projectshome^[link1].atlantisdhd^[link2].wishlist^[link3].dhdcompletedtasks

09.11.08

• SGA CS is born!

08.11.08

• Shield
  • Fixed bug when turning off the shield.

02.10.08

• Startup Screen
  • Completed about 60% of the work on this over the past few days. Will probably have it nailed in another session or two but that won't be tonight.
  • Todays "big" task is that I completed the multi file preloader and I'm rather pleased with it.

29.09.08

• General
  • Finished implementing pause support across the system. Seems to work a treat now.
  • Fixed a text writing bug where they glitched out in certain situations.
  • Fixed the horrid pixelated line along the top of the 8th symbol slot.
  • Implemented new power handling system. All gate related activities drain the ZPM(s). Shield is now directly linked to power supply meaning that the shield is always usable as long as you have power.
  • Updated colors of triangle glows on dialed symbols panel. The glow now has a bluish tint to it and the symbols have a slightly pink coloring.
  • Fixed the translator panel dot columns being in the wrong order.
  • Updated volume bar colors and switching the glow effect to the border not the fill.

28.09.08

• General
  • It's mostly finished, I'm just adding the final touches to it. This will bring it up to the point I was at last time around so I still need to add the gate content loading system as well as the actual gatescreen itself.
  • Implemented 9 symbol dialing. Figured I might as well just do it since I was rewriting the dialing system anyway. Seems to work a treat although it has re-spaked my interest in learning a math based approach to positioning the symbols in the dialed symbols panel triangles. Manually tuning each one is a proper pain and has resulted in some horrible code. Time to call Sinky :¬)

24.09.08

• General
  • Have done loads of work on this over the past few months.
  • Today is the first day the new sim has fully rendered. All the code rewrite is complete, it's not a fully Action Script 3 based sim.
  • I've still got to fix loads of things that need special attention. So far only the status panel, window controls, volume controls and power panel are fully finished. It's a great feeling to see it running again though.

17.06.08

• General
  • Completed upgrading Status Panel class

16.06.08

• General
  • Been working on it over the past few days, have now finished rewriting:
    • Translator Panels
    • FPS Overlay
    • Window Control

11.06.08

• General
  • Code update is coming along well. All the classes have been converted generally. Now I've got to go through and carefully update each ones unique sections. 1 class down already, just another 19 or so to go :¬)

10.06.08

• General
  • Spent a while trying to fix the Flash class caching issue^[link4]. Didn't get a working solution. Sucks.
  • Due to the above I decided to convert the whole thing to Action Script 3. Crazy decision to make at a time like this but screw it. I wanted to do this further down the line anyway.

01.04.08

• Pause Support
  • Implemented pause support in about 85% of the sim, still some work needs doing but for now a crappy class caching issue is top of the list of fixes to complete.

24.03.08

• Translator Panels
  • Rebuilt them so they are no longer AS generated. Made the brighter outline bit the same width as the rest of the border and implemented the triangle as a pause button.
• General
  • Added pause button and started clearing up all the parts of the sim that should respond to it.

08.03.08

• Translator Panels
  • Started redrawing panel so it's a design time asset instead of 100% code generated. The animated sections will still be code drawn. Just the actual bg.

28.02.08

• Volume Slider
  • I hadn't written an onReleaseOutside event for this which meant whilst it still worked as expected it didn't output any text to the status panel. Fixed.
• Top Right Menu
  • The buttons went glitchy if you tried to mouse over them whilst they were still fading out. Fixed.
• Messaging System
  • After a set timeout the status message is displayed, unless the current message is locked.
  • The status panels bottom right text section was not showing up at all. Seems I'd renamed it but not changed the code that sends messages to it to account for the new name.

27.02.08

• Message System
  • Done loads of work on the messaging system. Making the non MC Tween based version took alot of work. Code wise it's not much to look at but working out how to make it like that was brain wrecking. I really started avoiding the project after a while because of this task. I finally worked it out and am back in the swing of things. I now need to go back and make sure the MC Tween version works as expected. The final task is then to make it default back to the default message code. hmmm I only just reaslied how dumb that is. Instead of doing that we'll just go back to the status message :¬)

09.01.08

• Message System
  • Created the "quick_text" config option. This lets you switch between the fancy fade in and grow text effect and the simple snap in text effect used for all text panels. This is a quality vs performance toggle.
  • Added a delay between messages appearing with quick_text enabled
  • Still need to work on this section quite a bit as it needs
    • a better delay system that takes the type of message into account i.e. some we don't want a delay on at all 
    • a method of showing the status message after x seconds so i can clear it off the wishlist.

