OK, been working on the simple menus option and it's just about done. Here's what I've done with it so far:
- Restored the chunky pictures, spinning cursor and Quake plaque for Main, Single and Multi.
- Stripped out all options from Main that weren't in ID Quake.
- Removed the Help/Ordering option from "advanced" menus.
- Made simple menus the default.
- Restored the simple Options menu to ID Quake items, without lookspring and lookstrafe, but with Save Current Configuration and Mouse Look.
- Removed all items from the simple Video menu aside from resolution and anisotropic filtering.
- Added a menu_simplemenus cvar to control the whole thing.
At the end of the day menu options - even quite overwhelming ones - are far less hostile to players who may not be familiar with Quake weirdness than the command-line or cvars can ever be, and I want to be able to leave a way open for these people to record demos, change games, play with fog, and suchlike if they are that way inclined.
Toggling Simple Menus off will immediately switch on the full effect, which - if anyone finds it scary - they can just switch off again quite easily.
So here's what we have:


I'm still open to suggestions along the lines of "if you're going to be playing with those other options, you really should also be familiar with cvars anyway", but I'd like it if any such suggestions also came with ideas for how to make the likes of the Demos menu more accessible.
There may be one or two other items to add to the simple Options menu (and possibly one or two to remove, like Screen Size - does anybody use that anymore?), but I think I'm pretty much there with it; I'm definitely not going to build a "simple menu" and then start going overboard with it!
8 comments:
The first screenshot definitely says "play Quake"; but, this is hard to say, since I'm used to it by now. If I was just getting into it and downloaded DirectQ for the first time, I'd want to play immediately, but I'd also want easy access to all the advanced options.
I say take it and run with it; we'll give you our feedback, but I think you're definitely on the right path: simple, easy to start with, but make the advanced stuff easy to get at also. And screen size, yeah, what does that matter these days?
BUT, who really plays Quake these days and says "I just want to play, I remember this game"? I'm sure a bunch would fall into that category, and all this is feedback, but if you step back and look at it from the big picture, what does all this mean?
I say run with it, if it's not too time-consuming. And as for the simple-menus, if you code it for those that just want to play, definitely keep it to where they can customize based on the modern computer they're playing on - who the heck is going to remember or worry about screen size these days? If you have a widescreen monitor, you want it to be widescreen from the get-go and not worry about anything else, other than shoot, jump and swim.
Not that it's already there, I'm just saying.
Some suggestions :)
(from 1.7.2)
Mostly the menus just need to be
consolidated and trimmed.
Get rid of Help/ordering (i see you did that, cool)
rename select game directory to something like "browse mods" this one and "content options" always throw me
rename "content options" to something more descriptive
something like "image formats"
..i cant think of anything good
but something else.
in game options, put movement/input options at the top, or even a directory up placing it into the main menu. Whenever I jump into a game thats the first place I go, and it feels weird for it to be so far down the menu.
in game options, move the section "configuration management" to the bottom, because after you change a bunch of settings going down the list, you'll be at the bottom of the list, so if you want to save changes the option should be there.
place special effects, fog water warp and chase camera into a sub directory called effects, calling special effects "lighting and filters" or something similar
I think after these changes are made there wont be 1 big menu and things will be grouped a little more expectedly. Thx :)
Oh and put load map under single player
if you are defaulting to "simple menus" [on] ..
..i think it would be more intuitive to rename that toggle to:
"advanced menus"
and default it to [off]
That way it implies that there are more advanced settings to play around with (only they are hidden),
rather then implying that the current menu is simple and in use..
(i mean someone using DirectQ for the first time would not expect anything else anyway)
=peg=
All good suggestions. :)
Let me see - because I'm using the original chunky pictures for the Main, Single Player and Multiplayer menus I can't add options to them. At the very least I'd like to keep the pic for Main, but preferably for all 3. The big friendly text kinda has some positive reinforcement along the lines of "yeah, this is where you wanna be, stuff you're going to want to do in order to play can be found here". Pity Quake doesn't have a bigfont.lmp available, or all problems would just go away so easily.
Agreed about changing the "Simple Menus" option to "Advanced Menus" and inverting the sense.
"Browse Mods" sounds good (thinks: find out what Q3A calls it and copy that). I think this one, Maps and Demos kinda logically group together, but I haven't yet found out the best way to expose them to the player.
I'm guessing that quite a lot of people just want to play. Every release I do is currently getting around 250-300 downloads, so it's reasonable to suspect that many of those are not involved in the community; people who remember Quake, might know what Direct3D is, and wonder if there is a Direct3D version of Quake. I might be wrong though.
Yes, Screen Size is gonna die.
"Pity Quake doesn't have a bigfont.lmp available, or all problems would just go away so easily." -- mhquake
I have a windows font that uses them big quake chars.. i think i could make a charset-image that would look more or less exactly like the quake menu font..
I don't know how legal that would be tho..
=peg=
Yup, I can make a charset at load/runtime by writing the font into a Bitmap object using GDI+, but at the end of the day it's an external dependency I don't want. If it ain't native Quake content it means trouble for the player and the possibility of breaking - or at least screwing with - a mod somewhere down the line.
yeah i figured as much..
ah well ;)
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