Wurm Assistant - Enrich Your Wurm Experience

[Aldur 651]

Schwanke, how about if there were a separate, but single window and it would have all those messages in a tidy list(s)? Something like news windows in strategy games, only they would allow grouping, for example by game character. Messages would stay there until closed.

 

It would work similarly to how timer window does.

Edited December 27, 2013 by Aldur

[Schwanke 32]

A list could work if there could be a setting 'bring to front on new event'  and 'flash on new event'. It would also be nice if the grouping was configurable. I honestly dont know which would be better. A single long list that is marked who the event is for. Or seperate lists or + style tree lists. Id have to try it and I wouldnt wanna keep changing it on you. Another option is a single long list but color coded? I dont know which of these options are more trouble then they are worth. I'm a dreamer.

 

Like the 'perfect' solution would be:

 

Option: Long list or tree List with +s to expand and contract.

Color coding by character or even by event.  Gotta be some sort of access to standard color codes from windows? Generic color wheel plug in?

Option by event: Flash on new. Bring main window to front on new. Sound on new.

 

Thats what I can think of. But its always trade offs when coding. (I used to code before I broke myself). You could spend a week on a feature only one person would use (even if it was me lol) or you could put in stuff that does good enough and work on other things more popular.

 

Comments?

[Aldur 651]

Ok, I've got something that I think is doable and should work well for everyone.

 

First the layout:

 

Window is resizable and can be configured to stay on top, be half-transparent and even be click-through unless, say shift key is held. It can be set to blink on new messages, pop to top, blink on taskbar.

 

Inside window, there are groups, each group can be set a static size and will show as many messages as can fully fit. Remaining messages (oldest) will be indicated by a "+X more" on the bottom of group and the group will be scrollable like any other window. It's possible to color message borders.

 

Each group has it's own set of options, where you can set your own rules on what messages can go there and what colors they should have. For example limit entire group to single in-game char and color messages with title "cooldowns" green. You can also optionally limit life of any message, say they should disappear after 5 minutes.

 

Groups have priority, if same message fits multiple groups, it will go to highest priority. If a message doesn't fit any group, it will not show (though it may be indicated by some "5 other messages" button, that once clicked can show them).

 

 

This is not a replacement for popups, instead every WA option that currently allows reminders will give an option to set either sound, popup and/or message.

 

Together with this system, Sound triggers will be redone and will just be called Triggers. They will let you set any reminder for any condition. I'm even planning to eventually allow writing scripts to control each trigger. There will be more sources available in addition to game logs, for example official twitter server feeds.

 

Of course timers will be updated as well, so they can use new messages.

 

 

If anything sounds fishy, it's best to point out now, before any work is done.

Edited December 28, 2013 by Aldur

[Schwanke 32]

My only concern is the pop up window becomes so big to handle everything that you need a whole nother monitor just for pop ups .  What about a single line list where the title of the popup shows only and then when you click on it it expands to the larger version?  LIke right now your pop ups that ive seen all have only one line but the entire pop up is 4 or  5 lines plus padding plus border.  What if  the pop up sub window was just:

 

------------ ---------------

| Char 1  | | Char 2      |

------------ ----------------

| +Item1  | | +Item 1      |

| +Item 2 | | +Item 2      |

------------ ----------------

 

That probably didnt format right lol but my point is just have a list in each Group as opposed to actual pop ups.  So its compact. Does that make sense? Sorry having trouble this morning my rib is back to hurting again so I havnt really slept.  Just straight forward text list but when you cilck the text list it gives more information if there is any. Leaves room for info later like maybe how many prayers left or how many minutes till next mediation or whatever.

 

Just what you have above is awefully big when the whole point is to manage 10 or 20 popup/triggers per character and some run even more then 3 characters.

 

thanks for your work on this. hope i make enough sense.

[Schwanke 32]

haha it did format right lol. So yeah. I would make each item in the list a small window of its own that can be colored with atleast a back ground if not also a foreground (text) color and then when you click on the plus it expands it and when you click on the text it gets rid of it.

 

I think if you have the list of them and they can 'stack'. Then you dont need to have them dragable where they go somewhere else on the screen. List leave theme in the list like a todo list maybe?