07.01.08

• Dialed Symbols Panel
  • Fixed a bug where getSymbolNumber was returning a string in some cases instead of an integer. That meant when I was trying to manually reposition symbols using a switch statement with int values it would skip straight past the value I was trying to tweak. Only happened with certain numbers.
  • Now all symbols fit within both types of triangles as well as the 8th symbol slot
• Bottom Right Dots
  • created them and then made them into a volume slider control since no one knows what they do

06.01.08

• General
  • Added toolbar at top of DHD including 4 dummy buttons
    • I reckon these should be window controls i.e. minimise, maximise, rotate and close. For now their functionality will remain a mystery as I would rather focus on getting the rest of the DHD sorted before I implement what I really want these to do ;¬)
  • Fixed a minor bug with the opaque background on the main DHD. In full screen mode where you can see the letter box style black bars you also saw a 1px high purple line running along the width of the DHD background. Now it's set to be black.
  • Noticed that the DHD looks really really cool without the gradient bg i.e. on a straight black bg.

03.01.08

• General
  • Re-did icon file so it's now a multi-image one and wrote FAQ about it

02.01.08

• General
  • Renamed current Atlantis address to Lantea (original location of Atlantis city)
  • Created project icon ;¬)

27.11.07

• General
  • Setup batch file support so programs can be opened. It means you can link a gateaddress to a web address in your prefered browser. Or it could be used to load a program like photoshop.
    • I moved this one up the list so it'll be included in the next release
    • Reason for that being that its been requested a ton of times via email and its pretty easy to implement :¬)
    • This was easy to implement although I've noticed a few issues with it. When the DHD is open at it's full dimensions there seems to be a HUGE delay in the target program opening. If you shrink the window down a bit then the target program will open almost instantly.
    • Uses Proxy.exe from NorthCode for loading batch files via fscommand without the dos prompt showing

26.11.07

• General
  • Switched over to packages instead of the dumb file naming system I was using
• DHD Buttons
  • Removed the last of the colorTransform to calls. These are waaaaay slower than alphaTo calls. It made a huge difference like 20fps with the translator panels. Unfortunately it made a much smaller difference like <5fps with the main dhd buttons.
• Debug Panel
  • Fixed pause button – I seem to of accidentally deleted the two triangles used for its graphic, oops.
• Shield Button
  • 100% rewrote shield button and its functionality

25.11.07

• DHD Buttons
  • Implemented better positioning for the 8th symbol
  • Re-implemented keyboard support for number overlays
  • Re-worded the 8th symbol slot glow effect
  • Discovered that the ultra major slowdown is not due to the bigger sized interface but it's actually to do with all the fancy text effects. I'm working on a non-fading version and will make it a config option so it's up to the users to decide on the performance vs quality trade-off.
• Status Panel
  • Re-implemented middle pink bar effect when dialing

27.10.07

• Dialed Symbols Panel
  • Implemented better (although more complex) positioning for the symbols in both the big triangle and the ring of 6. Still need to do similar for 8th symbol slot.

30.09.07

• General
  • Started packaging the classes
  • Noticed how whole thing runs like shit still :¬(
• Dialed Symbols Panel
  • Re-drew the panel in the IDE so it's now a design time asset
  • Pretty much rewrote the whole class

29.09.07

• General
  • Togglable FPS overlay
  • Removed misc.as file, moved the two color functions in it to the new Color Helper class and then optimised them into one static function

09.09.07

• Debug Panel
  • Reduced width of blocks and slightly altered position of a few. Now it feels finished.
  • Made the little triangle a pause/unpause button for the blocks animation and the text on the panel.
    • Any new text that gets sent to the panel while it is paused is not processed, I figured sticking all those messages in a queue would be pointless since some of them might cancel each other out etc. It works out easier this way as well
  • Finished the panel and am rather pleased with it :¬)
• Messaging System
  • There is now a sub_systems section. The text here gets loaded into the debug panel after it has debugged something in that specific area. I got the text for the "dialing" node directly from a screenshot.
  • Certain actions within the sim will load the text from the sub_systems section into the debug panel. Once that happens it resets the panel so that the next line to be entered into it appears on the top most line.
  • Instead of each node having a "code" attribute I just created a seperate node for the code in each message section. Means that each message now has a single code instead of 3 which got way to hard to maintain.
  • Added a "verification_code" node to the misc section. This is supposed to be the user id of the person using the DHD and gets appened to the end of the code line in the debug and status panels.
  • The code line in the debug window consists of the codes from all the messages since the last sub_system message up until the current one, the last set of digits is the verification_code.

08.09.07

• Debug Panel
  • Rendered the blocks based off a kind of exploded cylinder I made. Then I manually traced a still image of that in Flash. Finally gave it a gradient mask as well as a glow effect.
  • Added history queue to panel, this is so we can check if a new message is already visible in the panel, if so then don't display it again. This is to prevent things like the same message getting displayed 7 times, once for each symbol button pressed. It isn't finished though as I need to either hardcode a value for certain events or add it to the XML system. That value will kind of be like "Carriage return" to tell the system that the next set of commands are a fresh set so start accepting all messages again.
  • Created "New Releases Info" mailing list for the DHD sourceforge project

06.09.07

• Debug Panel
  • Modified TextDrawer class so that it could take a dynamic kerning value.
  • Modified TextDrawer class so that any text generated with it is squashed to 90% of it's width.
  • I did the last two based on tests with screenshot text. Seems to be the standard way human text is treated.
  • I noticed that the last line of the four we all know about actually seems to use a smaller font than the other four. The only reason I can think of for this is because with the same sized font it doesn't fit on the panel, like a 3rd of the sentance goes off the right hand side. Because I don't want to over-complicate this section I opted to implement dynamic kerning. This isn't as fancy as it sounds, it just means there is an extra XML config option so that you can specify a specific kerning value for each debug message. Puts the control of how it looks in your hands so you can make your own messages look better than they would with a hard-coded value.
  • Added DebugPanel_Text_Handler class which is the parent wrapper class for the 4 TextDrawer Movie Clips. The idea is that this will control what is displayed on the four lines including how the CODE line is generated.

