More suggestions

[Tedium]

Main
• Change the vertical distance between the buttons when playing on a higher resolution. I know it's still WIP, but they are too close together.

Select Level
• Use a center alignment for the levelblocks. Having a small amount of levels on the far left looks very unbalanced.
• Try to form a rectangle rather than using the full screen-width for the levelblocks? Like having a 6 x 4 of 8 x 3 rectangle instead of 24 x 1 row?
• Place the time and recordings buttons and stats on the right, to make it look more balanced.
• Use my "inky" time and recordings icons , http://forum.freegamedev.net/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=2929

Options
• Music and sound sliders?
• Repositioning of the buttons. Then again, it's better to do this after adding new buttons.
• The buttons below should be spread over the width of the screen. (Like the ones from the Map Editor, equally spread)

Config Keys
• Just looks too cluttered. The title and description need more space.

Map Editor
• Same levelblock layout as suggested in the Select Level part.

Edit Map
• The block configuration screens need improvement. Max length or sliders for the textboxes?

Addons
• Needs more attention.

Misc
• New sounds and music.
• idle animation? Shouldn't be too hard.
• Replay menu. To view replays that aren't necessarily your personal record.

Bugfixes
• Still isn't fixed: http://forum.freegamedev.net/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=2804

[odamite]

Hello Tedium,

It's great that you've listed some of your ideas and faults in the game. This will help us to fix them more fast and precisely. I'll try to fix something according your descriptions soon.

I really like the idea of sliders. They are quite common GUI element these days and they really help to visualizes values better. But the down side of them is they might make setting values less precise. And of course someone has to code them too.

The only thing is don't find so nice is your idea of forming rectangles in level selection screen. This might make it look inconsistent and confusing. I don't know...what the other think?

Anyway thanks for pointing these things out. If you had time for some mockups, it would really help. For instance key configuration needs some love.

[Edward_Lii]

Hello Tedium,

Main
• Change the vertical distance between the buttons when playing on a higher resolution. I know it's still WIP, but they are too close together.

Somehow I think it's better to leave the buttons close to each other.

Select Level
• Use a center alignment for the levelblocks. Having a small amount of levels on the far left looks very unbalanced.
• Try to form a rectangle rather than using the full screen-width for the levelblocks? Like having a 6 x 4 of 8 x 3 rectangle instead of 24 x 1 row?
• Place the time and recordings buttons and stats on the right, to make it look more balanced.
• Use my "inky" time and recordings icons , viewtopic.php?f=48&t=2929

Your new time and recordings icons are in the latest svn.
I also changed the placement of the time and recordings stats as you suggested.

Not sure about the centering of the levelblocks.

The only thing is don't find so nice is your idea of forming rectangles in level selection screen. This might make it look inconsistent and confusing. I don't know...what the other think?

I agree that it is strange to see different number of levelblocks in a row per levelpack.
But on the other hand 24 blocks in one row is perhaps a bit too much, I think it's better that instead of using a fixed offset from the left (and the right) we should use a percentage.
At 800x600 the levelblocks take 80%, if we do this with every resolution we won't get very long rows but not a fixed amount.

Edit Map
• The block configuration screens need improvement. Max length or sliders for the textboxes?

I think we should implement a max length, since every text should fit in a 800x600 screen and it isn't really needed to tell more than three lines of text per message.

Misc
• New sounds and music.

I understand that new more music is needed, but what sounds need to be replaced/updated/added?

• idle animation? Shouldn't be too hard.

I'll work on that.

• Replay menu. To view replays that aren't necessarily your personal record.

Not sure about that, is it really needed/wanted.
And where should we place it in the menu structure tree?

Bugfixes
• Still isn't fixed: viewtopic.php?f=48&t=2804

It should have been fixed but turned out that the fix didn't work.
But it should be fixed now in svn rev. 339.

Anyway, thanks for your suggestions.

[Tedium]

Thank you all for the feedback,

The only thing is don't find so nice is your idea of forming rectangles in level selection screen. This might make it look inconsistent and confusing. I don't know...what the other think?

I'm not too sure either .

I agree that it is strange to see different number of levelblocks in a row per levelpack.
But on the other hand 24 blocks in one row is perhaps a bit too much, I think it's better that instead of using a fixed offset from the left (and the right) we should use a percentage.
At 800x600 the levelblocks take 80%, if we do this with every resolution we won't get very long rows but not a fixed amount.

I think the idea of using certain % offsets is a good idea, but I still want the levelblocks to be centered.

I understand that new more music is needed, but what sounds need to be replaced/updated/added?

(Walk.wav seems obsolete) I want to hear new sounds (Spike death, squash death, fragile block breakdown, button being pressed and a victory sound) and music.

Not sure about that, is it really needed/wanted. And where should we place it in the menu structure tree?

Let's leave this for a later release...

Anyway thanks for pointing these things out. If you had time for some mockups, it would really help.

Here are my mock-ups:

• I've centered the row. I think bigger levelpacks need rows to be a certain % of the screen width.
• The slashes aren't aligned. Luckily this is hardly noticeable.
• Time and recordings buttons to the right. The distance between the right side of the time and recordings buttons and the right border is the same as the distance between the left side of the selected levelblock and the left border.

• Is the lowest value on the slider mute or do we need mute buttons or an indication to show that it's muted?
• About the buttons below: The buttons' centers are on 1/3 and 2/3 of the screen width.

