Hi, since Goom is currently not active in SCFA anymore, he's given permission for me to take over management of his UI mod.

So here's the egotistically renamed GAZ_UI mod :)

Get it at the vault under my name.

Or at this mirrors:
Thanks to Ghaleon! v6

EDIT:
Here is v6.1 which has some bugfixes in it, thanks to various forum members.
http://www.mediafire.com/?7gi97kbdr0o8cmw

It wasnt done by me and I havent personally tried it, so I'm leaving the v6 download up above too. Give it a shot!

--------------------
Version 6: Thanks to ghaleon for many additional modules (see the posted readme below), and for doing most of the work for this release.
Also thanks to Thygrrr for Smart Economy Indicators, and for nice Strat Build Icons to replace my fugly ones. :D

Version 5: Thanks to norem, we now have the very excellent Factory Build Queues feature!
You can now turn off the "seperate icon for idle engineers" feature via the options menu.
Also I've written some proper docs in the README.txt. It's still WIP tho.

Version 4:
Sorry, missed some search & replaces, SCUManager was still referencing the old mod. Get this new version.

Version 3 is released! Ignore v2, it was a false upload :P

- Added norem's hotkeys
- Idle engineers in selection now uses Idle icon rather than low fuel (thanks norem!)

- Idle icon will now appear even if you dont have "Larger Strat Icons" enabled.

- Fixed some bugs.

Version 1: The main new features for this first release is:

- The units in the selection window will now be consistently sorted. If you right click to remove some they will no longer randomly reorder themselves.

- Idle construction units (factories, engineers, (s)ACUs) will now be seperated from active ones in the selection window. The idle units will be marked with an "out of fuel" icon.

- The "larger strategic icons" for the build window. I've replaced Goom's nice ones with ugly rescaled ones from the "resized strat icons" mod. The reason for this is that the ugly ones contain the Tech Level dots beneath the icons, useful to differentiate engineers etc.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Here's the readme:
(btw) Goom's old documentation is in the original thread:
viewtopic.php?t=23447



***********************************************
| GAZ_UI Mod
***********************************************
(Formerly Goom's UI mod, aka "GUI")

Hi AdmiralZeech here, since Goom is currently not into SCFA anymore,
I've gotten his permission to take over management of his UI mod.

Because the mod is so complex, I'll be documenting it gradually when I
get the time. If you cant find something here, try the forum post:

viewtopic.php?p=414706

----------------
|Overview - Options

The various components of GAZ_UI can be toggled on and off via the
menu Options/Interface. In the various items marked "GUI:".

Here's a short explanation of each item, which gives an overview of
the features of GAZ_UI.

NOTE: There are some options that must be disabled to be compatible with
AngryZealot's AZUI mod. Do a text search for AZUI in this document.


- GUI: Bigger Strategic Build Icons
Replaces the strategic icons in the build menu with larger images.
Has 3 settings: Off, Simple (larger icons only) and Full (larger icons
with Tech dots).

- GUI: Template Rotation
When placing a structure build template, you can press middle mouse
button to rotate the template.

- GUI: SCU Manager
Allows use of the SCU Manager. This is a complex feature which I
never use and know nothing about :)

- GUI: Draggable Build Queue
You can drag and drop items in a factory's build queue.

- GUI: Middle Click Avatars
You can middle-click the avatar icons on the right side of the screen,
to select all units in that category.

- GUI: All Race Templates
When creating structure build templates, templates with common
structures like Power Generators will be applied to all factions.
This means you dont need to create the same template for every faction.

- GUI: Single Unit Selected Info
When you have only a single unit selected, that unit's mouse-over
information will be displayed.

- GUI: Single Unit Selected Rings
When you have only a single unit selected, that unit's range rings
will be turned on. (effectively, this options activates "Turn range
rings on selected units" if and only if you have a single unit
selected.)

- GUI: Zoom Pop Distance
This option sets the distance the Zoom Pop hotkey will zoom to.

- GUI: Seperate Idle Builders
When selecting engineers, factories and other builder units, idle
units will be collected into a seperate icon in the selection window.


Additions by norem:

- GUI: Factory Build Queue Templates
Allows creation of Factory Build Queue templates.
When a factory is selected, selecting the Templates tab will change
the "Infinite Build" button into a "Save Template" button.
Alternatively you can use the "Create Build Template (factory)"
hotkey. All functionality in the Factory Build Template tab is the
same as Structure Build Templates. (you can rename, assign hotkey for
build mode, etc.)


