Re: [TuxKart-devel] GUI

[Steve B. <sjb...@ai...>]

Robert Kooima wrote:

> Here's the distinction in our thinking: you're looking at it from an
> application GUI point of view.  I'm advocating looking at from a game
> GUI point of view.  Think of it as if you were programming for a
> console.  Would a GameCube game use tiny scrollbars and radio buttons?
>  No, it would use big bold simple obvious widgets with gamepad
> control.

Yeah - but we aren't as horribly limited as they are on a GameCube.

But do you think they'd still do it that way if they had a mouse
attached to the system?

Because the mouse is a really nice pointing device (and a joystick
sucks for accurate pointing because it's a relative motion device
not an absolute position device) - so if you have a mouse, you can
dispense with all those layer-upon-layer menu's with easily forgotten
options.   It's much simpler IMHO to just lay out all the options
on a single page and let the person see all of them.  They can verify
that everything is how they want it - and when it is, click the "GO"
button.

We don't regard a joystick as a good GUI device for other applications,
why would we use if here?

Well - it doesn't really matter.  We can certainly make the joystick
work the GUI if that's what everyone wants.

Aside from improving the general look and layout of the GUI widgets
(which is easily done) - I'm not sure I'd want to spend a lot of
additional effort on it.

The main things it needs (IMHO) is a pictorial indication of the
tracks rather than the present list of text names and a pictorial
(preferable 3D, rotating slowly) image of the kart you have selected.

---------------------------- Steve Baker -------------------------
HomeEmail: <sjb...@ai...>    WorkEmail: <sj...@li...>
HomePage : http://www.sjbaker.org
Projects : http://plib.sf.net    http://tuxaqfh.sf.net
            http://tuxkart.sf.net http://prettypoly.sf.net
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