02.08.07

• Debug Panel
  • Finished re-drawing it, looks rather good although I'm not too keen on the lower 3 rows of blocks. I did a straight trace from the screenshot for them though so in sticking with cannon-ness they have to remain as they are. Luckily they are very easy to edit so if anyone wants more uniform slants they can implement their own.

30.07.07

• Debug Panel
  • Started work on design time asset version
  • Noticed and added a new feature to it which is the inclusion of a small triangle in the top right corner

27.07.07

• General
  • Set main bg components to have opaqueBackground color which should give a minute, teeny tiny performance boost, might do the same with the DHD buttons, have to see if they have a transparent tint to their color
• Power Panel
  • Finished hand drawing fin 
  • Re-implemented the countdown text
  • Re-implemented the rolling gate symbol bit in the middle. Gave them better vertical positioning as well.
  • Finished it for now

26.07.07

• Power Panel
  • Started hand drawing the fins, making it a design time asset instead of 100% code

01.07.07

• DHD Button Border
  • Finished it off, just had to delete some design time line helpers I had
• DHD Buttons
  • Added mouse over effect, the symbol glows up when it's rolled over, the border stays grayed out though
  • Moved the cancel button down a bit so it's better lined up on all sides
• Glyphs
  • Resized them all to 200% their original dimensions. This is in the Glyphs.fla file which means I'll have to update the code in the GateAddress.fla file since it uses the old size symbols.
  • Repositioned all the symbols so they line up better on the symbol buttons
  • Added missing line to Glyph 15
• Translator Panels
  • Updated glyph code to account for the new resized symbols versions
  • Updated row code to be a slight bit more optimised
• Status Panel
  • Redrew it in the IDE so the border and bg are now design time assets. This let me clear out a bunch of crappy maths code that relied on the dimensions/positions of other elements
  • Repositioned it so it's now proper cannon

08.04.07

• General
  • Created sourceforge online sim page and changed link from this site to reflect that. Means all viewings of the online sim will now be handled by sourceforge :¬)
• DHD Button Border
  • Completed about 90% of the 8th symbol slot, just cant work out what the dark inner line is. Going to have a think about it.

03.04.07

• DHD Button Border
  • Have hand drawn the button border. Turns out that each segment needed special attention as almost none of them where the same. Means my trig idea would never of resulted in a perfect border.
  • Finished the main border
    • Re-implemented the glow
    • Re-implemented the border itself
    • Re-implemented the border bg 
  • Whole thing looks a million times better
  • Removed the fade in effect for the border, need to work out a better intro animation. For some reason this particular fade in was a major speed killer.
• DHD Buttons
  • Created a new parent class which will hold the DHD buttons, their border and the 8th symbol slot.
  • Repositioned all the buttons so they line up within the border better
• Gate Logic
  • Cleaned up some of the logic code as it was using excesive for loops where they where no longer needed.

02.04.07

• DHD Button Border
  • Spent some more time getting the trig to work for this. Didn't quite make it work correctly. Asked Sinky for some help and he suggested just hand drawing the border which is just what I'm going to do. Don't know why I didn't think of this myself.

01.04.07

• General
  • SGCSims been shutdown by MGM due to someone using the board email system to pester Amanda Tapping. Pretty crazy stuff. Wasn't me btw :¬)
  • Haha I just got it, it's April fools, cant fool me Jason :¬)<
• DHD Buttons
  • Re-implemented the button bg triangle
    • Their overall placement relative to each other is much better, spent ages with the measure tool comparing screenshots etc.
    • Each button has a glow around it as does it's white triangle state
    • Uses bitmap runtime caching. Doesn't seem to of helped yet.
    • Need to resize all the glyphs. Might leave that for a while as I want to redo some of them.
  • Completely redrew cancel/engage button, it should be alot nearer to what the actual thing looks like although I'm a little iffy on the 3 orb edges. Not even the hi-res screenshots are helping with this one as the detail is soooo tiny.
  • Re-implemented number overlays. They look the same but the code has had a revamp and they have been resized plus better positioned.
  • The whole button code has been optimised to run a bit smoother
• DHD Button Border
  • Spent most of today working on this, well this afternoon and this evening. I've never been happy with how this section was generated so I worked out a neater way to do it. Unfortunately it meant using trig to do some new calculations and I've totally hit a wall. I've been banging my head on it for over 5 hours and have gotten nowhere. The maths looks sound but it's not working as expected. It's a right fucker cos it's only two lines. I think I've been staring at it for too long and am probably missing some ultra simple error like a type. Stopping for tonight as I've gotten really mad at it all, just imagine some idiot waving his fist at the monitor and swearing into nothingness, that's me.

