What the what?! How did I just now see that Joel posted a revised Cardie mockup back in November? Why doesn't anyone tell me these things?!

The reworked Cardie UI looks pretty slick, though there's perhaps a bit too much empty black space above the map region.

As for UI consistency, the elements definitely don't have to be in the same place for the various themes, but they should share most of the same common elements, and the transition should feel pretty natural.

A word on Fonts: Supremacy now uses "composite fonts". Different ranges of Unicode glyphs can be mapped to different fonts. This will enable us to locate "ideal" fonts for languages using non-Roman characters (i.e. Greek, Cyrillic, etc.). However, we still need to be careful that fonts used for western languages support the common variants of Roman characters (é, ñ, ö, etc.).

Sorry boss, we will try harder.

Oh noes we have angered our master... we must do what we can to please him... sorry master. *begs forgiveness*

Hey Mike, Joel posted some Cardassian UI mockups...

Sorry mate, I thought you had already seen them. I've posted a few times about the Klingon one, but not the Cardie one.

It's cool, I was just messing with you guys. I hadn't seen the reworked Cardie mockup, but that stuff isn't on the immediate time table anyway, so no worries. I'm glad we were able to recover the Cardie and Klingon mockups. I'll make sure to store them somewhere safe . Joel, if you're still lurking, can you make me a seamless tile for the gray 'shale' used in the Klingon UI? If you give me something I can tile seamlessly, I can pretty much replicate the look of the mockup.

Does this mean that our master forgives us???

Forgive you? I'm still trying to figure out who you are.

It is nothing personal Andrew. It was three years and four hundred ship models before he noticed me.

Uh Oh! Notice me Bashir

Message received I will give it another try with the Greek fonts during my holidays in a few weeks. I hope it goes better this time...

Well, it's unlikely to go much better the first time around--we'll need to find a 'condensed' (narrow) font with a complete set of Greek glyphs to use in lieu of the standard LCARS font. Then we can edit the composite font file to map the Greek glyphs to the new font (it's just an XML file). Once that's done, the game will seamlessly switch fonts based on the type of characters being displayed.

BTW, the best way to start testing is to make a copy of the "en.txt" file and name it "el.txt" ('el' is the language code for Greek) and start making translations in there.

Thanks for the extra details! I will test all the Greek fonts I have (~30, including one for ancient Greek ) to see which one fits best and I will let you know. As I said though, it will have to wait until my holidays start in a couple of weeks time from now.

No worries. I'd just stick with the string table file for now; I'm probably going to change the way we handle translated text for object/race/tech descriptions.

Don't forget that we've got a load of people lined up waiting to do translations Mike; please remember to include a translations box in the editor, or provide another way for them to do their work.

Trust me, I won't forget. This is a very high priority feature for the editor.

I am curious now... What exactly does this fabled editor let the user do? I mean, to what extent can the editor be used to edit material for the game? I bet I won't find out until its done though .

I can only talk about the previous version of the editor (Mike is working on version 3), but it was similar to DCER's Ultimate Editor for BOTF in certain respects. For the translation, the editor had a screen where you specified all of the attributes of the object - cost, maintenance, bonus, races that can build it, tech requirements, description, etc etc. Near the description box on this screen was a very small, unlabelled button that when pressed, brought up a panel with a list of hundreds of different languages. You could then select one of the languages, and the panel would disappear leaving the previous screen, but the description box left empty. You could then enter the translated version of the object description in the description box. When you then saved your changes, both the English description and the foreign-language description was saved for the object (Ship, building, race, etc etc), so that the game could call up the translation when requested. Since Supremacy has never had a language setting though, the game has never requested the files load up the translations, so this feature was merely future proofing rather than being a usable function at the time.

The editor had screens where you could create and edit Races (Species), Political Entities (One species can be more than one Political Entity, so you could have both the Human-led Federation and the Human-led Terran Empire in the game at the same time), Objects (Structures and Ships)...and other stuff but i've forgotten what.

Well what do you expect? I haven't seen it in over a year! But it really was a good editor. It had some small bugs, was a tad slow at loading, and was missing a few features (Which I documented for Mike lol), but it really was a good editor. I know the structures and ships are a bit of a mess at the moment, but the database simply wouldn't be where it is now without the editor making my life a lot easier back then.

I see... Well it sounds like a great editor. I cannot wait for the new version to come out .

Oh man, wait until you guys see what Silvercliff's been up to. I'm keeping it under wraps for now, but I think you Romulans will like it.

We Romulans already know. He shared it with us...willingly.

OH NOES! Silvercliff has been captured by the Romulans! We must do something!

INITIATE PROTOCOL THETA-9: FIND AND ASSIMILATE NEAREST ROMULAN TO OBTAIN INFORMATION REGARDING WHERABOUTS OF CAPTURED DEVELOPER...

I'll let you know how that turns out later . But it's doubtful that my drones are actually capable of such complex thought

Captured? I am, and always will be Romulan

I have to admit, your avatar does make it a little obvious.

Silvercliff shared some of his ideas with me over MSN. That was about a week ago though, so no doubt his work has moved on since then. Can't wait to see what the future holds. And remember the numbers.

Even the Borg are/is looking forward to it.

Are we anywhere close to the release of a new editor and update to the game? I've got a lot of gamers in my sickbay on life support, suffering from acute Supremacy Withdrawal Syndrome, who just aren't going to make it much longer without treatment. Please oh Please help these poor souls.... fading fast.

I haven't even started on a new editor yet, but I'm still hoping to get an update out in August.

Just to tease you all, I might put a pic up in the next week

Thats if the Tal Shiar approves the release of such material

Ahhh, relief is on the way. Thanks you two! CB

Of course the Tal'Shiar approve...as long as they get to see it first.

August?? Oh noes I won't be here in August!! I am vanishing from society for a month to go to camp. I leave August 1st, and come back August 27th... so the release has to be on August 28th . Just joking. I'll pick up any and all updates upon my return... and as KoB said, the collective IS anxiously awaiting the release of the new editor........