Main Menu + UI Editing

Aydra · AA Infantry **Joined**: 05 Apr 2012 **Location**: Canada

Hey again, I've been messing around with the menu's in TS trying to get a more funtional and asthetically pleasing UI. I'm using Resource Hacker to mod the language.dll and since this is my first time editing a .dll I wanted to know the limitations to modding the menu's.

Eg.
- Buttons that open up a text window showing patch notes
- Animations like RA2 menu buttons
- Display images
- windows that you can scroll if what is beings displayed is larger than your resolution

So far ive expanded the game menu's to 1024x768 resolution and overall made the map previews much larger and higher quality. I wanted to know if I could add new main menu buttons that would display an Image in which I would have the Tech tree's layed out for each faction. Even more so, could I even make it so when I cursor over the particular unit/structure in the tech tree a tooltip would appear showing cost/prerequisite/special ability and such. Is this possible and can I do it with Resource hacker?

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MODDB Profile: http://www.moddb.com/mods/the-second-tiberium-war

CCHyper · Defense Minister **Joined**: 07 Apr 2005

The game does not really have any more code to allow the other features of windows dialogs. TS uses OwnerDraw, and they only wrote in what they needed, plus, the actual code that draws the dialogs depending on where you are in the game, is pretty liner, nothing special.

Aydra · AA Infantry **Joined**: 05 Apr 2012 **Location**: Canada

I know there are limitations but i have seen some improvments that other mods have done. I know that the TI menu has a different type of text instead of the standard TS font, I would like to know how to do that.

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MODDB Profile: http://www.moddb.com/mods/the-second-tiberium-war

Bittah Commander · Posted: Sun Aug 05, 2012 11:10 am Post subject:

That's done by editing the dlgsysa.pcx and dlgsysi.pcx files.

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Aydra · AA Infantry **Joined**: 05 Apr 2012 **Location**: Canada

Is there anyway to have the game scaled to a widescreen 16:10 resolution and have the game play widescreen with all the menu's and also ingame without it stretching?

My TS does not support 1024x640 which I would like to play it on and customize my UI to scale to. Anyone know anything about this?

It's not my PC, I already have a custom resoultion saved on my nvidia control panel.

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MODDB Profile: http://www.moddb.com/mods/the-second-tiberium-war

ChronoSeth · Sergeant **Joined**: 13 Mar 2010 **Location**: Canada

Are you talking about simply running the game at a widescreen resolution, or changing the UI to cover the whole screen in that situation?

I can run TS at 1680x1050 and 1920x1080 (on different systems) with no problems.

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Dawn of the Tiberium Age staff member

Aydra · AA Infantry **Joined**: 05 Apr 2012 **Location**: Canada

Sorry I should ask my question more clearly:

Can I add 1024x640 to the available resolutions in TS so I can rescale everything to widescreen?

These work:
1680x1050
1920x1080

These don't:
1024x640
1152x864

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MODDB Profile: http://www.moddb.com/mods/the-second-tiberium-war

Bittah Commander · Posted: Fri Aug 17, 2012 11:44 pm Post subject:

TS can't display custom resolutions. So unless the resolution is selectable as your desktop resolution by default, it's not going to work in TS.

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Aydra · AA Infantry **Joined**: 05 Apr 2012 **Location**: Canada

How am I able to skip the beginning menu where it lets me select TS or firestorm and go straight to firestorm? Is this a simple matter of editing the newmenu.ini?

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MODDB Profile: http://www.moddb.com/mods/the-second-tiberium-war

MrTweek · Posted: Tue Aug 21, 2012 4:01 am Post subject:

Aydra wrote:

How am I able to skip the beginning menu where it lets me select TS or firestorm and go straight to firestorm? Is this a simple matter of editing the newmenu.ini?

one method is you copy the ~20MB "Firestorm Content" (units, sound and inis) from expand01.mix into Tibsun.mix and delete the expand01.mix after that

i have it done in my mod then you have Tiberian Sun with firestorm-content... but you start tiberian SUn without firestorm

- you must also add the Firestorm.ini-Content to the normal inis (sound, rules, art, night, dark,temperat.ini)

- dont forget to override the tiberian SUn "Iso*****.mix with that ones from firestorm...

Krow · Commander **Joined**: 30 Jan 2010 **Location**: Malaysia

You should try contacting Hyper. I'm sure he'll help you with the technical stuffs. Very Happy

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^Rampastein · Rampastring **Joined**: 11 Oct 2008 **Location**: Gensokyo

Aydra wrote:

How am I able to skip the beginning menu where it lets me select TS or firestorm and go straight to firestorm? Is this a simple matter of editing the newmenu.ini?

You don't do that; instead you'll go straight to TS by including all the Firestorm INI code and assets in the original TS ini/mix files and then removing the Firestorm content.

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CnCNet Client | CnCNet TS patches | More Quality-of-Life Improvements for RA Remastered

MrTweek · Posted: Tue Aug 21, 2012 6:35 am Post subject:

^Rampastein wrote:

Aydra wrote:

How am I able to skip the beginning menu where it lets me select TS or firestorm and go straight to firestorm? Is this a simple matter of editing the newmenu.ini?

You don't do that; instead you'll go straight to TS by including all the Firestorm INI code and assets in the original TS ini/mix files and then removing the Firestorm content.

i had also tested this and this worked for me... but it is a little work to get this working:

one method is you copy the ~20MB "Firestorm Content" (units, sound and inis) from expand01.mix into Tibsun.mix and delete the expand01.mix after that

i have it done in my mod then you have Tiberian Sun with firestorm-content... but you start tiberian SUn without firestorm

- you must also add the Firestorm.ini-Content to the normal inis (sound, rules, art, night, dark,temperat.ini)

- dont forget to override the tiberian SUn "Iso*****.mix with that ones from firestorm...

Krow · Commander **Joined**: 30 Jan 2010 **Location**: Malaysia

He's not blind. You don't have to post it again. #Tongue

But yeah, that's the way to do it. Like Rampa said.

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Aydra · AA Infantry **Joined**: 05 Apr 2012 **Location**: Canada

Alright, I was hoping to avoid that since it seems like a hassle but it needs to be done. A quick question before I do:

1. is there a way to extract all the files within a .mix at once without extracting them one by one?

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MODDB Profile: http://www.moddb.com/mods/the-second-tiberium-war

Bittah Commander · Posted: Tue Aug 21, 2012 11:50 pm Post subject:

Select all of the files you want to extract, right-click on one of them and then click Copy. When you do this, all files will be copied to the folder that's opened in the other pane (so whatever gets copied or converted is always copied from the left pane to the right pane or from the right pane to the left pane).

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Krow · Commander **Joined**: 30 Jan 2010 **Location**: Malaysia

Ever heard of Ctrl+A? #Tongue

Then just copy.

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Aydra · AA Infantry **Joined**: 05 Apr 2012 **Location**: Canada

Can anyone supply me a stripped and Merged TS where Tiberian Sun and Firestorm have been merged and its no more a game + expansion?

I've tried doing this myself and its not as easy as I thought : /

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Krow · Commander **Joined**: 30 Jan 2010 **Location**: Malaysia

http://www.ppmsite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=27860

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