GTA2 Game Hunter

[Cuban-Pete]

You're "forcing" new GH now? It said wrong key or something today.

Is it possible to send invite to someone?

[Gustavob]

GH's channel key has been changed so only 1.509 and newer will work, older ones will display an error

[Sektor]

The channel was accidentally put in +M mode. That makes it so only registered names could chat. I'm not sure how long it was like that but it's fixed now.

[BenMillard]

Have noticed a bug with RTF shortcuts affecting text in the chat history.

1. Allow some messages to build up.
2. Click anywhere in the chat history.
3. Press Ctrl+2.
4. That line of text now has double line spacing.

If you do the above when at the end of the chat history, all subsequent lines have double line spacing. (That's how I noticed it.) You can use Ctrl+A and apply this to the whole chat, too.

Repeating the above but using Ctrl+1 puts the line spacing back to normal.

You can capture and supress RTF shortcuts using RichTextBox_KeyDown() and set KeyCode to 0. Probably have some stuff for this already. Don't try using a whitelist of allowed commands, just leads to perpetually breaking stuff. Also quite confusing when you develop new shortcuts which don't work right away.

[Cuban-Pete]

How about some new preview images.

edit: Moved to first post.

[Sektor]

Added them to first page.

[Cuban-Pete]

These are some minor things I noticed.

1) When you switch between theme's, you lose the colors of the standard theme.

2) Grid lines go over the country flags. Just turn them on/off to see what I mean. Country flags should go down a pixel i think.

3) My name is green and underlined (is that because of sound notification?). This is more personal, but I don't like the looks of it and it looks like it is a (web) link...

4) "Can't find D:\GTA2\manager-HKCU.exe" - I think you are already aware of this one.

5) Commands info is a bit unclear. (This is how it's now)

15:27:50 Private message: /msg GTA2Guy What's the password?
15:27:50 Set your status to away: /away ran away from home
15:27:50 Set your status to normal: /back
15:27:50 Say you are doing something: /me shot the food!
15:27:50 View player details: /wi GTA2Guy
15:27:50 Get an IP from a hostname: /dns GTAMP.com
15:27:50 Clear the currently selected chat history: /clear
15:27:50 Quickly create a game game: /c
15:27:50 Set GH resolution to 640x480: /r
15:27:50 Exit with a quit message: /quit I regret nothing!
15:27:50 Rejoin channel: /hop
15:27:50 Terminate all open files named gta2.exe and dplaysvr.exe: /t
15:27:50 Terminate all executables that start with this word: /kill notepad
15:27:50 Display CRC32 of a file: /crc gta2.exe

The time is actually not needed. How about this: (crap, tabs don't work. it really needs more space between command and description.

Code: Select all

Messages:
/msg GTA2Guy Hello	- Private message to player (GTA2Guy)
/me likes beer!		- Say something in purple.
/clear			- Clear the currently selected chat history

Channel:
/quit Bye!		- Quit program with message (Bye!)
/away			- Set your status to away
/back			- Set your status to normal
/hop			- Rejoin channel
/wi GTA2Guy		- View player (GTA2Guy) details

Extra:
/c			- Quickly create a game game
/r			- Set GH resolution to 640x480
/t			- Terminate all programmes named gta2.exe and dplaysvr.exe
/kill notepad		- Terminate all executables that start with this word (notepad)
/crc gta2.exe		- Display CRC32 of a file (gta2.exe)
/dns GTAMP.com		- Get an IP from a hostname

6) Create game window is nice (also preview images), but not everything is consistent. I would like to make the following suggestions:
6.1) Set a fixed size for width. Long lines (tables) with information reads difficult. Most of the tables aren't needed for normal users. Who cares it's this or that sty file. 2 lines are important. Name and player amount. Perhaps for developers its nice to have more info, you could add a checkbox that enables/disables the extra table info.
6.2) when password checkbox is unchecked, make password label also grey. (in other words, the whole groupbox grey) same with hamachi
6.3) what are the underlined P, N etc for? They don't seem to work with key combo's.
6.4) the "popping up" and going away of the preview images when clicking on different maps is a bit annoying. make the preview image location static. no preview image? just display nothing or an image saying that there is no preview. I can easily make such image or you do it with simple larger text. for basic maps (hidden surprise etc.) we can easily make preview images.
6.5) use same description and images like on gta2 maps website for more consistent way of working.
Putting it all together, you get something like this:

create-game-window-idea01.png (95.44 KiB) Viewed 44737 times

* for description I should set a max. amount of words. both in create game screen and for on the website. i like to call it "equal-selling-space". if map makers want to add more info, fine, link to a website or something, but keep the description short and informative with a max.

6.6) to be honest, there can be way more improvements with create game window. more ... i don't know how you say it... doing more with trends/favourites and stuff. for example, you could arrange the order of the maps in most played (by user or by the whole gta2 community). or you can have some icons that highlight that there are new maps -> link it and update it with a website. more new content info/updating. you understand what I mean? even better would be that you can let it download and install automatically. click on new map, it downloads and your ready to play. if other players don't have map, they can download it also easily. for example, now you get message you don't have the map -> than you get extra message "do you want to download/install this map?" of course there are some security risks with this. but this way it will all work more user friendly and map makers can and will update there maps faster/more often, because they know that within short time everybody is up to date.

