Re: [TuxKart-devel] GUI

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

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

> Both SWS and MWS can handle that.  Once the game is over, the SWS system can
> pop up yet another widget-screen with something like:
>
>     REPLAY THIS LEVEL?

The classic way would be to have a pause/end menu with:

 * Restart Track
 * Change Driver
 * Change Track
 * Exit

> I'd argue that the benefit of the MWS approach is that you can very
> simply play again - but with more or less laps -

More or less laps are for example a thing that I would leave out, at
least for most game modes, except multiplayer and practice. 

The classic way would be to have GrandPrix mode with a number of races
one after the other, in which it must not be allowed to change
anything, else that would be more or less cheating.

Same goes for TimeTrial, changing the number of laps and such doesn't
make sense here either, since people want to have comparable track
times, just won't work if they can tweak dozens of options.

Practice and multiplayer would allow some more options, but that would
be just one or two screens more, nothing critical.

> In the SWS approach, that's a LOT harder because you have to
> navigate through a stack of menu screens to get to where you can
> change that one thing - then back though a bunch of 'no change
> please' clicks to get back to playing again.

There are just two layers of screens, TrackSelect and CharacterSelect,
in GrandPrix and TimeTrial there isn't a reason to change anything
else, if people want to switch the game mode, they press exit and
start from the main menu again. I don't see how clicking twice is
going to be 'a LOT harder'. MarioKart has worked that way from day one
and I never felt that its to hard or anything.

> So (of course), I maintain that the MWS approach wins hands-down
> (especially if you allow the joystick to steer the pointer as well
> as the mouse and have the joystick's "A" button work like the mouse
> button does.

If you use the joystick to emulate the mouse you end up with an almost
unuseable piece of controlls. If you use the joystick you switch
directly between options (kind of like Tab does in most GUIs) you
don't it to emulate the mouse.

> I still think everyone is grossly over-estimating the number of
> people with joysticks.  I've been playing with this stuff for a
> long time and I *know* it's a rare thing in the Linux population.

Even those without a joystick will use the keyboard to drive the kart,
while there will be almost zero people using the mouse for driving the
kart. The point is that the keyboard or joystick will be the primary
controll device for the game, for which reason it should also be the
primary device for moving around in the menus, else people will have
to constantly switch controlls.

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