Dramstud's site

using flash in banner graphics

Tue, 12 Nov 2002 01:48:19 +0000

I was just curious how people have been implementing animated banners. It says the banner must be one of these formats: (.bmp, .jpg, .gif, or .png). Is this not correct? My understanding was that flash would have a different extension... but I'm a newbie when it comes to flash, so I'm probably wrong.

getting ' say " ' to appear on command line

Fri, 08 Nov 2002 19:17:56 +0000

I noticed on many games that 'say " ' will appear automatically on the DS command line, and re-appear after saying something. I've taken out all verbs except say, but I still have to hit TAB to get 'say " ' to appear. What am I missing?

Thanks.

need help outputting consistent text formatting

Wed, 06 Nov 2002 17:34:53 +0000

I'm hoping there's a built in function for this that I just glazed over...

Consider the following output:

Final scores:
fffffff: 10
TTTTTTT: 9
Dramstud: 5
lllllll: 5

In the forum display, the letters are equally spaced, so this works fine. However, in the dreamseeker text window, the "fffffff" and "lllllll" are much shorter than "TTTTTTT", so the number requires an extra \t to line up properly. I was checking length(name) and putting in the extra tab for short names ( <7 chars), but I'm not sure how to check for the above problem. Any suggestions?

showing dice roll stats: which is better?

Wed, 06 Nov 2002 17:16:55 +0000

I'm torn on whether or not to include the numbers that were rolled 0 times, so I wanted to get some opinions. Which of the following outputs would you rather see:

[A]:

Dice Roll Statistics for this game:
2: 0 (0%)
3: 0 (0%)
4: 0 (0%)
5: 1 (10%)
6: 2 (20%)
7: 2 (20%)
8: 3 (30%)
9: 0 (0%)
10: 2 (20%)
11: 0 (0%)
12: 0 (0%)

or [B]:

Dice Roll Statistics for this game:
5: 1 (10%)
6: 2 (20%)
7: 2 (20%)
8: 3 (30%)
10: 2 (20%)

formatting numbers in output?

Tue, 05 Nov 2002 01:25:59 +0000

I'd swear I saw this in the blue book once, but I can't seem to find it now...

Is there a simple way to format numbers in an output string? (ie. if I have 4.5454545, I only want "4.5" to be displayed). I guess I could do copytext(num2text(N),1,3), but I'm assuming there's a simpler way.

question about browse_rsc

Thu, 31 Oct 2002 16:36:35 +0000

If a user already has the resources in their cache from a previous login to my world (ie. they just got disconnected and are returning), will the browse_rsc call force them to download these resources again? If so, is there some way I can explicitly check their cache to see if they need the resources? (I'm guessing not, as this seems somewhat invasive to their computer)

simple question about images

Sun, 27 Oct 2002 20:21:53 +0000

If an image is attached to an object, does the image get deleted properly if the object is deleted, or does it remain in memory (potentially leading to a problem if too many images get created)?

I have a tougher question about images that I still need help on, so please take a look if you know a lot about how images are handled.

image management

Sat, 26 Oct 2002 17:01:52 +0000

I'm having some trouble with image management. Here's the scenario:

--4 rows of 8 tiles each, 1 row per player
--the row fills up with "card" obj's during the game
--an image is created for each card, only seen by the player who owns the card (others just see the card back, which is the icon_state of all cards)
--when a player gets more than 8 cards, a scroll arrow appears allowing them to scroll beyond the 8th card.

When a scroll arrow is used, all cards are first set to loc=null, then the appropriate 8 cards are moved back into the row area. I also have a Sort_cards proc which works the same way (set loc=null, then move back into the row).

If I delete the image attached to a card at the same time it's loc is set to null, sometimes I end up seeing the card back briefly (or longer for remote/non-host clients), which I want to avoid. However, I'm concerned about what happens to an image when the object it's attached to has it's loc set to null. If the obj is then moved back onto the map, should the image remain intact? When I experimented with this, I created a condition that crashes my computer*, so I'd rather get help on approaching image management correctly rather than continuing to experiment on it. Also, is there any written documentation of the proper methods for handling client images?

Thanks!

* I believe it's the same type of crash problem that I encountered a while back with MapText... I already submitted a test case to Dantom, and the problem seems to be isolated to my computer.

need help with changing mouse pointer

Wed, 16 Oct 2002 23:02:14 +0000

I want to change the mouse pointer to an hourglass while a particular proc is running, no matter where the user moves the mouse. Per the DM help, I created a mouse.dmi file with icon_state "all" as the hourglass, and used the following code in the beginning of the time-consuming proc:

if(usr:client && !usr:auto)
usr:client.mouse_pointer_icon = 'mouse.dmi' // hourglass

This compiled fine, but did absolutely nothing when I ran the proc. I also tried "mouse.dmi", which compiled but did nothing. Any suggestions?

problems with mouse_drag_pointer (set inside MouseDrag())

Wed, 16 Oct 2002 05:34:17 +0000

I have a tile_stacks object upon which the active player sees the tile which he/she just received. Whenever the tile is rotated or used (causing a new tile to be drawn), I del(tile_image) and then set tile_image to a new image based on the new tile (or new direction if tile was rotated). The image on the tile_stack is behaving as expected, but I'm having a problem with the MouseDrag() proc. After rotating the tile, the first time I drag the tile_stacks the mouse pointer shows the previous icon (before it was rotated). If I let go and drag it again, I now see the correct icon. Similarly, after the tile is used and replaced, the first time I drag the tile_stacks I see the old tile. After letting go and trying again, I get the correct image. What's going on here? Is there another way I should be programming this?

obj/tile_stack
MouseDrag()
if(usr == trn.cur_player)
mouse_drag_pointer = tile_image

// other code for context:
var/image/tile_image

TakeTurns/BeginTurn()
var/obj/tile/new_tile = pick(tile_stack)
if(tile_image) del(tile_image)
tile_image = image(new_tile.icon,locate(/obj/ tile_stacks),new_tile.icon_state)