• centered the row. Same system as the levelselect menu.
• About the buttons below: The buttons' centers are on 1/4, 2/4 and 3/4 of the screen width.

• Changed the "tabs", because I didn't really like them. I figured that the levelpack select system might work as well.
• By pressing an arrow button the "tabs" will rotate in the given direction.
• I also wanted to replace the * with logical text.
• An updateable addon can be highlighted. Perhaps selecting a highlighted addon should make the selection box yellowish, like the highlight itself?
• About the buttons below: The buttons' centers are on 1/3 and 2/3 of the screen width.
• If the update button appears below, the positioning should be as follows: 1/3, 1/2 and 2/3 of the screen width.
• I put the title on the same height as the others.

[odamite]

Hello,

Thanks Tedium for the great mockups. Your improvements in Addons look great but I would like to see the menu completely rethought. So that's why I would like to share my vision:

I know that in the next version the addon system will be improved quite a lot. So the menu should be interesting, simple and clean but full of information and easy to use.

I think that descriptions, icons and screenshots must be there. They will give much information for user to better select interesting content. But I see some problems with implementing these. First we need to have a good system to upload images with levels and other content. If we have this system in-game, there will be much things to implement to make it easy to use. Secondly some user created content won't have or have substandard quality images/description. This might give bad impression of overall quality of content.

[Tedium]

That looks amazing . I prefer yours above mine, because they looks more user-friendly and detailed.

Secondly some user created content won't have or have substandard quality images/description. This might give bad impression of overall quality of content.

Addons are user created. There shouldn't be too high standards since that might discourage potential contributors. Perhaps we can add a rating or popularity system to put the best content in front ?

[odamite]

Hello and thanks Tedium for the feedback.

I don't mean that we should remove/block content with bad description or some thing like that. But in my opinion it's not nice if some addon doesn't have any information. In worst case scenario there is level called "my level" which doesn't have any info. The level might be great but it doesn't look attractive in the list. Also I think that there shouldn't be descriptions like "MY FIRST LEVEL VERY GOOD PLAY NOW !!!1!!1!!".

I'm not sure if my idea of using icons is very good. I think that it's not so useful for levels or levelpacks as it's for themes. Screenshots will give better picture of the content. But without icons my mockup doesn't look so great. I think that icons should be very optional and we could have some nice default icons.

I agree that rating system is much needed. It will make the system work better and helps users to pick quality content. We could use like/dislike system which might be easier or more traditional 1-3/1-5 star system.

[Edward_Lii]

Hello odamite,

I don't mean that we should remove/block content with bad description or some thing like that. But in my opinion it's not nice if some addon doesn't have any information. In worst case scenario there is level called "my level" which doesn't have any info. The level might be great but it doesn't look attractive in the list. Also I think that there shouldn't be descriptions like "MY FIRST LEVEL VERY GOOD PLAY NOW !!!1!!1!!".

I agree that there needs to be some form of moderation.

The only problem I see is that if someone does his best (fun levels), but his description is poorly written, what should we do?
Reject his addon and tell him why? If English isn't his native language he won't be able to upload addons.
We can't start writing descriptions for them, because that would make moderating substantial harder.

I'm not sure if my idea of using icons is very good. I think that it's not so useful for levels or levelpacks as it's for themes. Screenshots will give better picture of the content. But without icons my mockup doesn't look so great. I think that icons should be very optional and we could have some nice default icons.

We should use a default icon but keep the possibility for custom icons.
These can be used in special cases like sequences for previous levelpacks (part in icon),

I agree that rating system is much needed. It will make the system work better and helps users to pick quality content. We could use like/dislike system which might be easier or more traditional 1-3/1-5 star system.

Although a like/dislike system doesn't allow to give accurate rating (good but not perfect) I think it's best since it's the simplest.
But perhaps we should only allow liking and no disliking?

One thing is clear, the new addon system will require a lot of work, both in-game as server side.
I think it's better to leave this for V0.5 so that we can take the time to create a stable system?

[ctdabomb]

The only problem I see is that if someone does his best (fun levels), but his description is poorly written, what should we do?
Reject his addon and tell him why? If English isn't his native language he won't be able to upload addons.
We can't start writing descriptions for them, because that would make moderating substantial harder.

If people want their addon added hard enough, they can write a good enough description for it. and if they are good enough to make a good level or 5, they are probably good enough to make a good description.

Although a like/dislike system doesn't allow to give accurate rating (good but not perfect) I think it's best since it's the simplest.
But perhaps we should only allow liking and no disliking?

what else would there be to do?

One thing is clear, the new addon system will require a lot of work, both in-game as server side.
I think it's better to leave this for V0.5 so that we can take the time to create a stable system?

yes. If it is going to work, take the time to make it work really well.

[Arjumand]

the last four are not in ubuntu software center. where else should I look to install them?

[Edward_Lii]

Hello Arjumand,

the last four are not in ubuntu software center. where else should I look to install them?

I'm not entirely sure what you're refering to. I assume you're talking about the addon levels visible in the last image of Tedium's post: http://forum.freegamedev.net/viewtopic.php?p=29128#p29128.
If that's the case, I'm sorry to dissapoint you, but those last four entries have never existed. They are for that mockup only.

In any case I hope you enjoyed the game. Sadly there hasn't been any development for quite some time now, so there probably won't be any new content.
(Though I would still like to revive the project at some point, but can't seem to find the time to do so. )