Additions by ghaleon:

- GUI: Display Reclaim Window
default is disabled.
Will display a small window close to the Economy Bar which details
the total mass and energy you have reclaimed.
Note:
It looks horrible, but this will do for now.
Note#2: when enabled will also display up to 8 digits of energy/mass production
as opposed to standard of 6 digits, ie "999999" when your true energy production
is "12574899".

- GUI: Display more Unit Stats
enabled by default
This is based upon Eni's Total Veterancy UI mod and also works in
conjuction with it.
The unitview window will display hp regeneration rate, shield hp,
shield regeneration rate and build rate of selected units.
Will now display hp regen rate changes due to upgrades and veterancy.
Commander-type units now also get shield hp displayed.
If a commander-type unit has gained a level up, hp regen rates in brackets
denote total regen rate gained by veterancy, the other value displays regen rate
gained by upgrades.
Currently I lack the facility to determine which of the two displayed regen rates
is in effect, it always is the one which came into effect later.
(Regen rates gained by veterancy and those by upgrades do NOT stack,
they overwrite each other depending on which came last)
Note:
It could also display storage, but unfortunately I haven't
found a spot where it does not collide with e.g. the kills counter
or nuke symbol or something else.
If you don't mind, the code is commented out in Unitview.lua
and its layout dependencies.
DISABLE THIS FEATURE FOR AZUI COMPATIBILITY


- GUI: Visible Template Names
enabled by default
All template icons will have a small text below them, displaying the
template name.
DISABLE THIS FEATURE FOR AZUI COMPATIBILITY

- GUI: Template Name Cutoff
By using the slider, you can choose how many characters are omitted
from the start of the Visible Template Names. You can use this to put
some hidden characters in the name to allow templates to be sorted in
the order that you want.
(Needs restart for effects to be visible.)


- GUI: Always Render Custom Names
Default is enabled, when disabled will disable display of custom names.
Unless kept at default this option will be applied at every gamestart.

- GUI: Force Render Enemy Lifebars
Default is disabled, when enabled will force display enemy lifebars.
Unless kept at default this option will be applied at every gamestart.

- GUI: Auto Rename Replays
Default is enabled.
Auto renames the current Replay once you exit to the Score screen.
will work for localized versions of fa, too.
Follows following naming scheme:
"year"."month"."day"-"hour"."minute" "mapname"
mapname will be shortened to 15 characters, examples:
090206-2243 Fields of Isis
090206-2257 Gentleman's Reef
other naming schmes may be supported in future revisions.

- GUI: Improved Unit deselection
Reduce the number of selected units by shift(-1) or ctrl(-5) or ctrl+shift(-10)
right-click in group selection. Enabled by default



Additions by Thygrrr:

- GUI: Smart Economy Indicators

* when mass stores above 80% and rising, income indicator begins
flashing bright white, if expenses are higher than income and usage
efficiency is above 80%, mass income indicator remains green, it's yellow
till 50%, and red below that.
* when energy stores below 20%, energy indicator begins flashing bright white,
before that, if below 50% and sinking, it turns red from yellow, and is
green above 100%.
* when zero expense, displays infinite instead of 100%
* percentile "efficiency" display goes to more than 100%. it was bad and
wrong it was ever capped, because it's an important metric.
* percentile values (not absolute values) are filtered, meaning they change
smoothly over time. This is expecially good when reclaiming stuff an
wondering about your overall efficiency.
* edit: the old style economy warnings (glowing underlay) now coincide with
the new flashing effect.

(zeech: It's pretty confusing - I think the point is to keep your mass and
energy at about 100% efficiency, no higher or lower.
You can switch between percentage and absolute +/- by clicking on the number
in your mass/energy panel.
Check the GAZ_UI thread Page 5 for more details and screenshots.)




----------------
|Overview - Hotkeys

- Bindable hotkeys
By pressing F1, you can access the hotkey window. GAZ_UI allows you
to bind your own hotkeys!

Some notes:
Although its possible to bind a function to multiple keys, only one
key will be displayed in the F1 window.

The Hotkeys are saved to your Game.prefs file, which you can find at:
\Documents and Settings\[YOUR USER NAME]\Local Settings
\Application Data\Gas Powered Games\Supreme Commander Forged Alliance

It's sometimes easier to directly edit that file to manage your
hotkeys. BE SURE TO BACK THE FILE UP TO *ANOTHER LOCATION* BEFORE
MODIFYING IT! This is for semi-advanced users only!



----------------
|New Hotkeys

GAZ_UI also adds some additional hotkeys, which you may find useful:
The format for each entry below is:

------------------
- The "internal name" which is used by Game.prefs
"The name listed in the F1 Menu"
An explanation of the key.
------------------

- toggle_repeat_build
"Toggle factory repeat build"
Toggles the "Infinite Build" button on factories.

