nightshade team mailing list archive

[Rob Spearman <rob@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I'm forwarding this email so that everyone on the Nightshade project
will be in the loop.  Troy is interested in helping out, particularly in
the area of graphics.

We need to get a UI design mocked up as a starting point for that work.
Right now we are thinking it will be similar in functionality to the
NS11 GUI, but looking and working better.

The plan is to keep all the keyboard shortcuts but add in GUI access to
everything.  A lot of that was not done because the previous GUI was too
difficult to modify.

Troy, can you tell us more about how you created the MilkyWay texture
you attached?

Thanks,

Rob


-------- Forwarded Message --------
From: Full Dome FX <info@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: Rob Spearman <rob@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: Nightshade User Interface
Date: Wed, 08 Aug 2012 16:59:57 -0400

I do agree with you on this and I think the glass window is the way to 
go.  I don't think you need flashy graphics, just elegant dialogs that 
include as many of the features as you can.  I also think you should 
maintain the keyboard shortcut menu for some of the items that a user 
would change more often.  Not everybody likes this sort of thing, but I 
find it to be a good solution for a lot of things.  I do think that the 
more of the customizing features of the software that you can encompass 
in the GUI users will feel more at home and it will be more intuitive. 
If you are able to make the video/image sequence output as part of the 
GUI it will really make this a breeze for users to output content. Just 
my thoughts.

I have also created a new Milky Way map that you may want to use. It is 
derived from the NASA/Goddard Deep Star Maps. I have attached it here. 
Let me know what you think.

Thanks,

Troy

On 8/8/2012 3:12 PM, Rob Spearman wrote:
> I don't know if this will be any help to you, but we will be using this
> GUI toolkit:
>
> http://www.cegui.org.uk/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
>
> The top right video shows some nice transparent glass type windows that
> we like, although we hate the cartoony other aspects of it.  It's
> completely customizable through XML.
>
> Rob
>
> On Tue, 2012-08-07 at 17:34 +0000, Troy McClellan wrote:
>> Rob,
>>
>> I was great talking with you yesterday and I am looking forward to the
>> release of the new version of Nightshade.  I may be able to help with
>> some graphics for the user interface.  Just let me know what you are
>> looking for and the file format you will need the images saved as.  If
>> you can give me a screenshot of what you have in mind that would help.
>>
>> Also,  in the current version of Nightshade exported images/sequences
>> are sent to the desktop (if there is a way to specify the output
>> directory I may have missed it).  Will we be able to assign an export
>> directory?  Will we still need to modify the .ini file to output image
>> sequences that are larger than the current screen resolution?  If there
>> is a way to create an output dialog that a  user could specify the
>> output directory, size and format it would be very helpful.  I'm not a
>> code guy and I might be asking too much for the current build specs.
>>
>> Sincerely,
>>
>> Troy McClellan
>> Full Dome FX, Inc.
>> Tampa, FLorida
>> 813-677-6614
>> info@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> www.FullDomeFX.com

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