Compilation Bump
 

Went through and got all of my ideas that were ignored, and decided to bump them in one entire collection of ideas and improvements:

saturation value : added alongside of RGBA. 1 would be full saturation, 0 would be no saturation(grayscale). Currently impossible to replicate, and I think many people would appreciate the effects.

download window : I'm tired of having to close a download window when I switch a server, because it feels the need to inform me I'm downloading some random head or gani. Just have it not pop up.

PM notifaction : Changes the little head icon on the taskbar button into a blinking PM when you receive PMs. Only personal PMs, not masses/guild/admin! This would be useful for those who don't have minimize to taskbar enabled.

gmap.mapimg : added to the gmap object, a variable that contains the currently loaded MAPIMG from the gmap file. Would save the effort to work around and load it from the gmap.

tilelayers[x].layer : change the visual layer of tilelayers. This of course, would be useful for drawing tiles over players. I know this would probably need a rework of the way levels are drawn, but dammit, it would be so worth it!!!

freezeani() : freezes the players ani in place, at its current anistep, for the specified about of seconds. This, of course, would also include a freezecharani().

gani rotation : Still bugged. Rotating a gani like sword.gani will cause the gani to displace itself horribly.

clientside SentToRC() : would echo a message to the RC client on the clientside. Would be useful to send messages to staff when they log on, that wouldn't spam everyone else, for example.

global toguild: : toguild: sending a message to all your guild members regardless of server. Also the ability to receive toguild's from other servers. Along with this, I again, hope that the guild list would list all guild members regardless of server. Much like how the buddy list is.

onwallpoly({polygon data}) : of course, would check for an onwall within the polygon data(or a line), and some way to return the position the polygon intersects a wall.

polygon images : ability to change how images are resampled on polygons. I don't like the bicubic method Graal uses. More on this can be checked here: http://forums.graalonline.com/forums...ad.php?t=76258
Aside from that... drawing images on a 4 pointed polygon causes a distortion along the center, that runs diagonally. This means you can't really do '3D' stuff, because the image is so severly distorted, it's not accurate.

seteffectmode() : change the mode of seteffect, using the modes provided for showimgs. I don't see why this would be hard.

decimal layers : layers being checked down to the decimal. This is mainly important for layers 0-3, since there are only three layers. Not really important, but there are instances where 3 just isn't enough. Because it uses decimals, it would be fully backwards-compatible.

showimg layer <0 : Ability to draw images under the tiles. This is already possible with GUI's, but sometimes it's a pain in the ass... not to mention GUI's cause focus loss and other complications. Being able to just change the layer of an image to -1 to draw it under the tiles seems so much simpler. Oh, and it should carry the same respects as layers > 0. -1 through -3 would be drawn on level coordinates, and <-3 would be drawn on screen coordinates.

addtiledef online : when the image from an addtiledef is not in cache, it should instead be displayed as black, instead of jarbled tiles. I dunno if it still does this, but I guess it doesn't hurt to list it.

textoutline = bool : currently there is textshadow, which is cool. I also suggest textoutline, which would outline the text. This is a very nice effect for text, as it makes it a lot easier to read on ANY color, when there is a black outline, and white text. When over white, you see the black outline, when over black, you see the white text. Very useful, I'd love to see it. There is a way to do it, but it involves about 10+ images just to pull it off for one line of text.


This is all I can think of, but I'm sure I'm missing tons of ideas I've had over the years I have forgotten about. Now, Stefan, I beg you to go through and read all the ideas and at least give me a comment as to possible or not... and not just completely ignore them or pick and choose and leave me wondering about the rest.

Bump for Stefan's acknowledgment.

All of those ides above are great.
At first I was thinking... this would be hard to code, but then I realized if the client just checks the global guild roster you're in to see if those people are online it wouldn't be too bad.

Agree ^
seteffectmode already exists.
DEFINITE YES.
These would also be decent additions.

Oops... well the function name exists, my idea does not. seteffectmode changes the mode for setcoloreffect(so the name of the function makes no sense), which is for the transparency of the NPC.

Well, looks like I can't edit... I guess another syntax could be effectmode();

I agree with all of those. ESPECIALLY DECIMAL LAYERS AND TEXT OUTLINE :D I'm currently using 8 images with textshadows in every possilbe direction to create a damn text outline, pain in the ass.

I'm working on a script right now that would benefit greatly from an expansion on how layers are handled.

You mean "mode" which works for GUI and NPCs, players, showimgs ?

I mean being able to change the mode for seteffect.

Use a showpoly instead, it's implemented exactly the same (with mode=3)

Then comes the problem with not enough layers.

Why can't we just have a mode for seteffect?

I don't see decimal layers working since I'm pretty sure the layer just points to an index in an array.

I'm sure Stefan could change how they work in the engine, if he wanted too. x_x

Hmmm can try to add some of the things, e.g. tilelayers[x].layer should be relatively simple

yes!!!!

My god, seriously? You know how long I've been trying to get that?

Just an idea though, I think it would be better if you had like layer[i].tilelayers[x] instead. By default, layer[0].tilelayercount would be 1 and layer[i].tilelayercount for all other i except 1 would be equal to 0.

I mean, it would be pretty wierd to have tilelayers[0] at layer 0, tilelayers[1] at layer 3 and tilelayers[2] at layer 1, you know?

For backwards compatibility, the level.tilelayers array would just be a reference to level.layer[0].tilelayers.

Make sense?