- zoom_pop
"One-key zoom-pop"
The hotkey for the zoompop feature.

- toggle_all
"Toggle all unit abilities"
Toggles all toggleable functions on the selected units. This is a
handy key since most units only have 1 toggleable function
anyways. (eg. shield generators, mass fabricators, etc.)
Alternatively there are individual hotkeys below:

- toggle_shield "Toggle unit shield"
- toggle_weapon "Toggle unit weapon"
- toggle_jamming "Toggle unit jamming"
- toggle_intel "Toggle unit intel"
- toggle_production "Toggle unit production"
- toggle_stealth "Toggle unit stealth"
- toggle_generic "Toggle unit generic"
- toggle_special "Toggle unit special"
- toggle_cloak "Toggle unit cloak"
- toggle_cloakjammingstealth
"Toggle all counter-intelligence abilities"
- toggle_intelshield "Toggle intel and shield"
- teleport "Teleport"

- military_overlay
"Show all weapon ranges"
Toggles a SupCom-style "military overlay", where weapon ranges of all
units are displayed.

- intel_overlay
"Show all intel ranges"
Toggles a SupCom-style "intel overlay", where intel ranges of all
units are displayed.

- select_all_idle_eng_onscreen
"Select idle engineers on screen"
Selects all idle engineers of all tech levels that are onscreen.

- scu_upgrade_marker "Place SCU auto-upgrade marker"
- select_all_similar_units "Select all similarly upgraded units"
These are for the SCU Manager. I think it selects all SCUs that are
similarly upgraded. I dont use it.

- select_next_land_factory "Select next land factory"
- select_next_air_factory "Select next air factory"
- select_next_naval_factory "Select next naval factory"
Pressing these keys multiple times will go through your factories one
by one.

- toggle_selectedinfo
"Toggle single unit selected info"
Toggles the "single unit selected info" feature. May be useful to get
rid of the window temporarily to clear up your view.

- toggle_selectedrings
"Toggle single unit selected rings"
Toggles the "single unit selected rings" feature.

- select_inview_idle_mex
"Select onscreen idle mass extractors."
Select all idle mass extractors in view.

- select_all_mex
"Select all mass extractors."
Selects all your mass extractors everywhere.

- select_nearest_idle_lt_mex
"Select nearest onscreen lowest tech idle mass extractor."
Select a mass extractor that is:
In view, Nearest to the cursor, Lowest tech level of all mexes in view, Idle.

- acu_select_cg "Select ACU (control group)"
- acu_append_cg "Append ACU to selection (control group)"
Selects the ACU in different sort of way. I'm not sure what it does
exactly, I'll find out in the next version of this document.

- select_nearest_idle_eng_not_acu
"Select nearest idle engineer (not ACU)"
Selects the nearest idle engineer. Different from the other key
because it will not select the ACU ever.

- add_nearest_idle_engineers_seq
"Select/Add nearest idle engineers"
Pressing this key multiple times will add nearby idle engineers to
your selection one by one.

- cycle_idle_factories
"Cycle through idle factories"
Pressing this key multiple times will select idle factories one by
one.

- cycle_unit_types_in_sel
"Cycle through unit types in selection (Land, Sea, Air)"
Filter your current selection to a single class of unit (air, land,
sea). It will remember your selection so you can press this key
multiple times to cycle through the types.

- create_template_factory
"Create build template (Factory)"
If a factory with a build queue is selected, it will create a factory
queue template from it.


Some other keys that are self-explanatory:
- toggle_tab_display "Toggle options tab"
- toggle_mdf_panel "Toggle MFD panel"
- show_enemy_life "Show enemy life bars"
- show_network_stats "Show network stats window"
added by ghaleon:
- select_all_air_exp "Select all Air Experimentals"
- select_all_air_factories "Select all Air Factories"
- select_all_antinavy_subs "Select all anti-Navy Submarines"
- select_all_battleships "Select all Battleships"
- select_all_land_directfire "Select all Land Direct-Fire units"
- select_all_land_exp "Select all Land Experimentals"
- select_all_land_factories "Select all Land Factories"
- select_all_land_indirectfire "Select all Land Indirect-Fire units"
- select_all_naval_factories "Select all Naval Factories"
- select_all_stationdrones "Select all Drones"
- select_all_t1_engineers "Select all T1 Engineers"
- select_all_t2_podstations "Select all T2 Engineering Podstations"
- select_all_tml "Select all TML"
- select_anti_air_fighters "Select all Air Fighters"
- select_gunships "Select all Gunships"

- Render_SelectionSet_Names "Toggles display of group names"
- Render_Custom_Names "Toggles display of custom names"
- Render_Unit_Bars "Toggle display of names and bars of any kind"
- Render_Icons "Toggle display of Strategic Icons"
- Always_Render_Strategic_Icons "Toggle strategic icon cutoff"
- Kill_Selected_Units "Immediately kill selected units"
- Kill_All "Immediately kill all of your units"
- Show_Bandwidth_Usage "Show bandwith usage window"


-------------------------------
Compatibility notes
-------------------------------

ghaleon: AZUI will not work while template names and detailed unit view are enabled, nothing I can do about that, sorry.


