New Demo Recording Gui and Functionality
by Robert Blanchet Jr. · in Torque Game Engine · 07/08/2002 (8:54 pm) · 6 replies
Hello everyone,
I've been kind of busy the last few days working on a little project with the demo recordings gui and adding functionality to the screen.
I figured it would be a nice little addition to have the ability for the user to manage their demos more effectively within the environment and to easily identify demos for future play back.
With this in mind I completely rewrote the demo recordings gui from the ground up and added two new script functions to the engine.
To start things off, I first wanted to have the ability for the user to quickly delete or rename demos within the game without having to exit back to their operating system to do this. In order to accomplish this effect I wrote renameFile() and a deleteFile() script functions. Of course these two functions will work with any file, not just demos, so their use extends beyond what I'm using them for. And not to be concerned about security issues these functions will only work with files that are contained within the mod directories. This means that trying to use these functions on a file within the game root or on some arbitary system file will not work. These functions were actually added to the Tribes 2 engine quite some time ago but were too late in the Tribes 2's engine development to be included in the Torque Engine.
Secondly, I needed a way to display to the user what a particular demo was, its information so to speak. To accomplish this I'm saving a seperate info file in *.txt format with the same name of the demo. This file contains information, that the user enters through the new gui, about the demo such as date recorded, the title of the demo, the description, and even has a field for renaming the demo file itself. I am still toying with the idea of storing this information with the demo format (*.rec) itself but I would like to retain the ability for the user to easily modify this information without being in the game as well, thus I'm sticking with the text format for now.
Without further ado, here are some screenshots of what I'm talking about. Please let me know what you think and feel free to give any advice or feature requests. I would like to keep the control as general as possible because I feel it would make a nice addition to The Core Torque Engine.
I've been kind of busy the last few days working on a little project with the demo recordings gui and adding functionality to the screen.
I figured it would be a nice little addition to have the ability for the user to manage their demos more effectively within the environment and to easily identify demos for future play back.
With this in mind I completely rewrote the demo recordings gui from the ground up and added two new script functions to the engine.
To start things off, I first wanted to have the ability for the user to quickly delete or rename demos within the game without having to exit back to their operating system to do this. In order to accomplish this effect I wrote renameFile() and a deleteFile() script functions. Of course these two functions will work with any file, not just demos, so their use extends beyond what I'm using them for. And not to be concerned about security issues these functions will only work with files that are contained within the mod directories. This means that trying to use these functions on a file within the game root or on some arbitary system file will not work. These functions were actually added to the Tribes 2 engine quite some time ago but were too late in the Tribes 2's engine development to be included in the Torque Engine.
Secondly, I needed a way to display to the user what a particular demo was, its information so to speak. To accomplish this I'm saving a seperate info file in *.txt format with the same name of the demo. This file contains information, that the user enters through the new gui, about the demo such as date recorded, the title of the demo, the description, and even has a field for renaming the demo file itself. I am still toying with the idea of storing this information with the demo format (*.rec) itself but I would like to retain the ability for the user to easily modify this information without being in the game as well, thus I'm sticking with the text format for now.
Without further ado, here are some screenshots of what I'm talking about. Please let me know what you think and feel free to give any advice or feature requests. I would like to keep the control as general as possible because I feel it would make a nice addition to The Core Torque Engine.
#2
Of course, I've never actually looked into the matter myself. I always tend to believe that anything is possible if you put your mind to it, especially when it comes to programming :) So, with that thinking, I simply have to hold out hope that maybe some day I, or another person, will make demo rewinding a reality :)
07/08/2002 (9:32 pm)
Actually, you could create a hud to play and fast forward through a demo, but unfortunately you can't rewind. One of the limitations of the file streaming is that you can't step backwards through it, only forwards through it. Or at least, this is how it was explained to us (the Tribes players) when we asked for a rewind feature in Tribes 2.Of course, I've never actually looked into the matter myself. I always tend to believe that anything is possible if you put your mind to it, especially when it comes to programming :) So, with that thinking, I simply have to hold out hope that maybe some day I, or another person, will make demo rewinding a reality :)
#3
07/09/2002 (5:07 pm)
Shameless bump :/
#4
07/09/2002 (6:53 pm)
is this a resource ?
#5
07/09/2002 (7:00 pm)
No, not yet. I'm stilling working on the GUI and some minor scripting bug fixes.
#6
awesome work!!, i want this code !
please give me :)
thx and good work
12/12/2002 (5:40 am)
Hello guy!awesome work!!, i want this code !
please give me :)
thx and good work
Torque Owner Ian Roach
Just out of curiosity (from someone who has no idea how the recordings work) is it possible to have play/rewind controls e.t.c ?