DART/DUF need to play nice.

[Gimpifier]

Lozareth,

If you remember me on your forums on your site, I've dug a little deep into your options in DUF/DART and made myself a pretty sleek (in my opinion) UI that looks nice and fills every need I have. The key part about the UI was the look nice part. I know you've been going through hell and back during this last week, but I thought that this suggestion (bug find?) might be of interest of you.

I have no problem with the latest DAB 3.0.
I have no problem with the latest DART.
I have no problem with the latest DUF.
I do seem to have a minor issues when DART and DUF play together, though. It deals with Frame Strata and the sub-levels within those strata.

I design my DART layout as all background strata stuff.
BACKGROUND, Level 0: I have a simple black image that spans the very bottom of the DART region of my UI, to finish where some images above will miss, and to catch partial transparent objects above.
BACKGROUND, Level 0: I have the "background" images that make the UI start to look nice.
BACKGROUND, Level 1: Different UI items are placed all over to finish the DART UI.

At this point, everything looks perfect as I imagine it. How it works fine with multiple image objects sharing the exact same Frame Strata and level, I'll never know... but it's orked for a few months now.

Then I design DUF frames and elements. I also designed a simple DART object where its UI parents are the DUF frames, so that I get a neat background effect. (A DART image underneath the DUF Target Frame, etc). The DART object is set to BACKGROUND, Level 0... because if I set it to BACKGROUND, Level 1 or higher, it eats the DUF "Frame" object... since the DUF "Frame" object does not have ANY Frame strata control that I know of.

Every element within a frame object has frame strata control, from the health bars/mana bars, to the text boxes. Only the "Frame" element doesn't have strata control, and I use that element to define a frame background. This background gets overlapped and is no longer visible if the DART object "behind" it is set to BACKGROUND, Level 1. Unfortunately, when I set it to BACKGROUND, Level 0... that object it does not play nice with the other DART objects also set to BACKGROUND, Level 0.


So, my suggestion is to maybe add a frame strata control option for the "Frame" element of a frame. Similar to the [-] 0 [+] controls in each other element in the frame.

Or, is this a bug report? I can't remember if setting a frame element to a negative value actually worked. If it did work, I can say that it doesn't now. If it never did work, then maybe make it so hitting the [-] button won't let you go into the negative values? (I know someone can just type a negative value into the text field if the wanted to.)

That's my little story. Hopefully it wasn't too long winded, but I like to make sure I say as much as I can so you know exactly how to proceed.

-- Gimpifier