Re: [Help-liquidwar6] Work in progress, again

[Christian Mauduit]

3 inHi,

On 12/12/2011 10:54 PM, Kasper Hviid wrote:
> I like the new menu information. Even though I know my way around the
> menu, it just feels better now. New players will undoubtly feel the
> same!
Glad you like it. My position follows: nobody ever reads manuals. Only a
few geeks like me would, but not our typicall target. So let's just
bring the documentation in the game.

> I tried 'liquidwar6 --simulate-basic' which gave me this: "red: 9,3%,
> green: 40,2%, blue: 27,7%, yellow: 22,8%"
> So technically, red should have a bit of a handicap, but it felt quite
> fair when I played it!
mmm, strange. What I suspect: you ran it before running the game and for
some reason your $HOME/.liquidwar6/config.xml file contained the
previous settings. Make sure your delete this config file, re-run the
test, I'm positive, it should return about 25% for all teams, what you
report here is the result *before* I updated the profiles.

> Should I still design some full-screen "pop-up" GUI? The small pop-up
> windows look good too, so we could also use that instead. Or would it
> be possible to "script" the current pop-up solution with images and
> more advanced layout?
Well, ideally, you could just draw the popup on top of the screenshot
you already sent me. As you've seen, that's how I found it logical to
implement. I like your first proposition best, with rounded edges.

Anybody on the list has an opinion on which looks best?

As a side note, if we want to anticipate usage on smartphones, we need
to have a *bigger* font for menus, I think. I might be wrong, but I
suspect in your screenshots it's quite small for a 3.5 inches display.
OTOH the help/tooltips/breadcrumbs need not be very big, if one misses
the information it's not that bad, after all, a few weeks ago it didn't
even exists. I'm opened to suggestions.

> The map description could also tell if the game contained special
> effect such as wrap-around. (This information could either be written
> in metadata.xml or be pulled from rules.xml)
Pulling from rules.xml is dangerous in the sense it could quickly get
very verbose, and it's hard to find out what is relevant. My idea is
that in description, one should just write "what makes this map
special". And it depends on maps, some are special because of rules,
some because of the special settings of teams fighting on it, some other
just have a nice look. I guess you see the point.

> A danish translation would be fun, but I think I wait a bit, so we can
> get the english text nailed down first. I remember being a bit unsure
> about exactly how I should translate, but I think it is mostly because
> I have not tried it yet. The unknown is always a bit intimidating.
Translating is (IMHO) easier than with LW5, at least in the long run.
The first translation might be a little boring, but updating is not as
akward as with LW5, thanks to gettext. However you're right, it might be
interesting to get the English texts right first, then translate. As of
today, I quick-filled most of the entries, concentrating on code rather
than on the help wordings.

> One thing I have considered is to create a "character" for each color
> team. They should of course be designed to have the same colors as
> their fighters. Also, their look should suggest the nature of their
> fighters: good defence = the character has some massive armor. They
> could each have an individual name and they could be seen when using
> powerups or at the HUD or player icons.
Well, this would be just... great. You could design them either 2d or
voxel or as a classical 3d character with vertices and surfaces. Just
let your creativity imagine something cool, I'll try to make the engine
support it ;)

> On the negative side, it might
> go against the abstract nature of the fighters. A bit like how ancient
> text adventures had a really epic illustrations on their boxes.
Yeah, but those adventure games were great. This has to do about
"suggesting" epic characters.

> It would be nice if there was some connection between the various design:
>  * The homepage at gnu.org/s/liquidwar6/
>  * The node at http://ufoot.org:8056/
>  * The menu in the game
>  * The level graphic
> 
> But what should the visual style be? What is it that we want? The menu
> has so far aimed for a realistic underwater style, and then there's
> the "dogma" of not favoring any color. But the visual style hasn't
> been discussed much. 
I globally agree on the fact it would be nice to have the game, the
node/server page, and the home page have a common look. Now which one,
well, my only criteria is the "no favoring dogma" you mentionned.

> I think the current menu layout has a slightly clumsy feel to it. It
> could give the impression that the game is something which has been
> thrown together in a single weekend. This is a unfair way to present a
> piece of software with so many years of development. I know I should
> use my time on creating some actual content for the game, but I have
> made some menu layout suggestions, based on the current menu elements.
> I have tried to create something that looks somewhat pleasing, and
> somewhat possible to implement:
> 
> A ) I have stretched the GUI-boxes all the way out, to give it a more
> clean look, and replaced the sky background in the level with 100 %
> black:
> (A bad thing about this design is that the dominant box to the right
> "breaks" the center-based layout of the menu)
I could "center" the menu elsewhere for that matter...

> BTW, you may have noticed that I have changed the font. I used Square
> Antiqua from openfontlibrary.org
Ok, Square Antiqua, got it.

Thanks for all these great ideas!

Have a nice day,

Christian.

-- 
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