[Schwanke 32]

Sorry so many posts.  Re reading things.  I see what your doing with the original layout here with the colors. Maybe a modified version where its more compact like Title/Age and only one line of info with a ... or something.  So its like what I wrote in my first reply here but only twice as long as oposed to three or four with your 'bigger' pop ups does that make sense.  I really was hoping for a todo list style listing but maybe thats harder? Not something people want? I dont know.  

[Aldur 651]

How about if it worked this way then:

 

Also I can make them more compact.

[Aldur 651]

I don't like expandable messages, this quickly gets annoying. I think it can work like chats do, show all info in single line:

 

Title: content (X min ago)

 

 

Also I could apply same, transparent style to timers.

Edited December 28, 2013 by Aldur

[Schwanke 32]

Well I prefer the idea of a single resizeable window holding them all. Definitely not a part of wurm becaues I play with wurm at different sizes at different times with different characters and re arrange all my windows a lot depending on what other non wurm stuff im doing. (Like when I play wurm I'm actually playing two copies of a wurm a web based game that has its own timer system lol and a phone game on my desk all at once, which is why I am so excited about this system.  Even just the hacks with the 1 second count downs I can jump around like lightening when my brain is in a good mood.)  I like the first version better just more compact. I like the fact you can resize the current one and the layout flows automatically. (done some html coding so I know html will auto flow, dont know if thats similar).  

 

What i envision is I run my main client taking up 80% of the upper left corner of my display.  Then have all the pop ups in some kind of 'list' format in a stretchable window that can pop to front but be in the back (when i refocus on wurm).  So I can watch for updates in the triggers window 'out of the corner of my eye' and then 'check off' (remove) the ones Ive taken care of.  

 

When I used to run four clients at once on one display I learned that you run each client at 40 to 60 % of the display. Put one in each corner.  In the lower left one you put the alliance chat and the queue window on the bottom, then you put the rest of the queues (the bars thatsay when your done) in the four corners.  That way you can keep an eye on all four quees at once and rotate between the clients as they finish.  I wont be running four clients anymore but i could see myself running 3 and your asistant. So the awesome part would be your assistant in the lower right corner where it 'pops up' (the whole thing) when a new event happens, the event is on a list in order of events happening. (Id be fine with just one list that I could color code) and then I can say "ohh do I need to take care of that now?" and then take care of the item in the apropriate client (the popup list goes back to the back of the window stack) and then I can click on the popup wndow to bring it to the front somehow (without erasing anything yet) and then 'scroll?' to the one that is done and I can erase it. (maybe exit X at the end of he line instead of just click so accidents dont happen.)

 

I feel like I might sound like I am pushing an agenda and I dont mean that.  One of my hindrances is I often know how "I would do things" with what little information I have and only a couple of years of gui design in college now damaged by brain abuse. So I dont wanna come across like 'do it my way or you suck' lol. I am just trying to suggest options that are super compact and streamlined but with any coder its 'in my opinion'.  Let me know if there is stuff I am suggesting that you CANT do. Maybe thats part of it.  You might be making alternate suggestions cuz doing what I wanna do is not worth the time it would take to make/debug.  

 

Does that make sense? Doin my best.  Trying to stay focused on this for abit while I have your attention hehe. Unless you wanna move to skype or even wurm irc. Dont know if that would help.

[Schwanke 32]

Ok expandable isnt necessary. Especiay if you can do it on one line like a check off list that removes the item when you 'check it off' (X close button).

[Aldur 651]

The reason I'm coming with that alternative is because many others suggested something like that transparent in-game layout (for timers, back then). I didn't do it, because it required using windows-specific code and I still had plans to make WA multiplatform, but not any more.

 

But of course you are right, which one is better depends on how one plays wurm. I think I'll stick with first idea for now, just make it more compact like you suggested. Some day I'll make this alternative view as well, as a second choice.

 

Closing messages, I think the best option is to use right-click and opening options for the window/group could work with shift + right click, for example.

[Schwanke 32]

Alrighty.  I can dream. I can also adapt. So will see how it goes.  I can eventually get used to almost anything just like to dream. I'm sure I will be impressed regardless so have at it and I'll cheer you on along the way

[bigsteve 378]

I am "Stumbling" around LCD Studio to make a G15 App to display timers. How would i go about getting the timers from WA2 to use in the App?

[Aldur 651]

I have no idea, tried to check how to work with it, but their documentation is a joke and their forum is not even accessible, so afraid I can't help you.

[Aldur 651]

I've been experimenting today with making timers work more like widget, that can be placed on top of wurm itself. 

