DAMN Development Thread (formerly known as "Custom Submenus")

[Diggis]

I am very inpatiently waiting on this. Great work to everyone that (helped to) create(ed) this. If the proces of adding pieces is of intermediate level, I am always willing to help to create new sets.

Once we have a few more sets done and checked that it's all going to plan we will release instructions.

[Yoman]

Take your time to make this live up to your expectations (which no doubt result in something incredible). I've lived with maxis menu's for 5 years, think I can for a few more months if you need that much time

[FrankU]

I fear that I will download even more content when this mod is going to work. One of the things that make me picky is the fact that these days already a quarter of my SC4 time is spent on scrolling.....
Daeley, you make my day!
Maybe this mod is as good as the NAM?

[City Builder]

I fear that I will download even more content when this mod is going to work. One of the things that make me picky is the fact that these days already a quarter of my SC4 time is spent on scrolling.....
Daeley, you make my day!
Maybe this mod is as good as the NAM?

I applaud your patience.  I have pretty much stopped collecting new content even though I've seen some great stuff because I don't ahve the patience to try to find the content in the jumbled scrolling list that we currently have.  It will eventually be nice to have such a tool as this so that I can continue on my collecting spree.  The only good thing about the way the game currently does it is that I often get a nice suprise when I fiind a building in the list that I've never noticed before.  It can be like christmas everytime I play SC4 and get to see a new building in my jumbled list of content.

[FrankU]

Yes indeed,
Sometimes I suddenly stumble arcoss a lot that I completely forgot about....., but then I immediately want to put it somewhere, because I fear I'll forget about it, but then there is no good spot for it and I do indeed forget the lot and then some weeks later the same thing happens to me again and it always and always goes on (and now the sentence is long enough. Period).
Or I scroll and scroll and overlook the lot and scroll back and.... get angry.
Or all the time that I have spent with Ilive's Reader to get the lots in the desired order.

I hope it is not a too difficult job to add menu items into the new system? Maybe we could work all together.
We can divide the job between a lot of people and then share the results....So everybody needt to do just a tiny bit of the large amount of work.
If the job is within my capabilities I will gladly spend some time on editing.

[City Builder]

I was/am hoping that the average person will be able to get items into the new format on a custom basis so that people can organize their own content into it without having to rely on the authors or whomever to do it for them.  I don't mind tedius work if it will benefit me in some way and I'd gladly do what I need to do to be able to organize collections of items of other peoples that I've collected into my own organizational scheme for the new custom sub menus.

[Diggis]

It's not overly difficult, just quite tedious and repetative.  It takes a knowledge of the Reader and LUA scripts but not much more.  I'm sure once it's released a tutorial will accompany it.

[FrankU]

I know the reader, a bit, but what is a LUA script?
Probably will be abkle to learn about them.
I'll wait for the files and the instructions.

My offer still stands.

Everyone will have her/his own files and lots, but there are many lots that will be used by a lot of people. These could be edited by many for everyone.
All the personal lot can always be put into the much emptier old menus. Isn't it?

[Andreas]

LUA is a programming language, and a LUA script is, well, a script written in that language. I know next to nothing about programming, and yet I managed to understand the basics of how to modify those scripts.

[Diggis]

the problem is if you don't have a lot installed it will still show up in the menu.  We are looking at ways of warning users they don't have it installed but it's not easy.

[CasperVg]

If I am correct the same issue (^) happens with MMLs aswell (MLLs appearing in the menu, while you may not have installed the lots), right?
I'm having the issue for an MML that happened to be a dependency for a lot that I downloaded (not the lots the MML covered) and while I didn't have the lots it still appeared in the menus.

[Diggis]

Ahh, no slightly different.  An MML is a lot. If it's in the menu you can select and plop it.  It won't unhide any lots but it won't cause any problems.

With this if you install a set of menus that contain lots you don't have it will look like you do have that lot, except you can't plop it.

[RebaLynnTS]

At least you don't have to worry about my creations, I'll be glad to do the sub-menu's for all of it

[Jonathan]

While this is the greatest thing after sliced bread, just an idea which is probably not possible, and certainly not neccessary, what about a search box. I have probably asked too much, but I'm just wondering if it's possible.

[CasperVg]

At least you don't have to worry about my creations, I'll be glad to do the sub-menu's for all of it

Seconded.

Thanks for the explanation Diggis!

[City Builder]

While this is the greatest thing after sliced bread, just an idea which is probably not possible, and certainly not neccessary, what about a search box. I have probably asked too much, but I'm just wondering if it's possible.

Yeah I hear ha, a search capability would be great to have in a game such as this with so much content.  I spent the longest time trying to find where a particular sea wall was at, I finally had to spend a long time going through each menu in the game to find where the author of the mod had decided to place it.  Had there been a search feature built into the game itself it would have made finding it infinitely easier.  I don't know if something liek that is even possible but sure would be nice if it was at some point down the road.  For now it will just be great to be able to break out of the small menu choices.  This thing will even be better than individually wrapped cheese slices.

I wonder however how long it will take some enterprising person to create a program that can build the menus automatically with a program, I figure if it can be done by hand then at least to some degree it might be able to have a program do it to some degree, maybe not with all details but maybe in a more basic format.

[daeley]

There is a spoiler deviously hidden in the following message:

So you want a search function? how about using the search button? you know, the one with a question mark? Yup, that's the search button (:

@#|^$^£%uu?kLè§

[JoeST]

* star.torturer dies of excitement...

Joe

EDIT: !?£">$@!¬`'!@"$^0£5£$$^~|":$^"!%>£$% daeley = GRUE

[RebaLynnTS]

All i can say is ...

I was wondering what that question mark was for.

&^#)JS&)|?><*&%!!!

[Pat]

Im confusseded here and I cant break that code    can someone help me please!!!



Thank you Joe!!! For pointing out what to do