Hello, all!
Welcome back to a very long-awaited update regarding SkyLine Menu 2.0.
This glorious project has been quite possibly one of the most talked about, yet most seemingly impossible JK:JA modifications of last year. With the release of SkyLine Menu 1.0, authors Sentra and Zionter proved it was possible to some degree. However, the ambitions of SkyLine Menu 2.0 are much larger. High definition imagery on a 2K resolution were nothing but futuristic myths to the original makers, it seems. As you all know, SkyLine Menu 2.0 is trying to change that, and bring the future of GUI to JK:JA.
I am known personally as Elliot, but you can find me on MODDB or JKHub as ElliotOJRP. I'm a graduate graphic designer with an undying love for the game. I'm currently the lead audio/visual designer for the Open Jedi Project: Roleplay Edition modification. I contacted Sentra and Zionter about using and/or learning from the likes of SkyLine Menu 2.0, as its ambitions were the same as our own. These two amazing authors were kind enough to pass this project to my hands, given their time is now too limited. While Zionter has opted out of its development, I will be consulting with my coding partner, Mikkel (localvest) - the lead software developer for OJRP. Sentra will be overseeing all my design work and decisions, and I promise to still maintain its feel and theme throughout.
Now with formal introductions aside... let's get down to some technical explanations here. There's a reason why SkyLine Menu 2.0 is impossible at the moment. We want high definition imagery, we want 2K resolution, we want everything to look vector-worthy. However, the game is hard-coded to certain restrictions. For example, a simple splash screen is 1024 x 1024 pixels. Hardcoded. This means anything under, or over those restraints won't display. So, widescreen users (say, 1920x1080 Full HD monitors) will display a stretched splash screen image. That's not good enough by our standards, we're not working hard to have our artwork stretched.
So, through the implementation of OpenJK, we are able to access the game's engine code and change these restraints. Possibly even make it so that the game detects your resolution, and displays the correct splash screen image in accordance. Luckily, software developer Mikkel (localvest) is working on OpenJK implementation for Open Jedi Project: Roleplay Edition anyways, so we are currently in the process of learning and configuring everything that's required to get GUI's like this working
So, stay patient. Thank you for your on-going support.
May the Force be with us.
ElliotOJRP
A good person to talk to about this would be "skew". He just released his mod Jedi Fighter which worked well at many different resolutions.
You can change the background/text resolution by using the current resolution cvar in the .menu files and then showing/hiding stuff accordingly. I worked on it for a while with EoCIV but the number of menus in that project would of taken a very long time to sort out so I just opted for a total widescreen-only menu design.
Good luck with your project - if you can do it, it will be amazing!
Thanks for the advice! We'll take note of this.
Thank you for the kind words, Elliot :)
Looking forward to seeing the results.
Well, I guess I will be patient :)