#664 ScummVM Game list aligning

[naquaada]

Because of the enourmous amount of supported games there should be some new sortaion methods. Actually a game entry typically looks like this:

game name (system/device/language)

so as for example 'The Secret of Monkey Island (DOS/floppy/english)'. My sortation is changed to a format 'game name ...... system/device/language', so that the additional information are right-aligned. That worked only with a lot of spaces in the name, and it couldn't be aligned perfectly because of the proportinal font. After the new font style on ScummVM 1.5 everything looked total different. On games with different versions I'm also using an additional sortation, f.e. 01a - game 01c - game for the Amiga and Commodore versions. This works rather well, but the alignment is also not perfect. This could be corrected by a tabulator system. This would also eliminate problems with the proportional font.

Another problem is the sortation. There's no way to add empty lines between the games. I solved this by using one game as dummy entry and using spaces or lines, beginning with letters, so f.e. A--------------- B--------------- etc.

And as for game developers or game series, there should be a folder/subfolder system. I presume the best way would be the MS-DOS-style, with the usual '.' and '..' entries at the top for the previous and the root folder. I haven't a real idea how to manage a subfolder system, possible would a complete new option for creating folders, and also a complete tab for folders in the game entry. So a game could be used in more than one folder.

Well, it's not an easy task, but I thing a good game sortation is something many people would like. A beginning could be done with adding some commands for the game name. This could be:

\Tx\ - Tab system, one tab are 4 characters
\R\ - right alignment

optional could be font styles, \B\ bold \I\ italic \P\ plain. So this could be an example for a game name:

01a\T1\ - Maniac Mansion\R\(Amiga/Deutsch)
02c\T1\ - Zak MacKracken\R\(C64/English)

would result in

01a - Maniac Mansion................(Amiga/Deutsch)
02c - Zak MacKracken....................(C64/English)

of course, the dots are spaces then. With font styles the look could be optimized, but the actual 1.5 font has to be thinner then.

[HappyDog]

I think that rather than adding control codes to the game names, it would be better if SCUMMVM stored more structured information about each game.

Name: Maniac Mansion
Engine: SCUMM
Platform: Amiga
Language: Deutsch
etc.

Then the list of games could then be properly tabular, with a customisable set of columns (where you can specify which ones are visible, and in what order) and provide the ability to sort on any column. It would also be great to add the ability to filter on certain columns, e.g. to just see "SCI" games, or "Lucasarts" or whatever, though that should probably be an extra feature request, made dependent on this one.