Re: [TuxKart-devel] GUI

[Ingo R. <gr...@gm...>]

Steve Baker <sjb...@ai...> writes:

> But on a PC, you were holding the mouse when you clicked the
> icon/menu item to start the game running. You'll have the mouse in
> your hand still when it starts up. Whether you switch to the
> joystick after launching the program - or after setting the options
> within the program is no different.

You click the icon only once to start the game, after that you should
spend at a minimum multiple minutes in the game itself, thus how you
started the game doesn't really matter at all. For the purpose of
debugging having additional mouse controll in the game can be a nice
addition.

> Most of our users will be running anything from 1024x800 to
> 2048x1600 - so we don't have that problem).

And many users will run in 640x480 or 800x600 to play the game on the
TV, I surly will. As said, TV-Out is pretty standard these days on
graphic cards and especially for multiplayer using the TV for gameplay
is going to be much more convenient than trying to got four people
around a tiny computer monitor. I don't mind having additional mouse
support, since it can be convenient to be able to navigate the menus
with a mouse, especially when running in windowed mode while doing
other things beside that, but I would consider making the mouse the
primary control device a fatal mistake.

> Yeah - but people who do that have mouse-emulating devices on their
> IR-connected keyboards. (I have one for my Linux PVR PC which
> connects to the TV so I know this for a fact).

Well, I don't. I don't have a special keyboard for by TV-setup, just a
regular one and a gamepad with a long enough cable. PC setup are
always non-standard, so one can't assume that everybody has a perfect
useable mouse while sitting on a couch.

> With an all-in-one GUI, these are trivial things to add and maintain.

Yes, trivial to add and maintaine, but insane complicated to use. Just
because one can easily add yet-another-option, doesn't mean that it
will improve the game at all.

> If it's separated out into separate questions then getting into the
> game becomes tedious because you have to step through each screen
> even if you are happy with the default.

Stuff like mirror/number-of-laps and such can be stuck into the track
selection screen without much throuble, there isn't a need to have a
special screen for each and every options, just for the major ones, so
that the player doesn't miss them. 

> The whole thing balloons from a real simple single-screen GUI to a
> major programming exercise. GoTM is a TWO MONTH TASK - we can't
> afford to waste effort in areas that aren't buying us anything.

GUI programming is something that can easily be done in paralell to
other task, beside that Robert already offered to do it and he even
has a GUIlib at hand if needed, so I don't see much throuble with that

> Adding new options to a single-screen menu is easy.

Adding a new option to a multi-screen menu isn't much more difficult
either.

> That's nonsense - probably more than half of our users don't even own
> a joystick.

They have a keyboard instead, which works quite good as poor-mans-joypad.

> You have it completely the wrong way around - the Mouse is *essential*,
> the joystick is something that's nice to have. 

The mouse is completly useless in the game itself, I don't see how
forcing the player to constantly switch to it would be a good thing.
Yes, it might easy programming a little bit, but thats it.

> There are MANY (if not most) Linux games that don't support a
> joystick at all.

If the game itself is mouse-driven, there is nothing wrong with making
the menu mouse driven too. However Tuxkart isn't mouse driven, people
drive with joysticks and keyboards and to restart a Race pressing
'ESC, DOWN, DOWN, BUTTON1' is a lote more easy than 'ESC, reach the
mouse, navitage to button, MOUSEBUTTON1, reach back to the keyboard'

-- 
WWW:      http://pingus.seul.org/~grumbel/ 
JabberID: gr...@ja... 
ICQ:      59461927