Mar 26

Shuttle Service Interface Done

GH1_ShuttleService

The shuttle service has been updated to the new SDL UI system. As far as I know, this means that everything has been updated, though not everything looks good yet and I’ll probably have to move some things around.

This interface includes a picture of the destination town. For now, it’s just a screenshot of the world map. I would like to replace these with more evocative pictures later. Not sure yet whether I’d rather show the skyline of the town in question, or show a representative scene closer up.

I’ve been looking at the PC info box in the lower left corner, and there’s no reason why it shouldn’t display all the information of the old one. The only thing holding that back is the fact that the navigation info block is too tall- 65 pixels, as opposed to 48 for the health diagram and 39 for the HP/St/Me text. I plan to shrink the nav bits down to 48 pixels tall, and that should leave plenty of space for two lines of info text above the clock.

Mar 25

Skill School Updated

GH1_NewTraining

The skill trainer interface has been reworked, and it is now possible to purchase skill training for your lancemates by pressing right or left to cycle through them. The best part: this also works in ASCII mode.

Mar 24

CBG-87 Ice Wind

IceWind_final

The Ice Wind is a light general-purpose battroid produced by Cobolt Battle Group of Wujung. It comes equipped with twin laser cannons and a variety of externally mounted weapons. Despite being the second most common chassis in the solar system, the Ice Wind is not popular with pilots, and is frequently denigrated as a “henchman’s mecha”.

The first Ice Winds rolled off the assembly line in NT139. The founder of CBG, Alexandr Cobolt, had great ambitions for this design. He intended the Ice Wind to serve as a modern replacement for the badly outdated defense mecha currently in use on Earth- the Buru-Buru, Condor, and Corsair. To this end the Ice Wind was equipped with the latest in modern technology. Of course, in order to keep the cost down some sacrifices had to be made.

At 13m tall the Ice Wind is fairly small for a main line combatant. Its general build has been described as “sleek” by proponents and as “scrawny” by people who are being perhaps a bit more honest. Its standard weapon complement is fairly light, consisting mainly of swarm missiles and an 8mm railgun. The cockpit is spartan and doesn’t even include an entertainment center.

Although the Ice Wind performed well by any objective standard, its various deficiencies meant that it would never be accepted by pilots as a “sexy” machine. In order to boost sales CBG began offering bulk discounts to governments and individuals who bought five or more Ice Winds at once. The strategy paid off. Within five years Ice Winds were in common use from Earth to Mars.

Nobody buys an Ice Wind so they can use it themselves. No, it’s definitely a henchman’s ride. It’s short so it won’t show up the captain on the news footage. And the weapons? That slivergun isn’t designed for destroying enemies, oh no, it’s just there to soften them up a bit. Same with the missiles. Send in the Ice Winds, soften them up, then swoop in and claim the kills. It’s a brilliant machine Cobolt designed. It’s just something that no self-respecting cavalier should ever be forced to pilot.

For the design’s tenth anniversary in NT149, CBG released a new mid-range variant known as the Ice Fox. This version featured a redesigned head, heavier missile racks, improved electronics, and enhanced mobility. The Ice Fox has avoided the stigma associated with the Ice Wind and is generally hailed as a good mecha, but ironically it hasn’t sold nearly as well as its predecessor. According to rumor CBG is planning to release another new design in NT159 for the twentieth anniversary.

Mar 23

New Shop Interface

GH1_NewShop

The shop interface has been laid out. Now all I have to do is connect it with all the sub-menus in the shopping unit.

Mar 22

New Design Browser, Snapshot Compiling Instructions

GH1_BrowseDesignFiles

Just about everything seems to be working in the new SDL interface. The “Browse Design Files” option in the main menu now works like the GH2 version- you can see each mecha’s info display as you scroll through the list, and selecting a mecha will open up its parts viewer. The last two things that need to be updated are the shopping interface and the yes/no menu.