------------------
| The End

This mod is mainly for my own comfort and use, so it's provided "As
is". However, if you have a feature request and have a good reason
for it, tell me and I'll think about it. (sorry if my attitude is
less professional than Goom's, its better than nothing innit? ;)

Of course, Bug Reports are always welcome.

Special thanks to Goom for the very excellent original GUI mod.
Special thanks to norem for Factory Build Queues and also some of the
hotkeys.
Special thanks to ghaleon for his many additional modules listed above,
and also for doing all the work integrating them into v6 :)
Special thanks to Thygrrr for the smart economy indicators, and nicer
Strat Build Icons.


Bye-Be!
-AdmiralZeech

Its nice to see someone taking over the GUI development.

What exactly are your plans for the future?

Sadly, I dont plan to do much. I'm mostly taking over the "management" of the mod. Unfortunately I'm not as nice as Goom is, my work will mostly be for things that I personally want.

However, I'll cheerfully integrate changes that people submit if it fits the theme of the mod. And so far I've been adding hotkeys that people want, since its easy and is completely optional for users.

Otherwise I'll just address personal annoyances I have with SCFA's UI as the mood takes me. (such as these latest features.)

I've been getting urges to try to mod the GUI layout, though. I prefer to have a non-overlapping HUD, with a smaller world view. I suppose once I work that out it might not be hard to implement some layouts requested by people too.

Thanks so much for taking over this essential mod. I have some bugs to report

These bugs are occurring in the Goom GUI Release 6 but since I'm not seeing any mention of them in your change list, I'm assuming that they are still there.

If I update the key bindings to the existing hot keys, the key binding entries doesn't seem to get updated. Eg: If I rebind Select All Land to Ctrl+D instead of the default Ctrl+L, it still shows Ctrl+L. Both the new and old binding still works after that.

However, if I exit FA and return, I have to open and close the key bindings menu in order for my updated hot keys to work. These doesn't affect the key bindings that doesn't have an initial key combi. Eg: If action A doesn't have a bound key combi yet, a new key binding for action A will persist and work. However, if I change the key binding for action A or any other pre-existing actions, the above describe problem occurs.

Hi, thanks for taking hold of the development.

If I may suggest something, the tiered groups mod might be useful to incorporate in the UI mod, especially if it's made almost transparent with the current system of group control in FA.

I just downloaded the aforementioned mod and modified it somewhat by moving the battalion assignments to keys 1-5 so that you can reach them with one hand and made the default Ctrl-number method do the even distribution of troops within a battalion. At the same time, I moved the squad selection keys to 6-0.

Now it works basically the same as the FA regularly and selection of parts of the larger squad is extra. Anything fancy as type-specific squadification, which is needed less often, is behind more meta keys (shift+control). I'm not endorsing this philosophy on your mod, but using this method, the mod could be used as-is as a part of the UI mod. The complexity it would add would be completely transparent to a regular user.

[/quote]


Yes, I mentioned this to Goom when that mod first came out.

It's more of a visual error. Basically you can map multiple keys to the same action, but it can only display one key per action. (the only exception are things like Attack and Dive where they have 2 identical actions)

It kinda sucks but to get rid of the Ctrl-L (if that is your intention) you'll need to assign it to something else. Then it will show ctrl-d correctly.

If you want both hotkeys to be active then you'll have to live with only one being displayed.

These days for advanced hotkey editing I just go to my game.prefs and edit the file directly, it's much easier. The important part about Goom's mod is allowing you to modify your hotkeys in the first place, I feel the keybinding-window is just candy on top of that :P

However, I am considering a way to "clear" a hotkey, so in future you wont need to assign ctrl-L to something else just to get rid of it from Select All Land. (as per your example.)



Hmm, havent noticed this before. I will test and see what's going on. A simple step by step method to reproduce would help me too :)

I'm planning on modifying all my other mods so that their keys can be reassigned using Goom's mod. (GAZ_UI will then be a required mod for all my other mods.)

