Comitis

Readme File

Issues, Problem Reporting

This application is currently a work in progress and is known to have a few minor (I hope) issues.  If you find anything wrong with the app please let me know so I can attempt to fix them.

Introduction

This application is designed to be used on a second monitor for the game Evochron Mercenary.  That said it will also work on a single display as it remembers where you place it.  Users with two displays will get the most use out of it thanks to the secondary information system it employs for that game.  It will display and inform you about the information it gathers from the game in a simple and easy to read and use format.

Setting up EM to work with Comitis


First of all create a text file called savedatasettings.txt in the Evochron Mercenary directory and add these lines to it.
1000
<directory to save to, I use C:\sw3dg\EvochronMercenary\>

Make sure you include the last backslash on the second line.  By default Comitis is set up to work in the same directory the game is saved to and currently doesn't have any optional ability to work elsewhere, this will come soon.
 Once you have this file in place, a file called savedata.txt will be automatically created for you in the game directory that Comitis uses to get its information from.

Special Features

Log File

    The application keeps a log every minute of where you are and how you are doing, it keeps two log files, one for general status and the other is for cash status and is triggered when new cash is found or taken away and is a comma seperated file and can be imported into a spreadsheet program such as Office or OpenOffice.

Notes

    The application allows you to keep detailed notes

Pilot Back ups and Restores

    The application allows you to back up your important pilot profiles and restore them at a later date quickly and easily from a compressed format. (Assumes Pilot saves are in default directory)

Camera mode

    If you take screen shots then this is a useful tool for you, pressing print screen will no longer require you to go into paint or what have you to save the file. Comitis will automatically save the file to a PNG image in the Screenshots sub directory, thus saving you time  and effort.  PNG is a good quality image format, free of restrictions and can easily be converted with most painting applications.

Audible Feedback

    There is audible feedback for a few key systems :-

Tour Guide

    This system allows you to use premade tours to get around in the game.  This feature can be used to either tour the massive universe of Evochron Mercenary or even to tell a story in an interactive way.  It could also be used to direct a player to certain points of interest if they enter the system or a host of other possibilities.  Optionally as well as html text files for each step a wav file can be listed that will play when the way point is reached, this feature would be particularly useful for the story telling or newcomer introduction possibilities of this feature.

Achievement Sub System

    This will help you to keep track of your progress through the game via an achievements system (WIP), currently I am looking for new ideas for achievements to add to the system, please contact me if you have any.

Acknowledgments

This application wouldn't be possible without firstly Vice for his marvelous game and generous help and a big shout out to the forum for their help as well.
This application uses icons from the Milky Icon Set
With thanks to Delphi Jedi

How To Make A Tour


Tour scripts are simple text files with the .tgf extention.  This program should have come with a few for you to look at in the /tour/ subdirectory.  If you open Test.tgf in notepad you will see a lot of lines that don't seem to explain very much.  We'll now go through each section of the file and explain it line by line.

Header Section 5 lines
Test Tour (Not Timed)
intro.html
5
0
false
The first line is the Name of the Tour.
The second points to an HTML file that will be loaded into the reader when the file is first loaded in Comitis Tour Guide
The third line is the number of steps that are in the file.
The forth line is the type of tour, 0=normal waypoint triggered 1=timer triggered
the fifth line tells Comitis Tour guide to hide the panel that has the step captions in it.  set this to true (lowercase) to hide that panel, I call this story mode.

Now we come to the steps there are 12 lines per step we'll look at the first
Welcome To Sapphire
-100000
-100000
-100000
0
0
0
step1.html
false

true
0
The first is the step caption, then the next three lines are point X,Y,Z and then the three after that are System X, Y, Z Point XYZ is the center point of a box 2000 wide, high and deep.
The next line points to an html file that will be loaded when that step is triggered
The next is if there is sound file (true for yes there is)
The next line is the filename of the sound file to play when step is triggered
The next is if to inform the user when the step is triggered
The last is the delay for that step for timed mode. This is in milliseconds so a second is 1000 and so on.

Repeat this for each step you want and have indicated in the header.

The html format for the Tours is very flexible, please take a look at the Story Mode.tgf and associated files for some ideas of what you can do with this feature.