Please note that to compile the current snapshot from GitHub, you should use:

fpc -dSDLMODE -dWIZARD gharena

This is because I haven’t cleaned up the WIZARD/ULTIMATE bits yet. By the time v1.210 is released you should be able to compile with just the -dSDLMODE tag.

Mar 21

Mecha Engineering Display

GH1_MechaEngineering

Today I added a new Mecha Engineering interface. The technical info panel lists the following things:

  • Mecha mass, form, and form bonuses
  • Intrinsic mass and equipment mass, along with associated MV/TR penalties
  • Walk and roll capacity; at 100% the mecha will move at maximum speed
  • Skim and flight thrust values, for mecha capable of skimming or flying/jumping
  • Full speed bonus gained from overchargers

Hopefully this extra information will help to de-mystify the mecha design process. Do you think there’s anything else I should add?

Edit- One potential problem is that the form MV/TR bonuses could be mistaken for the mecha’s current MV/TR. I should make that more clear on the display.

Mar 19

Help Wanted

2011-05-09-lost-and-found

I don’t have as much time for programming as I used to. There are a couple of things I could use some help with, so if you have at least a passing familiarity with Pascal and GearHead then read on.

Understanding the i18n version

The Japanese GearHead fan community has made a lot of improvements to GearHead over the years. nameless provided some links to the changes in a previous comment thread. It would be easiest for me if someone could submit each of the changes as GitHub pull requests; that way, I could quite easily see what each of the changes does, and quickly incorporate them into the main branch. Most of the changes seem to be within $IFDEF blocks, so even an explanation of what each tag does and which tags depend on other tags would be nice.

My main concerns:

  • What is the minimum code that needs to be patched in so that international translations work?
  • Are there any big bugfixes or improvements that should be imported right away?

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to compile the i18n version or run the precompiled binaries on my current laptop. I suspect that I’m doing something wrong.

Importing the GH2 ASCII interface

Right now I’m busy improving the SDL interface. Due to limitations of the console interface, many of these changes cannot be applied to ASCII mode. One way to get around this would be to adapt the GH2 vidgfx, vidmenus, and vidmap units to GH1. In theory, it should be possible to set things up so that most of the $IFDEF SDLMODE switches can be removed.

One possible complication: Are the GH2 ASCII units compatible with the i18n patches?

Mar 18

Even More FieldHQ

GH1_SelectMechaForPilot2

Even more of the Field HQ is now working. You can select a mecha for a pilot and select a pilot for a mecha.GH1_SelectPilotForMechaThe lancemate info display has a big empty space at the bottom; I should add biographies for all of the standard lancemates, and random biographies for all of the random lancemates. Random biographies would be much easier to make if there were a procedural text generator already in place. So, I think after I get the interface completely working again, I’m going to write a CFG token expander.

Mar 17

Today’s Progress: Wargear Menu

GH1_WolframWargear

The menu that pops up when you select a mecha or item from the FieldHQ is now working. To make up for the fact that this display looks just like the FieldHQ display, this time I present my results in glorious AnimGIF format.

Mar 15

New GH1 FieldHQ

GH1_NewFieldHQ

I’ve arranged the new Field HQ display, which now shows info about the team’s mecha in the right side panel. Unfortunately, I can’t find several of the original mecha portrait files, which is a problem because I’m resizing them to 160×160 instead of 100×150*. One of the problems with the 100×150 GH2 mecha pics is that large, bulky units such as the Savin and the Zwar come out looking smaller than tall skinny units like the Ice Wind and the War Cry.

The mecha info panel could probably use some more information:

  • Separate tallies for internal and carried mass, showing the MV/TR penalty associated with each.
  • The number of hands and weapon mounts, as per GH2.
  • Damage status. I just realized that’s not even shown.
  • List of defensive systems: ECM, shields, anti-missile weapons.
  • Daemonward’s encumberance display.

That seems like an awful lot to fit into a single 250×300 panel. Anything else that should be displayed?

*Yes, I’m aware that this Savin is being depicted as a Zerosaiko. The Savin portrait is one of the ones I can’t find. 🙁