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Bigger News Window

Started by z, September 08, 2009, 06:49:00 PM

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z

Did you ever notice that the news window in SC4 is rather small?  That it looks like it was designed for a 14" terminal?  Well, it probably was, as the game's minimum requirement for monitor size is 800x600.  But it's unlikely that anyone reading this has a monitor that small.  Meanwhile, the current size news window can fill up very quickly.  (This is especially true if you dump the whole LEX DVD onto your system, as I recently did.  ::) )  So you often have to scroll back and forth through the window just to see what's there.  Even worse, if you expand just a few items, the whole window size is taken.

To address this situation, I've created bigger news windows.  Specifically, I've created three larger sizes you can choose from.  Considering the current news window to be Small, I have created Medium, Large, and Extra Large sizes.  You pick one, but you can swap it out for either of the others (or just go back to Small) any time the game isn't running.  The default Small window is 228 pixels high; the Medium news window doubles that to 456 pixels.  You can see how it comes in handy if you happen to have a lot of news:



(All pictures are taken on my 1920x1200 monitor.)  Of course, as you can tell, it's still possible to overflow this window with news, especially if you open some items.  So there is a Large size, which is 700 pixels tall.  Finally, for people with big monitors, there is the Extra Large size, which is 1000 pixels tall:



Although this just about fills the available space on a 1920x1200 screen, as you can see, it's still not too hard to fill it up, especially if you use it for DAMN menus, as I do.  If you have the Urgent Advice Dialogs option turned off, these menus automatically show up in the news window.  You can see how you can balance the amount of news you have with the size of your menus.  And then there's always scrolling, of course.  But a window this big allows you to much bigger DAMN menus without scrolling, and navigating through them is actually a bit faster than in the popup version of DAMN, since the window doesn't need to be recreated with every mouse click.

(An implementation note:  There are actually two UI subfiles with the same IID and different GIDs that seem to hold identical information about the news window and the news flipper.  Only one of them seems to do anything, though.  Does anyone know what the other is for?  To be safe, I modified both of them.)

I have attached a copy of the bigger news windows at the bottom of this post.  Please let me know what you think of them; they will probably end up on the LEX in some form, possibly in addition to a related mod.  To use one of these, just extract the size you want into your Plugins folder.  And as mentioned above, you can always change it or remove it entirely.

EDIT:  This mod now contains an option for DAMN menus always to open in the news window, regardless of whether Urgent Advice Dialogs are turned on.  Please see my following post for details.

EDIT 2:  An updated version of this mod has been released on the LEX, so the attachment has been removed.  You can find the LEX version here.

Jonathan

The second one is stretched at the bottom?

There are two UI files because there is one for a screen with a resolution of 800x600(GID:08000600), and the other one is for resolutions bigger than than  that(GID:96a006b0). So seeing as someone with a screen resolution of 800x600 shouldn't make the news window bigger, you should probably leave that one.

Jonathan

daeley

hmm, I must admit I'd never thought of showing the DAMN menus like that. Seems like a nice alternative for people who don't like popups.

To answer your other question: the popups are easily turned off, you just need to set them to zero urgency. I don't have the code with me, but it requires a small edit somewhere in the LUA files From my testing it seems that the urgency level of a message is the percentage of chance a news will create a popup. Urgency levels between [-100,0] have a chance of creating a reddisaster popup.

by the way... 1920x1200... that's pretty figgin' big :)
1. Install SC4+RH
2. Install LEX (CD&DVD helps) and latest NAM + updates
3. Play the game
4. ? ? ? ?
5. Profit!

z

Quote from: Jonathan on September 08, 2009, 11:36:51 PM
The second one is stretched at the bottom?

Sure enough, it is.  Still getting the hang of Paint Shop Pro here.  It's fixed now.

Quote
There are two UI files because there is one for a screen with a resolution of 800x600(GID:08000600), and the other one is for resolutions bigger than than  that(GID:96a006b0). So seeing as someone with a screen resolution of 800x600 shouldn't make the news window bigger, you should probably leave that one.

Sounds good; I've removed it from my files.

Quote from: daeley on September 09, 2009, 02:36:58 AM
To answer your other question: the popups are easily turned off, you just need to set them to zero urgency. I don't have the code with me, but it requires a small edit somewhere in the LUA files From my testing it seems that the urgency level of a message is the percentage of chance a news will create a popup. Urgency levels between [-100,0] have a chance of creating a reddisaster popup.

I found it - it's in the section in customMenu.dat that begins "local a = create_advice_cityplanning('0DAE102C')".  Changing the priority from 100 to 0 did the trick.  And there's an added bonus - now when you click on "Open additional submenus," the menu item appears right above that line, which makes it easier when you want to do repeated ploppings after an interval.

I've updated the attached file at the end of the first post to reflect these changes.  I've also included my alternative version of customMenu.dat for people who don't want to turn off all their popups, but who want DAMN to appear only in their news window.  People who want to use this file should move it into its standard position in the Support subfolder under DAMN; otherwise, it should be deleted, or not extracted in the first place.  I'd be interested to hear what people think, and ideas on where to go with this.

z

#4
I'm happy to announce the release of Bigger News Window 2.0.  Since the release of version 1.0, 1080p has very much become the standard for HD monitors.  Unfortunately, the Extra Large version of the Bigger News Window is too big for 1080p monitors.  Therefore, I have created a Very Large version of the news window; it's smaller than Extra Large, but takes up all the available height on a 1080p monitor without intruding upon the Mayor Mode display.

Here is a link to the new version of Bigger News Window on the LEX.

AsimPika3172

Cool!  :thumbsup: Is more better using 4K Ultra HD version!  :D :bnn:
I loves Sim City forever!

z

Now that I've finally got SC4 running on my 32" monitor at its native 2560x1440 resolution, I've created a new news window size to go with it.  The new size is called Extreme, and it's the 1440p equivalent of Very Large.  Like Very Large (and Extra Large for 1200p monitors), it fills up all available vertical space from the top of the screen down to the mayor menu.

Here is a link to the new version of Bigger News Window on the LEX.