Mark V - Mouse Driven Menu

[Baker]

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWyFltQ-wRY[/ame]

This probably won't be in an update for a while --- a couple of months I imagine because I'm deeply immersed in real life action and will be for a while --- but I thought I'd share this video.

Entirely mouse driven classic Quake menu.

Like --- the Quake menu the way it is. No changing the way the menu looks. In fact, if you don't use the mouse at all, you'd never know it was mousable.

(YouTube seems to be slow processing the video ... might be a few minutes)

[mankrip]

Good thing you've kept the keyboard cursor separated from mouse input; I don't like when merely hovering the mouse across GUI elements makes the keyboard cursor jump around.

[Baker]

Good thing you've kept the keyboard cursor separated from mouse input; I don't like when merely hovering the mouse across GUI elements makes the keyboard cursor jump around.

Nice eye, mk Most people wouldn't notice a small nuance like that.

Obviously, I don't like that either.

Hovering assumes mouse event control, but doesn't change the keyboard item, hehe.

Weirdest thing --- once you have full mouse menu, you will use the menu more than you ever did before because it is dozens of times faster.

The next release (2 months? dunno limited time ...) won't just have mouse driven menu. You'll be able to select a block of text and copy it straight off the console. I may even mouse-enable text fields for cursor selection, copy/paste, etc.

Truth be told, the above also has mouse drag-look and touchpad tap fire. If I disable the mouse (nomouse 0), in-game anywhere I click will shoot exactly there.

Since the above might be hard to imagine ... a demonstration ...

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BhL03FhnVA[/ame]

[mankrip]

mouse drag-look and touchpad tap fire. If I disable the mouse (nomouse 0), in-game anywhere I click will shoot exactly there.

Those features opens up tons of possibilities.

Sadly I can't research that kind of stuff yet, my BSP renderer still has a long way to go...

[Baker]

Those features opens up tons of possibilities.

Sadly I can't research that kind of stuff yet, my BSP renderer still has a long way to go...

The calculations are "fun".

One of the things I really like about mh and Spike that they can do 3D math with ease. mh is obsessive about it. It's been a while since he's posted anything that would give you a good look at the level of expertise, but metlslime knows his 3D too (to the unknowing: metlslime is the author of FitzQuake).

Unlike mh, I'm not a natural at 3D math or even 2D math (sin, arccos, tangents, secants, radians ...) but I forced myself to learn it and I can calculate a frustum or any of the other 3D calculations, but I'm probably a fair bit slower at it.

Imagine yourself in a sphere ... because in 3D you literally are in a sphere.

Each pixel on the screen represents a pitch and yaw and it isn't flat, it is a sphere. So for each movement of the mouse, calculate the difference between pitch at point 1 and pitch at point 2 and you have the angle delta (you have to project the 2D points to 3D to perform that calculation).

It might be a slight advantage to a coder that uses Open GL because in Open GL you touch projection matrixes and such quite a bit. They exist in the software renderer too --- but Carmack being a math god either slightly "rolled his own" or used in a manner that someone like me who learned matrix manipulation the "Open GL way" doesn't find straightforward.

(Apparently it doesn't bother mh, since mh wrote all those software renderer tutorials that you and I and qbism and such used. )

One thing I must say --- writing "TouchPad Tap Fire" required understanding the interaction between client and server. One time I literally tore apart the Quake client and server, which exists in single player too, and rewrote it. There are small things going on I never would have guessed before I tore apart and rewrote client/server, one example is how if a button is pressed and released in the same frame it still counts as down for that frame -- otherwise a fast click and release would never fire.

[gulliver-trans]

Awesome.