30.03.07

• Addresses
  • Identified and verified Atlantis as dialed from fog planet in 1x09 "Home"

01.03.07

• General
  • Sourceforge project approved and activated. It's called SGA-DHD-SIM^[link5]

28.02.07

• DHD Buttons
  • Started re-implementing the buttons. I decided to ditch the trig code that Sinky gave me as they looked a bit crooked sometimes and the maths was kinda beyond me. I think the fact that he didn't know Flash and I didn't know the maths required meant the sim ended up having a poor implementation of what was really needed. I'm switching it all over to be graphic assets in the library.
• Translator Panels
  • Added a 2px space between the top and bottom sections
  • Added a tiny triangle under/above (depends on your perspective) the top faint line section
  • Adjusted the faint line that fades out so the fade happens nearer the end
  • Added Matts new even higher res screenshots to the DHD screenshots page
  • These changes are thannks to Matt for his even clearer high res screenshots

27.02.07

• General
  • Updated online sims HTML to account for the new resized version. Also hid the crappy gatescreen so that I could hide the scroll bars.
• Translator Panels
  • Well it seems the DHD doesn't use the Ancient font that I have in place at the moment. I've spent ages staring at it and I think they are actually gate symbols although they're flipped around.
  • I just spent some more time drawing lines linking the translator panel symbols to dhd button symbols. I matched six so far. This is enough for me to decide to change the system to use gate symbols. The only (apparant) difference is that they are flipped horizontally.
  • It's a bit later in the day since the above two points where made. I'm happy to say that the Translator panels are now 100% complete to my satisfaction.
    • Resized and respaced the dot bars
    • Changed the scrolling Ancient text to be scrolling horizontally flipped gate symbols
    • Increased the border width to 4px instead of 3
    • Optimised the code slightly so it should be a bit smoother with all the scrolling
    • Added mouse roll over and out effect
    • Made clickable, they now activate the dhd button with the same symbol

26.02.07

• General
  • Did some more resizing tests. The focus today has been on ensuring that the text looks ok at various scale sizes and it does. This means I can use "lazy" resizing for the sim. By that I mean that all I have to do is set the scaleMode property to "showAll" and then let it auto-scale the sim to match the parent containers dimensions. The more tricky method would of involved making the sim able to auto-scale individual components to match the new screen dimensions. This would be possible and is in fact mostly implemented at the moment except that the text is too big and at tiny dimensions becomes to blurry to read.
  • Completed about 50% of the resizing work on the Translator panels, need to make the border 1px wider, reposition the scrolling text and dots and resize both the last two items.
  • Decided to stick with the current Action Script drawn interface instead of switching over to hand-drawn library assets as all the code is already in place for advanced screen resizing so it can always be added later on.

25.02.07

• General
  • Submitted sga-dhd-sim sourceforge project request, gotta wait 2 working days for confirmation.

24.02.07

• General
  • Created sourceforge account

23.02.07

• General
  • Started resizing the interface, big big job to finish. I tested out a few ideas so now it's time to properly think about how this should be implemented.
  • Resized the background including the gradient, overlay panel and two glows
  • Increased space from edge of screen for border so there's enough room at the top for the row of buttons visible in the screenshots
  • Refined background glows slightly so they blend together better

04.02.07

• Status Panel
  • Finished text updates for the moment, needs revisiting when the DHD is resized to the correct dimensions which will then fix the overlapping text and tiny fonts
  • Added better message locking – this is when you want to lock a message once it's appeared so it doesn't fade out after x seconds

02.02.07

• Power Panel
  • Fixed bug where the scrolling numbers where getting started a bit too soon during the startup sequence
• Status Panel
  • The progress bar on the status panel (under the dhd buttons) is actually text and there is a second row below it which reads "COMMUNICATION IN PROGRESS" and under that "VERIFICATION CODE 79-374" the font is slightly smaller than the left hand text
  • the intro is left hand text writes in "STATUS: ACTIVE" then the top line writes in, then the bottom line under it, both on the right hand side. Then all three fade out together.

01.02.07

• Messaging System
  • Worked out how it should all work and wrote a tiny bit more code for it

31.01.07

• Messaging System
  • Started implementation of extended messaging system, things just got a whole lot more complex!