6.6b) if 6.6 is too much work, you could make easier and do just like in Game Hunter window. there is this "set topic" line where mods set topics and info. you could place also one one the create game screen and put info in it about new maps that there are (or updates).

7) In help>content you see controls, perhaps post them when starting GH also? They are now a bit hidden.
These I mean:

Controls:

ctrl+w or ctrl+F4 to close ALL private tabs
ctrl/alt + a number from 1 to 9 switches chat tab from 1 to 9
alt+right or ctrl+tab switches chat tab to the right
alt+left or ctrl+shift+tab switches chat tab to the left
F10 to chat in GTA2

7b) Will it also be possible to close just one tab in the future? Like a rmb on tab and select exit or lock or... whatever...

8) When send to tray ( not that I use that often), the hover over description is "GH". That's exactly what the icon also says... not very informative. Perhaps simply change it to Game Hunter.

6 extra) something I completely forgot is "category". category for maps. al thought this is difficult to do and often personal, it might be useful??
6 extra) perhaps get rid of player count row also... and change it to version.

[BenMillard]

Interesting feedback.

1. I don't think it should have themes. Just keep it standard Windows XP-like and inherit user's desktop theme where possible.
2. Known bug with the ListView control. We could make new versions of all the flags but I think there are 200+ graphics, which must be imported one by one and don't follow filename order.
3. That is due to your name being one of your notifications:
   1. The same thing happens for me but I turned off all the sounds.
   2. Green underlines are like Microsoft "SmartLinks" and some advertisers use something similar.
   3. Maybe a yellow background or inverted colours would be better, like "Highlight All" in good web browsers.
   4. Highlighting via a background colour is done by websites which detect the search keywords you used to find them.
   5. Could just bold things which trigger notifications? (Occam's Razor at work!)
4. Sektor?
5. I revised the commands to start with what you want to do because that fits the common situations better.
   1. There are more commands than when I revised it.
   2. The order could be changed so most common player tasks are at the top, common admin tasks at the bottom and really niche features in the middle?
   3. You usually see that list when you don't know the command but do know what you were trying to do, such as set your status to "Away".
   4. Maybe this list should be displayed whenever you type an erroneous command, like /brb or whatever.
   5. You can turn off the times in Settings. I think they should be off by default but Sektor and some other people don't.
6. Create Game is based on my GH (BenMillard Edition) experiments...plus the awesome feature of preview images! That was 1.491 branch. We're now on 1.5 branch and Sektor has continued to develop the window.
   1. You can resize the window to whatever suits you best. Different people will want it differently. Resizing lets everyone have it the way they want.
   2. That should have been fixed ages ago. GHBM did it this way.
   3. Underlined letters in Windows mean Alt+Letter triggers them. Labels with underlined letters won't move your cursor into the matching control. So Alt+P moves you into the Password box, if it is enabled. Alt+L toggles the "Lock Game" checkbox.
   4. Elypter made a set of missing preview images which I've been meaning to test out and review. So the jarring effect will be less. (That link shows this forum uses red on pink to highlight...heh.)
   5. The descriptions are probably not useful.
      1. You choose the level because somebody described it to you, or you read the website you got it from.
      2. The level name and preview image should be enough to remind you.
      3. This window used to have a "Comment" box but it was always full of useless information and nobody even changed it between games.
      4. Very likely to be unhelpful and go out of date and won't be part of any present-day levels.
   6. Fancy sorting just gets confusing because stuff is never where you left it. Imagine a cleaner enters your house every week and re-arranges all your stuff, putting most-used items nearest to your front door and less-used items further from it. That would be so annoying!
   7. Automatically checking for updates (and then letting users accept/decline) is probably on the wishlist for Sektor, vike and the GTA2 Maps Site:
      1. Prompting to download the newer version when 2 players have different versions would be best use of this. (Sometimes both players prefer to use an old version of a level, though.)
      2. Same problems with who maintains all this information...it's a lot of boring work and always has to be right to actually be helpful.
      3. It won't affect how often modders update their maps. Real Life™ is what slows/speeds that process.
      4. Your 6.6b idea is just one way to present 6.6, could be quite neat.
7. Providing the shortcuts in tooltips when hovering the controls may be a better way. The startup statuts messages used to like a whole screenful of information. Took a long time for me to convince Sektor to cut it down! Bloating it again just means people won't read it at all. Which defeats the purpose of adding to it.
8. Yeah, the program shouldn't refer to itself as "GH" anywhere outside of icons.

[Cuban-Pete]

Thanks for taking the time for reading and responding to my critique.

2. I got ImageMagick and can make all files in a folder have the same image edit. So I can add 1px to top and remove one at bottom. Perhaps that solves it? Names of the images don't matter.
//edit: nvm, the country flags are good (if you look at them under settings window)

3. Instead of green and underscore, just making bold would be good, I think.

5e. I meant that for listing commands you don't need the time in front of them. It only makes it more unclear.

