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[OPT HelpDesk] Theming

PostPosted: 19 Jan 2011, 08:33
by Jorbes
I will be helping out with theming in this thread, so any questions strictly related to theming can be asked here.
Also, if you need a specific setting that does not yet exist to create a nice theme, you may ask for it here.

note: while creating the theme below, I got a little bug "access violation" myself, but I didn't really remember the steps to produce it and it hasn't occured since, so if you happen to get an error, I believe it was while switching themes, let me know.

Theme examples

With winrar, simply place the zip file in the themes folder, rightclick and press extract here. Whatever method of unzipping, important is that you create a file structure like optprogramfolder\themes\themename\theme.opttheme

Overlays example: http://updates.onlineplaytable.com/downloads/themes/overlays.zip
Overlays are used to finish up backgrounds. Say you have a nice image for your messages box and it needs to stretch out, you can use overlays to create a "painting frame" like effect. Overlays have a prefix defined in the object theme settings. Then appended to that prefix will be the numbers 1 through 9, with 1 being the overlay image for the top left corner, from left to right, down to 9 being the overlay image for the bottom right corner.
You do not have to create an image for each number, for example, only having an overlay image '5' would put the image over the background in the center. Overlays can also be used to create transparency, by creating corner images for 1, 3, 7 and 9 that have a rounded edge in the color of the transparent color (FF00FF preferred), you can create a rounded background.

Re: [OPT HelpDesk] Theming

PostPosted: 20 Jan 2011, 03:28
by BaconCatBug
Hey Jorbes! :D

Found a bit of an issue. The settings for "Zones List" are not being saved by opt! D:

Re: [OPT HelpDesk] Theming

PostPosted: 20 Jan 2011, 07:02
by pinecones
Gwar wrote:Hey Jorbes! :D

Found a bit of an issue. The settings for "Zones List" are not being saved by opt! D:
i can confirm this.

Re: [OPT HelpDesk] Theming

PostPosted: 20 Jan 2011, 07:37
by pinecones
there are a couple things i can think of that would help a lot in making nice themes...

-ability to set the size of objects as a % of another object. (the width of the health buttons = 45% the width of the bottom play area). it would also probably be helpful to set up a min/max distance in addition to this feature.

-the ability to modify each "zone" individually including: ability to snap zones to other objects, ability to set a finite width/height, the option to have cards in the zone scale depending on the amount of cards in the zone, or have distances between cards in the zone scale with the amount of cards (as it is with MWS).

-it is frustrating in the multiplayer skins (and somewhat in 1vs1) to not have the ability to edit each value for each object individually... a lot of the values seem to carry between objects... such as font size, size of icons, number of icons, etc.

-what would be helpful for multiplayer editing... is if you were able to set up an object to show when a player is NOT present in the game. this would allow you to have a system where you could have player panels normally take up 150x150 pixels, and in the case that a player is not present in the game, it would be replaced with a 150x1 (or 150x0) pixel transparent image. that allows for a more dynamic theme depending on how many players are active.

edit: my reasoning behind this is that you could run into a scenario where your skin needs to have objects attached to player 4's player frame, whether the player is present or not. easiest example would be a scenario where player frame 1 is attached to player frame 2 is attached to player frame 3 and so on... then another frame, such as the phase bar is attached to the last object in the sequence (player 6 for example). if only the first 3 players are present, it allows a configuration where it would appear that the phase bar is attached to player frame 3 instead. (when in reality it's attached to a dummy image for 6 which is attached to a dummy image for 5 which is attached to a dummy image for 4, which is finally attached to player panel 3)


-options for hiding/showing most objects under certain scenarios would be nice. an easy use for this would be if you mouse-over the player heart (for health) for longer than x time, the + and - health buttons pop up until you click elsewhere or stop hovering over the health icon or the +/- health icons for x amount of time. (same with phase icons)

-the ability to dock objects to the mouse cursor and the object/card that has focus in OPT could be useful for things like showing the "highlight card" directly over the card you're hovering over. (would need to set an option to keep the object inside of the OPT program's borders)

-breaking down a lot of objects into individual parts with the ability to dock to other objects would give a lot more freedom to explore new ideas for themes. for example, being able to edit each mana symbol, phase, player zone symbol (health/deck/hand/exile/etc), breaking the player health object into 3 parts (increments, decrements, set health).

-a couple of generic objects and counters would be nice in case someone comes up with something you haven't thought of, or needs more objects for other card games.

-more logical sorting of theme submenus.


i don't know how well i described that stuff. basically the other thing i was thinking is that goal 1 should be the ability to mock MWS or MTGO. not that you wan't to do that as the main style of OPT, but because it would allow people to migrate comfortably, and i believe you would want your program to be more than capable of what others can do.

also making a lot of options more uniform across all objects may seem like a waste especially if you can't think of any sort of reason why anyone would NEED that function on the object, but the more freedom people have with tweaking the theme, the more possibility for unique and better layouts.

Re: [OPT HelpDesk] Theming

PostPosted: 20 Jan 2011, 09:30
by pinecones
also maybe a possibility for individual player zones for each player in multiplayer games.

Re: [OPT HelpDesk] Theming

PostPosted: 20 Jan 2011, 10:05
by pinecones
different settings for fonts/counters on cards in different areas. (highlight card, hand, play, graveyard, etc)

i think this may only really be a problem with the fonts associated with the tokens.



edit:
pinecones wrote:different settings for fonts/tokens
i meant counters, not tokens.