22.01.07

• General
  • Implemented a grid pattern on the bg 
    • roughly 54x35 blocks
    • 15px tall and wide each
  • Corrected symbol 5s appearance based off address_earth_b_3.png screenshot
  • Spent roughly 7 hours verifying gate addresses today:
    • Michaels Hiveship from offworld location (derived from Atlantis from this one)
    • Barren Wasteland
    • Ascension Creature Homeworld
    • Sateda
    • Five ZPM gate addresses old Weir gives to young Weir in 1x15
  • Ordered screenshots of gate addresses a bit better, was a jumble before
  • Added Sateda gate address screenshot
  • Added all the new gate addresses to the addreses.xml file
  • Fixed bug where it didn't clear all the "engaged" messages out of the status panel text queue when a dial was cancelled

11.01.07

• General
  • Finished implementing the state where all the ZPMs are deactivated and the rest of the DHD should be shut down.
    • Thanks to chris474 for pointing that this should happen
    • If the shield is active when the last ZPM is de-activated then the shield gets de-activated
    • If the above was true then when the first ZPM is reactivated the shield doesn't get automatically restarted but instead just starts recharging from the last point it was de-activated.
    • Either way the DHD symbol buttons no longer function when there is no power.
    • Any active wormholes get closed
    • Any symbols that have been entered get cancelled
    • The rest of the DHD interface is still active since it runs off a laptop battery ;¬)
  • Fixed bug in shield button where if you had the mouse over it as it became unpaused as the sim finishes loading then it wouldn't fade in even though you could click it.
  • Finished redrawing shield button
  • Fixed number overlays not showing up 
  • Changed number overlay font to match default human font
  • Changed number overlay background to be inverted triangle
  • Changed number overlay colors

10.01.07

• General
  • Started implementing the state where all the ZPMs are deactivated and the rest of the DHD should be shut down. Turns out it was a bit more work then I thought it would be :¬)
• Dialed Symbols
  • Renamed "engagedsym" xml entry to "symbol_selected"
  • Added two new sound events:
    • symbol_moving – this sound starts when a symbol first appears
    • symbol_locked – this sound starts when a symbol finishes moving

09.01.07

• Shield Button
  • Cleaned up code somewhat. Before it was a sub component of the dialed symbols panel and got alot of it's dimension information from that. Now it's a proper seperate entity.
  • Fixed a bug where the power bar could go above 100 and below 0 under certain circumstances. Now those two events can never occur
  • Fixed inner slants so they are properly aligned
• Dialed Symbols
  • Completed main outline
  • Added four small lines
  • Fixed minor bug with how the border segments joined each other
  • Implemented gradient border lines
  • Implemented gradient fade outs on the two big bg triangles
  • Drawing is now complete for the dialed symbols panel

22.10.06

• Dialed Symbols
  • Did some more rewriting, kinda back to the drawing board on this one :¬(

09.10.06

• Dialed Symbols
  • Started rewrite of this section
  • Started border pattern improvements, still need to ditch alot of the crappy maths in this block, its pretty icky atm 
  • Fixed wonky triangle bug that was pointed out by Smith6612 and coolestk here^[link6] ;¬)

08.10.06

• General
  • Make better human font, the last one i made sux – Scrapped making a new font in favor of using Bank Gothic^[link7] as suggested by commanderone here^[link8]
  • Updated the human text used in the status panel. The characters start marginally smaller and grow into position as well as using the Bank Gothic font above.
• Power Bars
  • Updated count down font to use Bank Gothic and improved vertical centering of text

01.10.06

• Non DHD Related
  • Made neat little Flash address banner – can take an address as an url appendage and will write it out in symbols horizontally. It's used on the Addresses^[link9] page.

15.09.06

• General
  • Redrew about 2/3 of the dhd button symbols. With the bigger screenshots I noticed that not all the symbols where as accurate as they could be i.e they where wrong! 4 hours o mi life just went into repairing them. Now they are in their final form, I am 100% happy with them :¬)

29.08.06

• Debug Panel
  • Used some trig to recreate the top purple line, its way better than my last attempt with both its alpha gradient as well as its slants along both sides.
  • Redrew slants on right hand side, now they all have even tops n bottoms
  • Redrew reverse L type thing to the left of the above slants, now its the same height as the slants and has a slightly tweaked alpha gradient
  • Re-applied alpha gradient that spreads out from the center of the bottom blocks, the one that is 3 rows of 10 blocks, also gave it a new color so it matches the original closer. Wish I could get my hands on the real colors, like if they released a sheet of the color codes, better keep dreamin i guess :¬)
  • Added tiny extra white lines to go with the top border, they fade out after about 5 pixels, looks way better even though its a tiny thing. Before i had the gradient fade out on the lines that these new ones are connected to. this made the purple line look like it was at the wrong angle even though it was correct, kinda like an optical illusion. Anyhow, adding these lil' lines fixed that one. Their on the original anyway so it isnt like i cheated!
  • This marks the end of graphical changes to the debug panel, all of thats complete to my satisfaction. The final thing to do here is implement the new text system in place of the animated morse code style lines. I need to think about how to do this for a while as its quite complicated or at least it has the potential to be. I've just asked Jason what he thinks the CODE line is about as I'm pretty sure theres something similar in the SGC Sim, we'll just have to wait and see :¬)