6.4. Yeah. Having for almost all maps a preview image will stop most of the "jumping" / "popping up" of image/table, I guess.

7. Yeah, you are right. It's better to not put too much info at the start, people won't read it if it's too much.

//New small crit.
This:

GTA2 11.41 != 11.40. Join aborted.

Is something I understand, but people who don't code - don't understand.
Something like this would be better:

Your GTA2 version (11.41) is not the same as host (11.40). Join aborted.

[BenMillard]

Left-clicking my name created a private message with myself. Seems a bit useless, unless I get very lonely.

Changing my status would be a useful thing to do when I click my name. There's currently no GUI to toggle "Away" on and off.

Is GH 1.512 stable enough to be released? I've been using that beta you gave me since ages ago. Many things have changed in it since then, I imagine. You've achieved the "frequent small updates" strategy throughout most of this year.

(EDIT) I'd suggest the above error message should use text which leads users to the solution, rather than verbosely describing the problem. For example:

[HostPlayerName] is using GTA2 v11.41 but you have v[VersionNumber]. Download the newest GTA2 by Vike, here: [Same URL as !gta2 command.]

Using "error red" seems appropriate, as this problem prevents you playing that person and requires action from the user to resolve.

[Gustavob]

I noticed the IRC away status GH sets with /away [message] command is only properly removed if you type /away again with no away message, i.e. if you type /away [message], you'll see "[Nick] is away: [message]" when right clicking his nick, and if he types /back, the "Away" status in the players list will be removed, but it will still say "[Nick] is away: [message]" when right clicking his nick, but if he types /away [message] then /away, the "[Nick] is away: [message]" wont be there anymore when right clicking his nick. Low priority, but I guess you should fix that

[BenMillard]

Ctrl+A doesn't do Select All in the Create Game textboxes. It should do.

[Sektor]

You could use shift+end or right click to select text.

I think this will replicate the ctrl+a function:

Code: Select all

Private Sub txtHostPassword_Keypress(key As Integer)
    If key = 1 Then
        key = 0
        With txtHostPassword
            .SelStart = 0
            .SelLength = Len(.Text)
        End With
    End If
End Sub

I'm sure there's a better way to do it but that seems to work.

[BenMillard]

GHBM had it a slightly better way, which MSDN describes as a "Form-level Keyboard Handler". This avoids duplicating code for each control.

Just ensure .KeyPreview is set to True on the Form and use the Form_KeyDown event. (Shouldn't have to release the A key for the shortcut to be triggered.) Using Select Case is more flexible and faster (at least in theory).

If your main form isn't using this technique, it's worth doing there as well. That would let you suppress RTF formatting keystrokes for both the chat history and the new message boxes from the same piece of code.

I'm aware of the slower and more awkward alternative keystroke and mouse operations. Obviously.

[Sektor]

http://gtamp.com/GTA2/changelog.txt


It's still not ready for release but it's getting closer.

[Cuban-Pete]

Nice, but don't forget alignment.

[Sektor]

Alignment changes a bit when you enlarge the window.

[BenMillard]

Imho:

• Filter Maps should either be a frame which contains controls or it should just be simpler.
• That resizing logic is awful. (Is there any?) Doing it like the old Hamachi frame would be neat.
• What does "unique" mean in this context? (Needs a better label to be intuitive.)
• You should always show the image if it's available. UI design is like Occam's Razor.
• Replays are such a niche feature that they shouldn't be in top-level UI. (Maybe not in the UI at all.)
• Exit on desyncs should go under the main Game Hunter Settings, not in Create Game.
• I agree with the positioning, naming and shortcut for the Refresh button. Make sure F5 and Ctrl+R also operate it.
• Find-as-you-type is cool but it needs better labelling.
• Glad to see the Game Comment box has gone.

[Cuban-Pete]

Alignment changes a bit when you enlarge the window.

I actually meant this

temp.png (134.19 KiB) Viewed 44616 times

[Sektor]

Empty space looks like it should be filled but I still don't like ridiculously long text boxes for text that doesn't need to be very long.

Unique only shows maps that have a unique combination of GMP, STY and SCR file. Pretty much the same as TM's Map Editor map list. I should exclude 1 player maps from that list since the 1 player map is usually the first unique one if they all use the same GMP, STY and SCR file with just different MMP files.

Someone requested the show image checkbox. Unticking it would speed up scrolling of the list and let you see more columns when you need to without horizontal scrolling. It probably wouldn't be used often and might seem broken when it's ticked and there is no image to show but people will figure it out.

Replays aren't used often but the easier I make them to use, the more often they will be used. It's also a decision the host needs to make before playing the game and it has to be decided before anyone joins. It was for my selfish convenience but it might help others (pretty much the whole idea behind GH).

Exit on desync needs to be set by the host (it's really the do_sync_check registry key) since it has to be the same on all systems or GTA2 will say the debug flags are different.

F5 and Ctrl+R are supported. The filtering refreshes the list (without rereading the MMP files) automatically. It's really only used if you change the files in the folder while the create game window is open.