custom Colour Slot 10 always dispalys as "choose this colour to be light blue"

[Jai]

i Cannot seem to get my custom colour slot 10 to do as it is meant to.

here is my code:

Slot10.DisplayColor=128,64,64 ;brown

Slot10.ColorScheme=Brown ;also tried as LightBlue as it still seems to be somewhat hard coded and uses them in certain list

Slot10.Tooltip=STT:PlayerColorBrown

ra2md.csf

STT:PlayerColorBrown
"Choose this to be brown."

i have also tried

STT:PlayerColorLightBlue
"Choose this to be brown."

when i chose my brown, id DOES NOT say "missing string" error.
it says "Choose this to be ligh blue."

Please Help!

[AlexB (alexander-b)]

I used this line to check whether there's a problem loading uimd.ini:
Slot10.Tooltip=NOSTR:My custom color description.
This worked, and the string is shown.

Ares.csf overwrites the strings in the original ra2md.csf, and this is likely what's causing you trouble here. Can you either put the text with a new name into ra2md.csf, or put it in a string table CSF?

[Jai (junior8805)]

Hey mate!

Sorry for the late reply, I have been really busy.

I was not aware of the "NOSTR" string command. it worked a treat and i use it all the time now rather than editing the CSF file anymore.

A few things I tried before you got back to me were:

I found a CSF file in ares.mix and I changed the "choose this color to be light blue" to "brown", and it seemed to stop the whole of the mix file from being read. It seems as this mix file has been hashed and this changed it's hash value, therefore rendering it the "wrong" file.

This did fix the issue, but then a lot of other strings broke.

Another way i found to work:

I set "Color=10" but have "Slot11.ColorScheme=XXX" filled and this also seems to fix the issue as it now bugged slot 11, but as i only had a count of 10 it didn't matter.

Thank you for your speedy response and keep up the great work.

Really loving Ares!

Junior

[Jai (junior8805)]

Sorry to bug you,

2 more things.

Is there any drawback for using "NOSTR:XXXX" on everything?

and is there ANYTHING i can help you with, on Ares? I would like to help, if possible for such a great cause.

[AlexB (alexander-b)]

Hey, and thank you! :)
To help, it's usually enough to use the latest unstable testing build and report issues with it. There's usually a pinned thread on PPM (https://ppmforums.com/index.php?f=875) about the latest development.

Drawbacks using NOSTR: is that you lose the ability for localization. INIs have 8 bit wide chars, CSFs use 16 bit wide chars. Also, a NOSTR: string cannot by design be longer than 31 chars, including the NOSTR: part, thus only 25 usable characters.

You could use a stringtable file. It would only contain your strings, it would override Ares.csf, and would support more characters and text lengths greater than 25.

I guess what happened while you edited the Ares.csf file was that the language setting was changed. Ares.csf should be language neutral to work with every language version. In the documentation I explained how you can change that setting manually using a hex editor (ares-developers.github.io/Ares-docs/new/misc/stringtableenhancements.html).

Though, I'm not sure I understand correctly. How is slot 11 now bugged?

[Jai (junior8805)]

Hey mate,

Thanks for the information!

So as I said before, if I make 11 colours and then set the count to 11, the 10th colour (brown) shows up as brown and 11 bugs out, so i set count to 10 and 10 still works while still having 11 in the list. Removing 11 from the list makes 10 bugged. It appears after 9 or 10 the last one seems to bug out, so I simply added more than needed and cut the list 1 short.

I will look into how to make use of a stringtable file tomorrow.

As for hex editing, i didnt think of that, brilliant!

[AlexB (alexander-b)]

I'm not sure what's going on. I used
    Count=10
    Slot10.DisplayColor=128,64,64
    Slot10.ColorScheme=Yellow
    Slot10.Tooltip=NOSTR:Dark brown test.
and all settings have the desired effect.

Do you have a color scheme called "Brown"? If not, I would expect a fallback to neutral grey-ish color in-game. Which Ares version are you using?

[Jai (junior8805)]

Sorry for the delay.

I forgot to mention, this was before i knew about the "NOSTR:" command. "NOSTR:" fixed it perfectly.

Thanks!

[Jai (junior8805)]

The colour was brown, always was, it was jus tthe tooltip. It is also version 1.0

[AlexB (alexander-b)]

Okay, then I'll close this.