator that there's an OTHER COM attached to the standard exit? A simple asterisk or even an inclusion of the current symbol you use to show this on the map canvas. If you wanted to get really fancy, maybe there's some sort of blitting API call that allows you to draw in a text letter captured from the keyword.
2)the room notes. Sheesh, that's all you're giving us? Any chance of putting that trigger pattern dropdown thing there as well? I know this field's gotten some rather creative use over the years, and the old version had close to half the window for its working space.
3)the hyperlink list. Separated by spaces? Granted, I've never seen more than 4 such exits that necessarily HAD to be kept as "no direction" NSEs, but as there's no guarantee these exits will be short and simple this could get rather confusing. Any chance of a 4-line column list instead of a whitespace-delimited one. |
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Rahab
Wizard
Joined: 22 Mar 2007
Posts: 2320
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Posted: Thu Aug 28, 2008 1:56 pm
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Way cool stuff, Zugg! I'm looking forward to seeing it. I have a nice complex area to try mapping with it, once I convert my COM stuff to the new syntax.
And I really like the idea of having that window available without the mapper. |
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Zugg
MASTER
Joined: 25 Sep 2000
Posts: 23379
Location: Colorado, USA
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Posted: Thu Aug 28, 2008 4:32 pm
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| Quote: |
| First, I assume the buttons will work like the NSE hyperlinks as well? |
Not sure what you mean by this. They are buttons...you click on them and they send the direction to the MUD. The Non-standard exits are hyperlinks...you click on them and they send the command to the MUD.
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| Second, could you add some sort of indicator that there's an OTHER COM attached to the standard exit? |
If a "other com" is attached to a standard exit, then you will see the Other Com also listed in the hyperlink section. I don't have any good way to modify the buttons to indicate that they are attached to an "other com". Clicking either the direction button or the hyperlink will send the "other com" to the MUD. So I think it works the way you want it to.
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| the room notes. Sheesh, that's all you're giving us? |
Would I do that to you? Sheesh, give me some credit! jk ;) It isn't obvious from a static screen shot, but there is a splitter bar between the Notes field and the Description field. You can resize it to give the Notes field however much space you want. You can even drag the splitter down to hide the Notes field entirely if you want. So you can customize this window to do what you want and CMUD will save your setting across sessions. The important thing is that the new window is much more compact, allowing it to be more easily docked most anywhere. It works with either limited vertical or limited horizontal screen space much better than the old dialog.
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| the hyperlink list. Separated by spaces? |
Yes. Putting them on separate lines makes it mostly useless unless you have made the window much larger (vertically). In many docked situations, there isn't a lot of vertical space, so separating by spaces makes a lot better use of the limited space. I've got rooms myself with *many* other exits in a room (typically a portal room of some kind). But using spaces actually works fine. It doesn't get confusing because the links are underlined as hyperlinks. So you see something like this:
in out enter painting touch statue
And I think that is both compact and really easy to use. The spaces within the links are non-breaking, so it if word-wraps, it will always wrap at the space between the exits. |
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Zugg
MASTER
Joined: 25 Sep 2000
Posts: 23379
Location: Colorado, USA
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Posted: Thu Aug 28, 2008 10:38 pm
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| Quote: |
| Question, will I be able to click on one of the greyed out compass directions to add a new direction entry, or to edit the room that direction connects to? |
Yes. There is a right-click menu that allows you to jump to the room in that direction (without sending anything to the MUD), to add a new room in that direction, to add a "stub" in that direction, or to delete the link/stub in that direction. Also an option to relink that direction to a different room (that you click on) just like clicking the relink button when you are in the Exits view tab. |
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Zugg
MASTER
Joined: 25 Sep 2000
Posts: 23379
Location: Colorado, USA
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Posted: Thu Aug 28, 2008 11:18 pm
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| Quote: |
| Also, because I want it, a reminder to include a way to programmatically define a room type. |
That will come in Phase 2, along with a lot more GUI editing features pulled in from zMapper for CMUDPro. For example, within CMUDPro you will be able to add new room types, modify existing room types, change the icon/shape for room types, etc. |
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Zugg
MASTER
Joined: 25 Sep 2000
Posts: 23379
Location: Colorado, USA
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Posted: Thu Aug 28, 2008 11:21 pm
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| Quote: |
| Second, could you add some sort of indicator that there's an OTHER COM attached to the standard exit? |
I looked into this and what I've added is that the mouse-over hint for the direction buttons will show the Other Com text, both in the mouse-over popup window and in the status bar along the bottom where the long hint text is displayed.