I dont feel that it's appropriate to integrate Tiered Groups into the GUI mod since it's mostly an optional thing. And it conflicts with Goom's Advanced Groups, so I want to leave the choice of which to use to the player.

Understood. The point of my suggestion was partly to get the keys modifiable in the normal keybinding screen, but if you're accomplishing this through other means, no problem.

However, I disagree about choise of use in the sense that your grouping mod also seems to accomplish what is important (subgroup division). In my opinion, the UI mod should be as complete a collection of game-enchansing functionality as possible and as easy for the user to obtain and configure as possible (as was largely the case in the original GUI), which would be best accomplished by incorporating the tiered grouping into the UI mod.

Of course this would require that any important functionality implemented by Goom's grouping mod should be implemented in yours too (so that people wouldn't feel left out and should not have to mourn for the loss of their favourite mod). At the moment it seems that this is not the case, because you work with differing philosophies and Goom's mod seems to have a Starcraft-like squad function (might be useful). However, I am confident that some kind of a hybrid version, which would incorporate all important functionality, or which would handle the grouping in some superior way, is possible to build. I am willing to help if necessary.

If this does not interest you for any reason, I will just keep on modifying your grouping mod for my personal use and leave it at that. Just suggesting.

Thank you for this update . Now at least one major annoying thing of the UI is gone.

Hm, I didn't see the out of fuel icon. The engys were separated though. Maybe this only works, if you enable the larger stratigc build icons (which I don't use)?

any chance of you adding in resizable ui elements is there?

Thanks for your suggestions, they are welcome. I probably wont be doing too much in that direction in the near future though.

However, if you make some awesome modifications, feel free to let me know and I'll integrate them if people find them useful.

Hmm, I'll check. It's not intended anyways.

Why dont you use the larger icons? :)

They're too big, obscuring the unit icon. And since you said, you have replaced them with ugly scaled ones, I don't even want to try them now

Personally, I want white, normal sized strategic build icons. But in FA they're gray and some of them are missing the black border.

I doubt I can be bothered. I might resize the world view to my preferred layout (after which I'll probably be able to add some layouts suggested by others).

But full blown nice resizable UI elements are too much work for me. I'm not good at the graphical UI stuff anyways. If someone else wants to learn it I'm happy to integrate whatever code they want added.

Heheh ok. I dont think the new ones are quite as big as Goom's ones. If that makes a difference.

Yeah but they are HELLA ugly.

Good on you Admiral!

There's a couple of niggly things with the GUI that I feel are annoying, that weren't present in the original SupCom SCA_GUI.

The Advanced Groupings mod covers the score in the top right corner. Sure you can click either off, but at the moment you can't have both on.

The Hotstats at the end of a game aren't as good as the SCA_GUI, you have to press "standard" before you can continue out of the stats screen...

The decorative border stuff on the UI is clunky and cumbersome, it would be nice to trim that off to a clean, minimalist UI, with transparency, and adjustability...

For some reason, running Windowed and stretched across 2 monitors doesn't work, as it did with SCA_UI in SupCom. We are forced to run secondary monitor in FA to have the minimap on the 2nd screen.

there's prolly a few other small things I could find if I sat down and thought about it,

Maybe you should mention that in the Hotstats thread and not here

oh yeah...

I wish GPG would release their tool for compiling pieces of Strat Icons into the gajillion strat icon files used in the game. I've asked for it a few times before.

Then we can draw our own nice ones.

1. I'm not maintaining Goom's AG mod sorry. I might just move the window and upload it one day though. May I suggest trying my Tiered Grouping mod in the meantime?

2. I'll keep an eye out for it, but sadly unlike Goom I'm not very good at the graphical UI stuff. I probably wont be doing much on that side.

3. Wow, that sounds nasty. I'm not touching that m'fraid ^_^;


So yeah, I'm not much help sorry. As consolation, might I offer to implement some hotkeys for you? ;)

Good news, nice of you to maintain the mod

Well done for the selection panel, the reordering was really annoying.
I also like that you're separating idle units. It's just a detail but the out of fuel icon seems a bit strange, though.
Maybe it can use the idle icon instead? I'll try to do it when I have the time, to see how it looks.

would you be able to map the zoom pop to the middle mouse buttton? I tried to but could never get it working

When I asked goom ages ago he said the middle button wasnt mappable. Or was it the space bar wasnt mappable to the middle button?

You can easily do it with autohotkey or similar program though.

I'll have a look. I've always wanted to be able to hold middle mouse button and pan the camera :D

Oh, thats a good idea. I guess I was just lazy. The project I'm on is going alpha this week so I'm pretty busy. If you get it done first let me know, otherwise I'll take a look when I can.