Sweeping Changes to Inner Space Coming

Announcements from the Lavish Software team
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Lax
Owner
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Joined: Fri Jun 18, 2004 6:08 pm

Sweeping Changes to Inner Space Coming

Post by Lax » Mon May 23, 2005 12:14 am

Changes are coming this week, in preparation for the official release of Inner Space (which may be weeks off yet).

Most importantly, Inner Space is receiving a complete in-game user interface system. The system is XML-based, and with a little more development, extensions even will be able to add new types of windows and other UI elements! The Inner Space HUD, for example, is now created by the UI system. Each element on the HUD can be moved by simply holding alt, and dragging it with the mouse. The in-game console is also done in the UI system, which will allow us (and our users) to make it look pretty with textures (you know, like background pictures) and such. The UI system also works correctly for non-US keyboards, so our international friends will be happy that they can use the console without major problems. The UI is seamless in most games, so you will be able to use the mouse and keyboard just like it were any other window in the game (Games which use DirectInput for mouse control will not immediately receive the benefits of the UI system -- the mouse must first be released for these games. The number of games this applies to is very small).

The UI system will provide Inner Space with an endless supply of new and exciting features, directly through IS as well as from custom extensions.

I've also got some changes coming for LavishScript, the scripting engine that Inner Space uses. But, since that's highly technical, I'll save that for the release notes in the coming update. Current Inner Space users should be aware that they will need to delete their existing PreInit.iss, AutoExec.iss, and PiP.iss files in the Scripts folder for this release (if you have made changes to these files, you will want to back them up).

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