If you have "out" assigned to the "n" direction, the mouseover popup for the north button shows "out" and the long text in the status bar shows: "out (n)". The long text in the status bar updates immediately when you move the mouse over a button. The mouseover popup appears after a short delay (as all mouseover hints work). So just looking at the status bar as you move the mouse around the compass makes it all pretty obvious. |
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Toxic
Adept
Joined: 27 May 2008
Posts: 299
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Posted: Fri Aug 29, 2008 2:11 pm
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I know this is sort of off topic, but it would be a major major feature and dont want you to forget about it :)
We need the ability to define the path syntax... changing .2n3e;(port dod);.4ew2n to run 2n3e;port dod;run 4ew2n is a bit cumbersome and slows down speedwalking a bunch. Im sure theres many other muds that this command would help with too :) |
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Rahab
Wizard
Joined: 22 Mar 2007
Posts: 2320
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Posted: Fri Aug 29, 2008 3:19 pm
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| Quote: |
| Yes. There is a right-click menu that allows you to jump to the room in that direction (without sending anything to the MUD), to add a new room in that direction, to add a "stub" in that direction, or to delete the link/stub in that direction. Also an option to relink that direction to a different room (that you click on) just like clicking the relink button when you are in the Exits view tab. |
Awesome. Very nice functionality.
Can the compass part be docked separately? That is, separate from the rest of the Room Properties window? |
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hogarius
Adept
Joined: 29 Jan 2003
Posts: 221
Location: islands.genesismuds.org
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Posted: Fri Aug 29, 2008 3:25 pm
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Zugg, this all looks impressive. I'm looking forward to its implementation.
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Zugg
MASTER
Joined: 25 Sep 2000
Posts: 23379
Location: Colorado, USA
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Posted: Fri Aug 29, 2008 5:41 pm
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| Quote: |
| Can the compass part be docked separately? That is, separate from the rest of the Room Properties window? |
Nope, sorry, there is no easy way to do that. But if you shrink the properties window horizontally you can make it so that only the compass remains visible and the name/desc/notes go away.
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| We need the ability to define the path syntax... |
Heh, Toxic, you must be playing Aardwolf too (yeah, I know you do). Anyway, I've wanted something like that myself too and it's on my list. It's going to be implemented as a function, probably like %expandpath or something like that, where you can specify the text to be added to the beginning of the path (like "run"). I'll probably add this sometime during the Phase 1 beta period while I am debugging other parts of the mapper. |
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shalimar
GURU
Joined: 04 Aug 2002
Posts: 4691
Location: Pensacola, FL, USA
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Posted: Fri Aug 29, 2008 9:26 pm
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So the properties panel with the compass is right aligned?
Thats spiffy, dont think ive ever seen one where the left side of the window would disappear when shrunk horizontally. |
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Discord: Shalimarwildcat |
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Zugg
MASTER
Joined: 25 Sep 2000
Posts: 23379
Location: Colorado, USA
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Posted: Fri Aug 29, 2008 10:03 pm
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Yep, the compass is right-aligned and set to a fixed width. So it stays the same width as you shrink the window while the rest of the stuff on the left shrinks.
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eclpmb
Novice
Joined: 29 Feb 2004
Posts: 36
Location: United Kingdom
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Posted: Sat Aug 30, 2008 3:17 am
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| Zugg wrote: |
| Heh, Toxic, you must be playing Aardwolf too (yeah, I know you do). Anyway, I've wanted something like that myself too and it's on my list. It's going to be implemented as a function, probably like %expandpath or something like that, where you can specify the text to be added to the beginning of the path (like "run"). I'll probably add this sometime during the Phase 1 beta period while I am debugging other parts of the mapper. |
Oh i would love this - I play on a Dawn of Time MUD, and DoT has a 'Speedwalk' command that gets processed twice per 'command' - so if you use it, you move twice as fast.
Unfortunately, the diagonals are different letters, but I assume the mapper picks directions up from English directions, so that will be fixable? |
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Dumas
Enchanter
Joined: 11 Feb 2003
Posts: 511
Location: USA
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Posted: Mon Sep 01, 2008 5:51 pm
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Yes, the directions are all assignable to different letters.
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