Arthurovitz

Here is the same Idealbb bug again! I'm NOT Daeley, I'm A-R-T-H-U-R-O-V-I-T-Z !

Hi, Daeley! Here is a small present for you! Read The readme and have fun! [EDIT: finally I got this link right! Sorry for inconvinience ]

This post is a request to admins/tecnicians of the site. It is not a first time I see that the name of a last poster on a thread on the general page of the discussion is incorrect (replaced by a name of another poster) You could check this thread for example. Please, take care of it, it can be very confusing. Thank you for support.

Date:10/23/2004 2:45:34 PM Author:Thalassicus ...To include transparency in a PNG, if you're using Photoshop, the easiest way is to use 'Save for Web' command under the File menu. Select PNG - 24 with Transparency checked. An alternative method is to add an alpha map channel to the image and designate transparency there (more useful for some applications, but probably not for a UI)quote> I found out for myself, that in the case of UI Close button, the property winflag_alphablend=yes should be present to allow tpansparency. You don't have to save yor PNG by no special way. (BTW, could someone explane to me what is the meaning of interlaced in the PNG save options?[EDIT: Somebody already explaned it to me]) Anyway here is my very first custom button: idle highlighted clicked You woudn't believe it, but I actually drew everything in BAT, and than exported to Photoshop by PrintScreen. Only thing I need now is a sound of flushing toilet for a click sound. Daeley, do you, by occasion, have any experience with TRK and WAV? My personal knowlege in this field is one big zero. To the nosoupforyou - help me to understand you - What do you mean by tutorial? - Daeley's Word document, Daeley's example Lot or iLive's UI-editor?

Stupid me... Daeley, thanks for clarifying this for the second time. I'm little slow this days due to the terrible cold I cought... Ill try it now.

Hi, guys! I'm really flattered that you like what I've done! Date:10/22/2004 1:39:45 PM Author:Daeley want to play around with photoshop huh? how about a custom button then?...have fun!quote> Daeley, thank you very much for sharing your knowlege with me, but I've already been making custom menu buttons for some time now. Recently I'm trying to complete an original coastal development Lot-pack, and it concludes about15 puzzle pieces, every one of them needs a unique custom button. I even made a template for them. To be honest with you, I do not find much fun in drowing, copying and pasting square images with the size of 40x40 pixels. There is no place for fantasy here. Custom UI is an absolutely different story. If we're talking about buttons, I would like to ask you about the Close button in UI. Here is my 3rd attempt on making a query: (As you can see, I'm pointing at Mass transit usage because I STILL DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT the friggin thing shows !!) It is obviously, that the only item on that picture that doesn't blend in, is a Close button. I tried to make it transparent, but nothing helped. Is there any way to make it unvisible, or on the contrary, create a custom one? I'm almost sure that I sow somewhere custom Close button made by you. I'm really grateful to you for support !

OK, I couldn't stop playing with it. Making UI became an excuse to fool around with Photoshop, but at the end this query of mine started to get some shape. The advantage of making custom queries is that, unlike BAT, the picture you see in the game is exactly as the picture in the Photoshop window. Let me present you the strike 2: I hope, anyone can see that I had a good teacher. Concerning your comments: I don't know why you thought that I use bigger font size. The size is the same, just the line spacing is little wider. Of course, I use the Reader - there are some things which can be done only there - changing line order, for example. But since I'm far from being a programmer and don't use to looong lines with text code, it's much easier to do the most work in UI-editor (merci bien, iLive!). About this darn passenger count. I still think the actual usage sould be higher, according to Transportation income & the Volume graf (see my previous posts ^^). I'll leave it as it is... So, the bottom line, I couldn't do any of it without your grate tutorial and tips. Special thanks for that info about tpansparent purple color - it opens an ocean of possibilities! Sencirely yours, Arthurovitz

Hi, Daeley! I'm really glad you replied to my call! Thank you a lot for your very helpful answer! I tried to follow your advice and do something about that query, and finally came to something, that, I think, looks OK. This is my first custom UI, and I learned everithing in process, so it took me a lot of time: What do you think about it, honestly? Your hardest criticism would be highly appreciated. Allow me to ask you another thing - what do you know about Goofy Stat Response Curve property? I would like to insert something like Cups of capuccino spilled and I want the number to be at range of ~20-60. Thank you again for the help!

Hi, Thal ! You are here, you are there, you are everywhere... Thank you for reply, you reminded me, that I forgott to post one important pic that shows the change in Traffic volume, if we're talking about usage statistics: What we can conclude from that? It is still the query issue, because if the game, as you said, combine inbound and outbout traffic from a Lot, my query should show at least 1,600 usage.

Daeley, could you, please, help me to put things in order with a query of a transit lot I made? I built a custom passenger ferry terminal, and made it transit enabeled also for bus & pedestians.(Its Transit Swich Point property is the same as default bus stop: pedestrians can enter & exit while remainind pedestrians, bus passengers can enter only if converted to ped-ans, ped-ans can also exit and be converted to bus passengers). But when I open the custom query (that I made in iLive's UI-Editor with the help of your tutorial), the Actual usage value do not make any sence. I performed an experiment, by replacing my Lot with the ferry terminal with default transit functions & query and the bus stop that were plopped side by side. Let me show you some screenshots, that compare regular & route queries in this two cases: Ferry terminal + bus stop: (Tropod, I'm really sorry that the image is a little bit wide, I couldn't shrink it any more ) And my custom Ferry&Bus station: Where the heck did simulator get the number of 1.5K in default terminal usage? And why all this ferry-using sims dissapear from the query, when the ferry terminal is enabled for bus? As you can see from the route query, the regular query shows only bus usage. The Transportation Dep. income shows that total usage of mass transit only increased. When I checked the default ferry and bus UI files, I found out, that they use the same ID for their Actual usage values - 0x00001044. How can it be?! What does this value detect anyway? In the case of bus stop it would be logical to think, that it detects number of pedestrians converted to bus passengers during the day. Regarding to ferry terminal, as far as I understand, it works like a wormhole, so the pedestrians that enter it are instantly teleportated to another terminal of the same type, so its usage is supposed to be calculated by some different way. I really can't figure it out. Another thing concerning the custom UI itself. As you can see, two of the anchors are missing from the picture. In UI-Editor it looks like this: What am I doing wrong? If you could clarify these issues, it wold really mean a grate deal for me! Thank you very much for support.