15.08.06

• Debug Panel
  • Re-wrote the section that creates the blocks at the bottom, well i tweaked what was there before, not a total rewrite. It still feals sloppy but i dont know how to make the trig any better. They look better at any rate and its alot easier to modify them such as altering the width and height etc.
  • Reworked panel drawing. Now the top has a thick purple alpha gradiented line across it. Before this was part of the bg fill. This time I made it a seperate line. Unfortunately Flash doesnt have a way to cut off lines at an angle so I have to suss out some way to handle this. I'm thinking of cheating and using the drawRectangle class I wrote a while ago ;¬)

13.08.06

• Debug Panel
  • Redrew overlay lines to use an alpha gradient i.e. now they fade out near the tips instead of just cutting off 
  • Need to redraw top section as its quite different than before. Luckily all the maths is already pre-computed for that part

12.08.06

• Power Bars
  • Uses better verticle centering for power powers cycling glyph, it seemed a bit high up 
  • ZPM bars outline gradient coloring, top left is more purple whereas the bottom right is kinda cyan
  • Uses seperate sounds/messages for each of the four ZPM buttons (powerbar1-powerbar4)

09.08.06

• o oh trouble! 9 ate 6 :¬) i love august since you use that joke every day!
• Finished implementing the new count down text for the power bars, looks alot better than before when you take the other changes into account. The ZPM Power Bars are almost complete, the last two things are to correct the vertical centering of the rolling symbol animation and then to apply the gradient coloring to the four bars background. Their both in the wishlist already.

06.08.06

• Cool date :¬)
• Did about 75% of the work to complete the new ZPM bars. This was a total rewrite and I'm alot happier with it. The buttons themselves are drawn but I still have to write the new "count text" class that will handle scrolling the number that counts down horizontally across the button. Its late now so I had to call it a day at this point. This is the next task to complete and then I cound the power bars as complete for now.

14.07.06

• Recreated status panel, it still needs support for the new font setup but first I'm going to make a better font, again, due to my last attempt looks crap :¬(

13.07.06

• Mostly finished the ancient panels on the left
  • the moving verticle lines are now not solid but consist of 6 circles
  • each column is an alternating color
  • implemented better coloring for ancient symbols
  • implemented faint outlines that sprout out of the panel
  • made the translator panels wider which included growing the ancient font
• The font is definately different on the show DHD than for the translator panels used here. These ones use Ancient Virtual, the one off the screenshots is alot thinner and curvier. Almost looks like gate addresses but I cant seem to match any of the symbols up and their only in columns of 4, gate addresses would be 6,7 or 8. This is the reason I said "mostly finished". Apart from this I'm happy to say their complete for now.

12.07.06

• Added neat little extra lines inside the 8th symbol slot
• Added an extra border line coming from where the 8th symbol slot connects to the dhd border, its a brighter border segment that is all along that side of the dhd but then fades off abrutly where it would turn to the next edges
• Roughly positioned the 8th symbol for now. I've added the better symbol positioning to the wishlist which is only for the 8th symbol and the dialed symbols pad.
• Implemented new colors for the dhd buttons, border and border background.
• Darkened the dhd buttons background
• Added a background to the dhd border
• Added a secondary glow to the dhd border, this one is a much bigger pink glow. It helps to make the left side look brighter. The effect of this will get added to when the same is applied to the status panel.
• The last thing makes the current intro a bit jumpy but unfortunately the glow effect is a "must have" feature. All that means is I have to come up with a better intro after all the touch ups are complete :¬)

07.07.06

• Switched the button border to use the new native Glow filter in Flash. Before I was using my own fake glow that wasnt anywhere near as nice
• Started re-implementing the 8th button slot, didnt quite get it finished yet so it looks crap
• The 8th symbol isnt positioning correctly due to the above

15.06.06

• Altered the bg colors slightly
• Added new glow on left hand side and altered them both to be taller and wider
• Split up xml file. One seperate file for addresses, one for custom addresses and one for all the rest of the settings. The main addresses file will hold all the official (ones off the project address page) and the custom file will be for your own so you can keep the main list uptodate without overwriting your own.
• Seperated symbols out of main dhd file so they can be used in other projects, made a new blog post about it here^[link10].
• This is kind of the first step on my way to releasing all the source. I've been putting alot of thought into that lately and I think I'm pretty set that once I deem the sim complete I'll put up the Flash source for it so others can expand it in their own ways. I think this will be after the three gatescreens are complete and all the bugs have been ironed out.

