Scawen, here's a screenshot of the apparent codepage issue in InSim. The apostrophes under each licence should be bordered and filled boxes (showing progress).
I can set them to different characters in a new release of the X-System if necessary. The change has happened around Y18 or Y19.. not exactly sure when.
OK, this is not a codepage issue. Or, it is... but it's not a codepage issue like another reported bug here, where a user saw one text on the List of Hosts then it appeared differently on the Join Specific Host screen. That one I can fix.
This issue, where some characters that worked in older versions no longer appear the same way, is because some special characters like the filled box and the empty square and the fuel and temperature icons, have been moved away to a hidden code page for LFS's own use. It's the same code page where the 5x7 font and the digital numbers are located. It's not accessible to users or InSim.
The reason for this change is because LFS has become more of a centre of communication than it used to be, with text going in and out to and from external programs. For example you could watch LFS using a spectator system and a lot of the driver names would appear wrong, because they were typed using LFS's non-standard code pages.
As various changes were made recently, new code pages added and the Japanese code page corrected, it was clear that the Latin code page needed to be made standard as well, and that meant moving away the wrong characters. The circle and the left / right arrows could stay because they are in slots that belong to characters that look something like them, but the up / down arrows and fuel symbol had to go.
This way, now that the code pages do not have some wrong characters in some slots, and use the standard layout, LFS can communicate with external programs and the text will be compatible.
Yes, test patches always can be instaled over older test patches (just like oficial patches, but those ones has an autoupdater that make it by you hehe)
Sorry Whiskey, I just meant that on this occasion you can't skip directly to the latest patch. To use Y20 you need Y19 already installed. Usually you can go straight to the latest patch, but on this occasion it's important to do both of the most recent two
The g-meter has been around for quite a while (long as I remember - not sure when I first noticed it though).
It appears at the bottom of the ingame F9 screen (tyre temp/wear etc).
The change in Y19 is simply a different font which looks like a 5x7 LED matrix type display to make it fixed-width and therefore neater.
Scawen: for future reference (you probably already know this) the arrow and circle symbols (amongst others) are on the unicode character set if/when you ever choose to implement it. I appreciate that this would mean changes in various places including InSim, thus probably causing more effort than it's worth at this point.
Up, Down, Circle are U25B2, U25BC, U25CF respectively
Speaking of g-meters, do you guys think that it'd be more visually intuitive to have a "moving dot" type of display like the ones seen in F1 onboard footage? I couldn't find an actual image, but something that looks like this:
Scawen - would this be difficult to implement? Thanks in advance!
Personally, I don't want a dot moving in my screen. I only check the G-meter if I Believe that my tires are losing grip. If Scawen implement it, it should be as an option so I can enable or not. But it si one of the things less important inthe development of this game (at least from my point of view)
TYVM for G-meter description
(i was seeing visions of some weird ball floating about like a game of pong)
Forgive me Father for I have sinned.
I read degats':smash3d: post and assumed the worst 'cause the solid squares and left/right arrows were gone I assumed the circle was also gone to 'cause he said so. So sorry. I was at work and didnt have LFS running to check this.
Here's some sweets for wasting your time... ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
I don't know much about colors, but I think that the colors in the game are the basic colors of the languaje programed, so put more new colours might be hard
Oops. must have been a figment of my imagination, no idea where that came from. Sorry, guys
mental note: pay more attention next time...
Personally, I think that a moving dot style g-meter would take up too much room ingame. However, I did knock up a quick 'n' dirty one in VB using OutGauge several months ago that I sometimes use on a second monitor that wasn't too tricky to write.
Someone has already written a g-meter overlay, i think they called it DriftMeter because it also had a slip angle meter, check that out.
No point in getting it directly implemented in lfs realy, doesn't add much value.