0.7 roadmap

[emoose]

Been a while since the last release, should probably start looking into releasing the new stuff soon, still a bit of work & testing needed though.

Major TODOs:

• input: dpad left/right steering inputs get cleared after rebinding steering, need to fix that & maybe show them in the dialog
• input: need to save out the vibration & sensitivity bypass options
• ui: move UI styling button, having it on ui settings window could be misleading since it doesn't actually save, better to put it on debug globals window
• chat: json message format, timestamping, initial per-lobby work (not really sure if per-lobby msgs are worth fully implementing yet though)
• chat: have to nail down the format, after it's released 0.7 will probably stick around online for a while (should probably send chat server the version number actually...)
• ui: maybe merge the main overlay windows into some kind of tab-based window, atm it seems kinda messy with the different windows overlapping, the way we did it in re4_tweaks was probably nicer (https://youtu.be/C32U6AQ-fmk?t=93)
• ui: probably hide globals page since it's mostly for debugging, draw-dist debugger/course editor/ui settings can be different tab pages, changing settings at runtime probably won't make 0.7, other than input settings
• investigate framerate issues in post 0.6.1 builds

Minor TODOs:

• still need to compare sensitivity values against vanilla game (was able to have both input methods running at the same time before, not sure if that still works with SDL3 though)
• go over each track with DrawDistanceIncrease 1024
• ui: styling? IIRC imgui demo does allow tweaking stuff at runtime, maybe need to play around with it and try making something closer to C2C style
• ui: font scaling, setup default scales for some common resolutions?

If you're testing the latest action builds please feel free to report any issues you run into on the issues page (or if there's anything important missing here feel free to reply)

[Zoukambada]

• Swap Action Buttons Feature:
  I think it would be nice to have an option to swap the action buttons for Nintendo / Eastern players. For example: Circle button accepts and Cross goes back... If it is enabled, it would be essential to also swap the sprite number calls, if its possible, so instead of loading sprite number 1 it loads the number 2 from the same texture (according to the atlas sprite ids).. these way the UI images will point to the correct buttons.
  Just an idea, I wouldn't use this feature but I was just thinking about other people that might.
  Here is OutRun2SP video of the Japanese input buttons from PS2 and its actions:
  https://youtu.be/OFCi0G6VwrE

• A way to communicate through chat with a gamepad, maybe a Radial menu with pre-defined chat messages to be sent by gamepad users:
  Probably it won't anytime soon but it would be nice to send messages this way. Basic ones like "Yes", "NO", "Hi", "Bye bye", "I have to go", "I am away, Ill be right back", "good game", "Ready?", "Thanks", "Sorry about that", etc.

• the same way you changed the "controller configuration screen" to load the input manager overlay, maybe could be done to the "friends" button that appears below in the menu when we are signed in: it could open the chat button and list all the players that are online. Better than using the built-in friend list.

[nuexzz]

A windows notification in the taskbar when someone joins my lobby would be a good idea (at least I use the game in windowed mode, so while the window of the game is behind me I don't see if someone joined my lobby) it could also be The car honks when someone enters my lobby.

[emoose]

Just FYI this isn't really an ideas post, it's more "things that's currently stopping 0.7 release" :P

Opened the discussion forum if you'd like to post more ideas up, then people can vote up ones that interest them too: https://github.com/emoose/OutRun2006Tweaks/discussions - probably better than keeping everything on Issues page where it just gets pushed to page 2 and beyond.

I think it would be nice to have an option to swap the action buttons for Nintendo / Eastern players. For example: Circle button accepts and Cross goes back...

Hm, think button remap might work for that already, changing the sprites would be nice though, maybe could be tied into the bindings so it'd always show the button bound for them, hm...
(also reminds me, should probably change the "A Button" "B Button" strings in the input UI to match controller type)

A way to communicate through chat with a gamepad, maybe a Radial menu with pre-defined chat messages to be sent by gamepad users:

Eh I'd guess there might be a way to do that with other tools already, I know you can bind controller to make keypresses with some apps anyway, be surprised if there wasn't anything for choosing predefined phrases too.

Might still be nice to have something built-in though, but not really sure how much work that'd take.

maybe could be done to the "friends" button that appears below in the menu when we are signed in: it could open the chat button and list all the players that are online. Better than using the built-in friend list.

Yeah the built-in list is kinda useless, guess maybe we could extend that into a general "online" button, which would pop open overlay and show chat/user-list/links to server page.

A windows notification in the taskbar when someone joins my lobby would be a good idea (at least I use the game in windowed mode, so while the window of the game is behind me I don't see if someone joined my lobby) it could also be The car honks

Oh that'd be nice, maybe would get more people to host games in the background too, probably wouldn't be too hard to get working if we can find where game handles lobby joins.

(this is also making me think of dedicated server stuff now too, imagine if someone could host lobby on a dedicated box with 0 slots taken up, then once enough players join and type /ready in the chat, it'd start them off - no need to mess with port forwards etc, probably a pipe dream right now since we don't have much of the network code mapped though, but still a neat thought)

[Zoukambada]

I know Steam can create the radial menu, but it can't type any messages. If we could customize through the overlay message 1, 2, 3 and 4 for example, if it was bindable to keys, then it would be possible to create a radial menu in steam or if the person just don't need a menu, the person would just bind one of the messages to dpad for example.

This just reminded about a feature that may be essential for chat:

• avoid users to flood the chat. Create a limit of X messages in a row before sending another, like a delay... Lots of games do that, even mIRC and Discord depending on the server.
  I don't know if it is already implemented.