08.06.06

• Proud to announce my all new Atlantis Human^[link11] font. I used Bitmap Font Maker^[link12] to do it. I think it looks pretty ok for now but its easy to update.
• Status panel font – I really don't like the one that's in use at the moment but I couldn't find a better substitute anywhere. This one is definitely high on the to-do list.
  • bInGo im almost 100% positive this is the font used on the gate related interfaces: Stainless^[link13]
  • Looked into DIM – Doing It Miself :¬)
    • MiniFonts Guide^[link14]
    • The Ex-Ess Guide to Pixel Fonts^[link15]
    • A cool online bitmap font maker^[link12] – WOW – this is the best font site ever! I used this to make the font i needed. It lets you create pixel fonts for free using their online system. you can save the data and come back to it later which is what i've done. I've created characters for all the chars they allow.
  • Good Font Comparison Images^[link16]
  • David Sans^[link17] – its more curvy then the actual font which can be seen with the "S" and "C" characters. Also the "W", "M" and "N" are slightly different. TO TALL
  • MiniKongo^[link18] – was using this for the human text until i made my own
  • Acens Font^[link19] – main differences are E,F,R
  • New Media^[link20]
  • Corporate HQ^[link21]

05.06.06

• Verified Earth address
• Verified M4X-337: Barren Wasteland
• Discovered Genii Homeworld symbols but not the order – the one from chevron 26 does not match this group and the POO is incorrect there as well
• Verified first 3 symbols of Atlantis in its own galaxy which again are different than the c26 address – also noticed that it appears to be different symbols on the offworld dhd as opposed to the Atlantis style dhd.

01.06.06

• Added text fade out to status text as pointed out by Stew2000^[link22]
  • Fades out after approximately 5 seconds with all texts except the "Connected To:" message as its always a good idea to know where you've got an open wormhole to :¬)
• Using MiniKongo^[link18] for console text
  • Decided to use this for small text but it looks too blocky when enlarged so will have to use a second font for larger text such as on the outgoing gatescreen

28.05.06

• Finished creating,preparing and configuring entire screenshot area, thats over 1000 shots :¬)

23.05.06

• Released v2.1 which simply adds the improved shield sound support detailed below.

17.05.06

• Implemented better shield sound support
  • Added new XML for the shiny new "soundLoop" sound event
  • Starts at end of shieldActivated sound
  • Loops until beginning of shieldDeactivated
  • The loop attribute does nothing for the shieldLoop node as the system automatically handles looping this one

27.04.06

• Changed XML structure slightly so all the main elements are on the same level i.e. removed the <config> wrapper
• Added XML elements for keyboard control
• Added keycode reader
  • The default key for this is (-) : the minus key 
  • Acts as a toggle on/off
  • Prints out the last key pressed in the status panel so you can easily identify the code you will need to put into the xml file
• Keyboard Control over every button
  • Added 44 new key elements to the xml file
  • Uses Decimal key codes such as those shown in the "Dec" column here^[link23]
• Add XML entries for power bar activation/deactivation (sounds & messages)
  • Added new xml message and sound entries: <ZPMActivated> and <ZPMDeactivated>
  • Same message is used for all 4 power bars
• Fix dialing bug as brought up by Gate Head here^[link24]
  • After looking more closely at this it wasnt a bug at all, it was just an oversight on my part
  • The new functionality is that if the 7th symbol is the POO and you attempt to dial an 8th symbol it will automatically cancel dialing. This does not include tapping the cancel/engage button.
• Add FAQ to site – page is in place and am just about to add some Q&As to it :¬)

26.04.06

• Make power bars clickable to turn them on and off. This way they can be deactivated prior to a zpm being pulled out...
• "Sound Loop" variable in xml file as requested by chris474^[link25]
  • Implemented as follows:
  • <engagedsym loop="3">sounds/dhdbutton.mp3</engagedsym>

08.04.06

• Implemented "simple" screen resizing. This is just using Flashs built in scaler. I'm still going to implement the more advanced version later on which is why I've left resizing in the current wishlist. Now you can resize the window and see it get bigger/smaller :)
• Add number of power bars to activate to config xml – at the moment there's only 1 active power cell, would be handy to set the active ones in the xml file
  • Added powerbar1, powerbar2, powerbar3 & powerbar4 elements to config section of xml file. setting these to true turns on the bar, setting them to false or removing the element turns it off.
  • At this date the show only uses powerbar3, the others are all deactivated

07.04.06

• Lock shield button till after interface starts
• Shield status panel messages
• Shield sounds (or at least just the entries for them in the xml file)
• Shield activation / cancellation – think i sussed this one out, the tiny bar under the 7th symbol could be the shield power gauge

06.04.06

• Use multiple sound objects so sounds can be layered on top of each other

01.02.06

• Complete update to F8 format

08.07.05

• Added new dhd button select sound provided by solid-snake56 (http://forums.sgcsim.com)

07.07.05

• v1 released

25.06.05

• Fixed text dieing thing i mentioned last time
• Added external sound effect files and relevant section in xml. means you can pick your own sounds so when better ones become available they can be easily updated
• just noticed a bug where it says gate closed and plays the gate cloing sound even if the address was invalid and the gate didnt open. gotta fix this — fixed it now
• Going to make a couple of quick gatescreens to demo passing the gate address across to another movie and do some minor code cleanup then im counting this project as complete
• Just finished the code for calling a follow on movie. now ive just got to make the two demos. their gonna be quickies but im not doing them today

29.05.05

• Here are the two addresses so far, use these numbers (after pressing (+) if you dont know the numbers off by heart!):
  • 16,9,19,32,27,21,31
  • 20,18,17,15,29,28,31
• Re-linked the address checking to the end of the status panel progress bar and not just when the cancel button is clicked. Makes it more meaningfull now.
• Finished off queueing. Text dies if some of the xml messages are not entered. I'll need to look into this further later on.

