displays and vehicles

[Mandoble]

How to configure and show a display while player is driving a vehicle that does not interfere with vehicle control? That is, while the display is showing info to the driver (dynamic texts mostly), the player is still able to drive the vehicle.

[Mr.Peanut]

Why would a hint not work for this?

[Mandoble]

AFAIK you are not free to place the hint box anywhere in the screen, but mostly because you cannot have a formatted set of text fields and then keep updating only one, for example one speed indicator, or a range indicator, or a display also with two slider bars (horizontal and vertical) to help you to find a destination (centering both arrows), etc.

[Cheetah]

I don't know how it was done, but Jezuro did something like it with Three Kings (SP mission for OFP). He made a health display, an image which was green first and turned red when the player got injured.

[Mandoble]

Cheetah, what you describe is easily done with RscTitles, that is, you show one, or another, or another. With that method you are able to show quite simple things like a health display.

But what I'm looking for is a bit more complex. Something similar in concept to next image but without any buttons or edit controls, so there should not be any user input, only informative data:

[bedges]

it's been a while since i played with this, but i recall it is doable. what you will need to do, however, is create graphics for each of your numbers 0-9. you then build up a cut resource (same principle as what cheetah suggested above) whereby you calculate the values required and show the appropriate graphics.

i'll see if i can dig out an example. the main point is that this method can be layered (i think) so you can achieve quite complex-looking results.

EDIT - this from general barron's cut resource tutorial -

Animation wouldn't really work with cutrsc, since the resource needs a short time to fade in. If you want to make animations, you would need to make dialogs instead of a resources.

and now i recall playing with just such an idea, and the fade-in time is what scuppered it. sort of knocks that idea on the head. 

[Mandoble]

Bedges, certainly one thing is sure, the solution (if any) is not based on creating any display for any digit. That way you may "animate" simple counters or health status but nothing really more than that. I know the image is not quite clear, but just imagine trying to "store" resources for all possible data combinations of what you see in the linked image: 1000000000000000000000 digits and alpha characters combinations may be? 

[bedges]

ah, but i would fully expect an editor of your expertise to realise a way of converting any number into a bunch of single digits...

is number > 9 and < 100? then number has 2 digits in it. divide number by ten... etc etc...

[Mandoble]

hehe well, that's not the problem really. Lets say you want to show a single line of text with 10 alphanumeric characters, that is, from A - Z, a - z, 0 - 9 and any other character like @#?. - +, etc. That is, whatever you want to show there, but not really with a single line of text, but with many different ones ...

[Mr.Peanut]

Is it possible to use a global variable instead of a string in your resource text definition?   I know that global variables can be used in place of certain description.ext static values (such as screen coordinates) but I can not remember if that includes string assignments...

edit: I just took a little trip down memory lane. With OFP, global variables could only be used for numeric values in the description.ext .

[Wolfrug]

I am actually looking for something similar to this. Basically all -I- want however is a single dialog button popping up, which doesn't interfere with controls in any way (particularly map controls) unless you click it. So I want some interactivity, not just static text, but the basic idea is the same. I've tried the movingEnable = true thing, but that really doesn't seem to do anything. 

Any help on that? I'm not trying to thread hijack, I figured these two requests are pretty similar though.

Wolfrug out.

[Mandoble]

While they seem similar they are not. Your case may be even more difficult to solve as you need INPUT, in my case I only need readonly controls showing info.

[Mr.Peanut]

I think you are going to have to wait awhile(forever?) to be able to do this. I was just reading the BI forum thread on Kegetys' fwatch for OFP, and then a thread on dsts. To do what you want some clever fellow has to make an external overlay program, something like the TeamSpeak Overlay. You would design your own overlay and an external program would hook into ArmA by accessing files created by DSTS.  All of this is possible, but I sure as hell do not have the C++, windows API, DirectX experience to do it.

For example, you could write your own app that hooks into dsts to get game variables, and then use something like this to display the app on top of the game.

[Mandoble]

The problem is that actually, if you open a display (a dialog), it gets the input focus. So, all you do with keyboard, mouse or joy is processed by the eventhandlers assigned to that display (if any), or, by default, by the display controls (buttons, etc). This may be reasonable, as long as the display has inpunt controls, else, moving the mouse to click a button would cause your airplane to roll and crash, for example. But in current version controls may be also readonly, and if a display has only readonly controls, there is no reason to give it the input focus. Just the very same as current HUD info, the info is there but there is no interference with the keyboard/mouse/joy.

[Wolfrug]

Ah poop. Well, worth a shot anyway. I'll just have to figure out some other way then. And I who made such a pretty dialog and all. 

Good luck with your request anyway - sad I can't help!

Wolfrug out.