Daggerfall Workshop Forums

I was watching the recent video and thought of something.

Would it be possible to have an option where the compass can be activated with a hotkey and then it appears in the center of the screen (with a open inventory sound being made), as though you're "checking" an actual compass, then pressing the hotkey again makes it disappear with the inventory sound again.

For that more immersive kind of experience.

Already thinking about that. if my art skills are up for, I would like to photoshop in one of the hands from the attack animation to make it look like the compass is being held and have the map zoom mimic bringing it closer to your face. It would also not allow you to have your weapons out while using the compass for real immersion kiddies like us.

Here is an experiment today for a ultra realistic free floating compass/minimap.

This is an actual object, floating in front of the player, so you can still look around normally as the compass floats in front of you. It's pretty easy now, as all the render and camera base objects and scripting is setup, so all I had to do was transfer the render texture to a flat cylinder and then put a gold cylinder it.

You have to actually look down at it to get a full, proper view, like you would any real life compass.



This is my thought as yet another player option for people who want super immersive. Tie this in with looping casting animations, and you have yourself a truly magical, free floating minimap/compass. Could even tie its spawning and going away to a cool particle magical effect.

Probably should finish the last two or three things for the UI version I already have and release before I dump more time into a whole new feature like this.

Finally, code is optimized to a point where anymore refactoring would not provide a big enough improvement for the time fixing some really small inefficient coding methods.

Minimap is feature complete. Just need to add in save data management for the settings, and keybinding settings, and nexus release.

I added in smart key inputs, so you only need two keys for everything.

Hold Zoom in Key: Zoom In minimap
Double Tap Zoom Key: Full Screen Minimap.

Hold Zoom Out Key: Zoom out minimap
Double Tap Zoom Out Key: Scroll Settings Key.

Press Zoom Out + Zoom In: Put Away Compass.

Full screen mode will center it, increase its size to full screen, and zoom out so it matches the same view area as the minimap, or pretty dang close.

I also added in settings for how the NPC markers show up.

Realistic Detection: Enables a range selection menu for how far a npc can be before they no longer show up. This is halved if the npc is not in view, say behind you. They also have to be seen/in view to show up if they aren't showing.
In View Detection: All npcs within camera view show up.
Nothing selected: All npcs, no matter where they are, show up if they are in the block data.

Lastly, I set all screen sizing and position values to proper dynamic screen properties, so it should scale properly no matter your screen size choice.

Here is the video of the latest build.

Awesome progress I also really like the menu on the parchment, thats so fitting. The golden watch style is looking good, but Id made it a bit less intrusive and rugged, thats just a matter of colors... also when its fullscreen it gets low res (easily solved by good upscale algo) If you send me that texture, I would gladly work on that a bit and solve it. Just for a test. Or is it possible to inject our own textures (overwrite the current one) That would be nice, there could be more variants for that....

Eitherway, really impressive

I uploaded all the minimap mod and its assets to my mod github. You can get any of the assets here. I didn't do the best job on design approach not being a visual artist. All the assets are differing canvas sizes, which are then rescaled and repositioned.

Also, I pixaleted the golden compass to try and get it closer to vanilla look. This probably didn't help the full screen resolution look. The github should have the original unpixlated compass.

You can upload and change any of the compass graphic assets, from the direction indicator to the golden compass. I was going to add a fake glass reflection layer too.

If enough compass variants start appearing from users, I'll add in a quick code to scan a folder for the compass textures and than add them to a list to select from in game.

https://github.com/l3lessed/l3lessed-DFUnity-Mods

After a day of tracking down the dependencies crashing the mod compiler, I discovered canvas prefabs require the importing of cs files that use enums. None dll compiling that can grab the cs files needed doesn't like the enumes. The dll compiler can't grab the proper cs dependencies.

This left me one choice, use the scripts and c# to construct the canvas objects myself. So I did. I built a canvas constructor method that returns a prebuilt canvas. I then rebuilt the 4 canvas layers needed and tied them back into the scripts, and wala, a functioning minimap in base build using unity canvas layers and render texturing.

Also, moving the building indicators into a proper class with a constructor class in it, and then updating the class objects themselves removed all menu lag when updating indicators.

Here is a video of it running in base without any issues.



I also updated the github with code changes and I dropped in the compiled DFMODfile for anyone who wants to be an early adopter so they can bug report for me as payment.

The default keys are "Numpad +" and "Numpad -"

Hold Zoom in Key: Zoom In minimap
Double Tap Zoom Key: Full Screen Minimap.

Hold Zoom Out Key: Zoom out minimap
Double Tap Zoom Out Key: Scroll Settings Key.

Press Zoom Out + Zoom In: Put Away Compass.

Looks freakin awesome!
One thing I saw is, the barrel image ontop of taverns has an alpha channel that is not being used?
Also one inspiring thought maybe: The NPC detection could be raycasted, so you would only see NPCs on the minimap, that are in direct line of sight from the player. (Would avoid NPCs to be displayed, that are behind the city wall or behind buildings.)
It's just an idea though, nothing necessarily important.

l3lessed wrote: ↑Sat May 22, 2021 6:12 am After a day of tracking down the dependencies crashing the mod compiler, I discovered canvas prefabs require the importing of cs files that use enums. None dll compiling that can grab the cs files needed doesn't like the enumes. The dll compiler can't grab the proper cs dependencies.

This left me one choice, use the scripts and c# to construct the canvas objects myself. So I did. I built a canvas constructor method that returns a prebuilt canvas. I then rebuilt the 4 canvas layers needed and tied them back into the scripts, and wala, a functioning minimap in base build using unity canvas layers and render texturing.

Also, moving the building indicators into a proper class with a constructor class in it, and then updating the class objects themselves removed all menu lag when updating indicators.

Here is a video of it running in base without any issues.



I also updated the github with code changes and I dropped in the compiled DFMODfile for anyone who wants to be an early adopter so they can bug report for me as payment.

The default keys are "Numpad +" and "Numpad -"

Hold Zoom in Key: Zoom In minimap
Double Tap Zoom Key: Full Screen Minimap.

Hold Zoom Out Key: Zoom out minimap
Double Tap Zoom Out Key: Scroll Settings Key.

Press Zoom Out + Zoom In: Put Away Compass.

Is there a way for the compass to only appear when you want it in the center of the map? So putting it away actually makes it no longer visible.

As said in above post, pushing both zoom in and zoom out at the same time will completely hide it, no matter what mode your in.

The alpha channel on the icons was an accidently addition. I need to swap at the materials.

Lastly, the raycast was already a thought and the last feature I was going to experiment with before NMM drop. I need to see how it impacts performance, as each npc would have to be shooting a single ray towards the player on every check.

Thanks for the feedbacks.

Also, I realized you can't use the mod file right now, unless you know what textures to put in streaming textures folder. I'll put a proper install folder up that has the mod file and directories setup properly.