 

Widget mode first needs to be enabled (there is a new button in timers!). Once widget mode is turned on, middle-mouse clicking anywhere within timers window will toggle between normal and widget. "Widget" is more compact, stays on top of any other window and can be simply dragged around.

 

So far it works ok, only the looks leave a bit to be desired of:

 

 

It doesn't get much better than this. I've added options to tweak background and font colors, but I can't get alpha to work at all and background pictures/textures were too glitchy to bother with.

 

But I'm not giving up on this, eventually I'll make a proper widget in better gui framework (WPF maybe), something where I could style it to mimic wurm gui.

 

Update with this change should arrive shortly.

 

------------

 

I'm aware that WA launcher starts slowly recently. It's probably Xmas thing, but I'll keep an eye on this.

Edited December 29, 2013 by Aldur

[bigsteve 378]

I LOVE it, but me personally, it does take up a lot of space in the wurm window.

May be while in widget mode, have Just the time and category (no progress bar), and be able to choose font size

[Aldur 651]

It would take too much effort to make work correctly. It would probably be easier to make that new widget.

Edited December 29, 2013 by Aldur

[raidsoft 26]

The only problem I would have with using that is indeed how large it is, look at the in-game timers and/or skilltracker as they are quite compact, just glancing over the timers there's loads of space that is just "dead" in the sense that it serves no function, the function would be a progress bar, a name and the timer number, the progress bar could be behind the text showing the name/number.

 

I have no idea how hard this would be to make with the tools you got at your disposal, it's just my thoughts and you're the only one that can really know how feasible something like that would be. You could seriously compress it though if you did that and only show say the last few triggered ones (that you can then click away or have disappear after X seconds like now depending on your settings) in one row and the upcoming ones in another.

[Schwanke 32]

Wouldnt it be best (or is this what your saying) to combine the triggers/timers? Some are about the same.  Like I dont know how best to say it but for example I have the meditation timer that counts down that does a pop up when its time to DO the meditation, then a trigger when the meditation is complete.  Same with prayer. I know not everyone does my ocd triggers but its just something to think about.

 

I see in my head code wise the triggers and the timers sharing a lot of code because of time, sound, window, pop up.  Like right now I am using timers as triggers by having it wait for the right phrase and then count down for 1 second and do the popup. If we were hacking this system further as oposed to starting over I would ask the option to not display certain timers in even the compact list because the 1sec timers are only there as triggers. I dont need to know they are ready.

 

But if we were starting over you could do like a:  Timer/Trigger radio button. In timer mode their is a countdown option with time till popup/sound.  WIth trigger mode its instant. Then you can recycle the code for popup/sound.  Have a check box for 'show progress bar' thats only available in timer mode.

 

Might have missed something. Still sleep deprived.

[Aldur 651]

Ok folks, I'll try to make this timer widgetry more compact.

[Aldur 651]

OK, I have managed to get this thing much more compact. Also took the advice of shortening Freedom / Epic to just F / E, so the width was also reduced by about 1/3.

 

It would be, of course, best to have text on top of progress bars, but gui creator didn't think of allowing that. I can't add text to progress bar, I can't even place labels on top of it, because they are not transparent and if I try to manually draw text on top of progress bar, it flickers on every update. Finally it's not possible to change how progress bar looks and animates, it's controlled by windows style itself.

 

The only thing that remains is to spend few days writing a new progress bar, which imho is not worth those 4 pixels and would be better spent on making a proper timer widget one day.

 

 

Schwanke: remaking both modules is unnecessary. Once new "messages" window is finished, you will no longer need fake timers. Triggers and Timers will all support sound, popup and message in any combination. Messages will be supported even in granger. Finally message window will have the same "widget" mode, that you can see in Timers now. Messages window will have a rich configuration, to fine-tune what messages you want to show, in what groups, what colors, how long to show and so on.

[raidsoft 26]

Much better and way more compact now! Sweet stuff but the only problem is you can't actually use it's minimal nature because of the buttons, they decide the minimum window size so even if they are smaller then the width of the window you can't make it that small if you only have one char (same goes for height, not sure what limits it there)

[Aldur 651]

Let's see what could be done about that...

[Aldur 651]

There (.118), that should do it.

[Stargrace 602]

Just wanted to say I absolutely LOVE widget mode for timers, thank you!!! It's working great.