Devlog update (2015-07-25) New gui theme, urraka joins team, landing page mockup

[Shoozza]

Hello everyone,

it has been a long time since the last devlog... Time to start posting again!



We have a new devteam member: urraka!
He joined a few weeks ago and is working on some soldat 1.6.10/1.7 related stuff.

The rest of the team is basically gone. I haven't heard from anyone except once from ExHunter.
I was also idle for some time and only helped urraka when he had questions, but that changed recently.

The SCTFL banner in the nagcreen is now integrated. The banner system needed to be rewritten as we used some old framework and it was easier to remove it than to invest more time fixing.

The soldat gui will get a new theme. I tweaked the colors a bit. I like the new look. Let me know what you think about it
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2394029/Screenshots/2015-07-25%2015_19_23-Soldat.png
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2394029/Screenshots/2015-07-25%2015_19_46-Soldat.png
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2394029/Screenshots/2015-07-25%2015_20_08-Soldat.png
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2394029/Screenshots/2015-07-25%2015_20_28-Soldat.png
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2394029/Screenshots/2015-07-25%2015_20_40-Soldat.png

Furai helped with the soldat website. We finally have the reg.exe in the download section of the site. He also add the missing 1.6.8 patch link and
added an automatic redirect from the site the client points to when you click on the register button.

That inspired me start to work on a new landing page design.

For Soldat 1.6.9 to be released we need to fix 4 more bugs (see http://bugs.soldat.pl/view_all_bug_page.php)

And that's it for now.

[CheeSeMan.]

Thanks for the update =) good to see a new dev member, I hope he can inspire some new activity in the dev team.

Good luck urraka!

[Furai]

Wow, am I famous now?

[urraka]

Good luck urraka!

Thanks! I'm urraka by the way.

[DarkCrusade]

Kudos for the update! And a warm welcome to urraka, it is nice to see a new face on the team.

I am following the progress.

[homerofgods]

About the new gui theme, I agree it was good to get rid of the sharp red color, but now there's no logic in difference between white text and gray text.

Example:

 

Here you see that ''Bot Team:'' has white text, and it looks good.
But ''Random Bots:'' should also have white text don't you think?

Also, it looks stupid for ''Maps'' as a headline to be grayed out as a headline, while ''Loop'' is white and is standing out too much compared to the headline.

Perhaps you need to make everything white text, not gray?

[DutchFlame]

holy shit a darker theme

sure as hell ready for steam now

l m f a o

[L[0ne]R]

Quite a few readability issues with the new theme unfortunately. The [^][v] buttons are very dark (though I understand those are default colors). Text in general is also too dark, especially section headers which really blend with the background. Team colors look very washed out.

My suggestions:

[Shoozza]

I don't use #FFFFFF because it's too light.
The Header text could be bit lighter, i agree.
The Button color cannot be changed in this way.
For me your Alpha, Bravo, etc text has a few issues: alpha is hardly readable, delta is too saturated.

[Ussocom]

holy shit a darker theme

sure as hell ready for steam now

l m f a o

LOOOOOOOL

[Bistoufly]

FFFFFF is just too harsh. Let's find a middle ground.

Oh and can Dutchflame shut the hell up already?

[duz]

Questions:

No engine updates coming? A "fix" for the streched graphics etc?
What Urraka is doing?

[L[0ne]R]

For me your Alpha, Bravo, etc text has a few issues: alpha is hardly readable, delta is too saturated.

Yeah, I'm noticing that too now. Not sure why I didn't notice that earlier, maybe because I had different display color settings.

Normal text should still be bright enough though. If not pure white - at least something very close to it. If Soldat had thicker fonts and was designed for larger resolutions from the start - that'd be fine. But if you want to keep supporting 640x480 with current UI - it's very important to keep good contrast for all text because of how small it is on low resolutions.

Anyway, here's a new version, with tweaked team colors and normal text:

[Shoozza]

@Bistofly:
Please don't give them the attention they cry for.
If there is something valuable I should read however, point me to it.

@DutchFlame:
I have to remove you from the beta team, as your behavior might make people think it is ok to act this way in this community.

@duz
Can you please point me to a bugtracker entry for this streched graphics bug? I'm not sure I know it
I will reveal what urraka is working on once it is done, sorry.

@L[0ne]R
I'll apply the lighter color for the fonts. I still think the team text colors I chose are better though so I'll probably keep them for now.

[Ussocom]

welcome urraka


Please don't give them the attention they cry for.
If there is something valuable I should read however, point me to it.

lots of trolling at sctfl.net yes, but also home of the most active players.  Many people agree and mention irc integration is a must.

[Shoozza]

I can understand that irc integration is very popular for the sctfl players as they use it a lot, but im not sure how the integration should look like and how it would be better than using your irc client.

[homerofgods]

Isn't the issue that young kids today doesn't even know what irc is? They just want to chat through the game itself.

I suggest making an account system with chat and stats as part of it. Also, if people use cheats they will get their account banned, so they would loose stats, friends and registration connected to thir account.

[Ussocom]

I can understand that irc integration is very popular for the sctfl players as they use it a lot, but im not sure how the integration should look like and how it would be better than using your irc client.

It wouldn't be for the sctfl players actually since like you said we already use mIRC or something similar, it's to bridge the gap between public players and gather players- having a more user friendly way to see the competitive activity.  90% or more of public players today don't even know what a 'gather' is, better yet IRC.  With our flawed system of IRC/Gathers basically being isolated from the rest of soldat with no new players replacing the old retired ones it has dwindled down over the years.  And on the flip side of that experienced public players having nothing to improve for/ or challenge gets boring fast.

In my opinion I think it should be on the tab that shows all of the servers available to join (maybe an expanded section on the right side) with the most popular channel (#gather.eu) pre-loaded.  People would see players talking in the channel and be able to talk, add/join ask questions, get info w/e.  It could always be on a separate tab if that was easier.

 

[DutchFlame]

nobody cares anymore shoozza.. the beta team was dead 3 years ago, many people tried

game is dead anytime soon

nobody listened to anyone.. look where we're at. i suggest you get a red interface in the next 5 years that might attract players
im done watching people ruin a game by working on it as their hobby.

just stop embarassing yourself. goodbye

[DarkCrusade]

Goodbye DutchFlame, 'twas nice mifriend.