21.05.05

• Adding queuing to the status panel message system, still in progress
• Added number overlays for the symbols, press + to toggle them on and off 
• Finished the intro animation
• igonre the rest of the points as they where made ealier today before i freed some time up!
• Added the two known gate addresses to the xml file and wrote the relevant loading code
• Played with the bg glow a little bit 
• Added a bunch of deletes to free up some memory after initial loading
• Started to play with the loading sequence so its more fluid, looks a bit crap at the moment but i dont have time to finish it right now 
• its mostly finished now and the size hasnt really gone up or down much so it looks like it will be under 50kb

18.05.05

• implemented the xml file for holding config data. now all the various text messages are loaded from there. will start moving other things over as they become finalised. added a glow to the bottom right corner, its very faint like the one in the screen shot. Changed the font as well, i need to improve it to handle slimmer characters like i.

07.05.05

• ok so top right panel isnt complete. at 2am this morning it felt like it but i got the direction wrong and i noticed in another vid clip that the bigger 7th triangle border becomes highlighted when its entered.
• Going to start a proper todo list this weekend if i get time.
• now its later on the same day... and its finished (again!).

06.05.05

• Completed the top right panel, fixed dialing (thnx greg), made the dhd button symbols turn white like their triangles and changed a slew of other niggly bits i didnt like. think its time to work out whats left to do. i know of a couple of things off the top of my head but im sure theres more.

05.05.05

• Haven't done anything today, its just a cool date!

02.05.05

• Did loads of work on the top right panel today. Started it the other day but that was just trialing the triangle placement. Theres a few areas were gradients are used on the bars in the "real world" dialer but flash doesnt do gradient lines out of the box and a couple of the areas their in are to tricky for me to want to tackle it just now. I reckon the next flash will have gradient lines as a default so these can easily be updated when that gets released.
• Next step is to add the animation to the top right panel and then correct the dialing messup. Greg pointed out that the cancel button should be pressed before dialing is completed. After both of those things are complete then its time to cleanup the interface abit. i want to add some glows behind various things.

24.04.05

• pheeew! took ages to do the middle right panels lower bars. the angles still arent just right but they'll do for now :¬)

12.04.05

• Did the simple animation tonight, got to do the one under it next...dunno how that will go ?:¬)

06.04.05

• Did some more work on the middle panel, got the bg drawn out so have to make the two animated sections of it next. one of them should be easy, the other i need to muddle over for a while.

03.04.05

• Started work on the middle right panel, dont know what its for as it doesnt seem to do anything related to the dialing process...

02.04.05

• Completed the lower right "power" panel today. Realised it shows dhd symbols, not just random electric spikes like i thought originally.

28.03.05

• Status Panel is complete for now. Theres a couple of things Im not super happy about but hopefully it will do as is. We can change the messages quite easily so we can add new things as we please. I think it would be good if it said "DIALING:PLANETNAME" where planet name is the name of the planet.

23.03.05

• Well it might not look like Ive done much again but I have. This has been another month of frustrating maths to get the border alignment corrent. It was a bit iffy before. Im much happier with it now although the fakey glow is off a bit. Im happy enough to get back to the status bar now. Thanks for the patience :¬)

10.03.05

• Got the cancel button drawn at last and implemented its animation. Theres a few ways to make it cancel the other buttons so i want to think about it for a bit so i can decide the best method to implement.
• hehe well its after midnight but i finally nailed the cancel button, i need more sleep, these simple things are becoming difficult!

01.03.05

• SORRY, I'm running waaaaay behind schedule. I' had a lot of work to do lately and havent had much time for personal projects, as you can see I have done some work. Onto the next step now which is the cancel button and then the status display underneath the dhd buttons. would of posted this in the forum but it seems down at the moment

16.02.05

• Well heres a snapshot with symbols 1-22 complete. unfortunately there has been a problem and i have to start them over again. consider this a sneak peak. heres a look at what it was before.
• The old screen^[link26]

22.01.05

• Same day as the last post but now Ive added the glow borders. their not perfect but they will do for now. they dont handle to well on resize which is due to me skipping some of the maths...anyhow looks nice to me :¬)

22.01.05

• Pheeew! Motto of the week = Trig is hard if your an idiot. Finally got the triangle positioning sorted out. Even got the border positioning sorted. Im just going to start on getting the glow back, im not sure how hard that will be. It can be dynamically resized quite nicely. The only downside is that some values are hardcoded so the distance between the triangles needs recalculating manually. im going to work the equation for it out later so it can be dynamic as well but for now ill leave it as is as it looks fine.

09.01.05

• Performed some "basic" maths to get the correct dimensions for various items. That then meant backtracking and redrawing some things like the text panel. borders next to get worked on

02.01.05

• Repositioned triangles slightly so they align better. Also started adding border details. Hid border glow for now

24.12.04

• So heres the first live version. Ill keep publishing it here so you can see things happen as they happen.

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