Polishing main screen to welcome 1.4 series

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Wesnothian Citizen
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Polishing main screen to welcome 1.4 series

Post by Wesnothian Citizen »

All,
I think feel that more polishing main screen is great in welcoming the 1.4 series and giving us immediate new fresh feeling inspite of all internal changes made.

Here is the idea

1) To let the main menu, logo and wesnoth tips hidden by default, so that we can admire the background map in detail and made them appear with 1 mouse click or spacebar.

2) To let the main manu options to have shortcut key, For example "M" for Multiplayer.

3) To break tutotial into few small lessons and player able to re-learn any particular lesson instead of start immediately even accidently click on Tutorial.

4) Slightly enlarge the version number and maybe put below the logo, instead of the bottom corner. (It represents our developers' hard work that we are proud of)

5) Hidden elements. For example, the bonus official campaign will only be unlocked if all official campaign done.
nataS
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Post by nataS »

Wesnothian Citizen wrote:1) To let the main menu, logo and wesnoth tips hidden by default, so that we can admire the background map in detail and made them appear with 1 mouse click or spacebar.
This is probably fun the first one/two times you see it, but from then it will only be an annoyance.
Wesnothian Citizen
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Post by Wesnothian Citizen »

This is probably fun the first one/two times you see it, but from then it will only be an annoyance.
Well, I think most of us never able to see the map in full detail since it is introduced and this map actually tell the main story of the game.

we can just hit the spacebar or 1 mouse click anytime to bring back the screen, should be atmost 2 seconds delay.
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DDR
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Post by DDR »

I think I will agree with Wesnothian Citizen on the general slant of his post, but wesnoth is all about the program working with you, not against you, so I am entirely against point #5. I like the idea, though. Wesnoth needs a new title screen... nataS states my issue with the first point. The third, I am neutral on, a good idea if executed correctly, but hard to. Point #4, I think needs to be carried farther, in that the whole screen is made anew. Sort of a face lift for Wesnoth, if you will... I wholly agree with point #2, though, keyboard shortcuts would be really nice! :)
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Post by turin »

On 3) - a wholehearted yes. It is extremely irritating, after accidentally clicking the Tutorial button, to have to wait for the WML to load (which takes a considerable amount of time) and then quit the tutorial... it should really make sure you want to play the tutorial before it loads it.
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irrevenant
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Post by irrevenant »

turin wrote:On 3) - a wholehearted yes. It is extremely irritating, after accidentally clicking the Tutorial button, to have to wait for the WML to load (which takes a considerable amount of time) and then quit the tutorial... it should really make sure you want to play the tutorial before it loads it.
IMO, it would be great to see something done about load times in general. Given how (comparatively) simple the data being loaded is, it takes an insane time to load things in Wesnoth.
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zookeeper
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Post by zookeeper »

turin wrote:On 3) - a wholehearted yes. It is extremely irritating, after accidentally clicking the Tutorial button, to have to wait for the WML to load (which takes a considerable amount of time) and then quit the tutorial... it should really make sure you want to play the tutorial before it loads it.
Loading screens should just have cancel buttons then. And ones that actually respond immediately, too...I hate cancel buttons which won't do anything for a while.
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Post by CIB »

Would such cancel buttons slow down the process?
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Chris NS
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Post by Chris NS »

Some of these ideas might work, but definitely not for 1.4. The development for 1.4 is now down to squishing the last few niggling bugs. The last thing you want at the moment is to introduce new features which are inevitably going to have some bugs in them.

Oh, and it's generally better to have one thread per idea, and propose one idea at a time. If you wait until 1.4 is released, attention will focus on the 1.5 branch, and that's the best time to propose radical changes.
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Post by Wesnothian Citizen »

I dont think #1, #2 and #4 will create lots of bugs to be implemented.
and very nice and convenient to be considered for minimal version polishing.

Except #5 maybe against wesnoth openess value and #3 relatively more complicated.

Anyway, I fully respect wesnoth team decision and ok if carry forward to 1.5 and 1.6 stable version next year.
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cool evil
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Post by cool evil »

What i think needs to be updated is the the general User Interface of wesnoth. It looks somewhat cartoony, and it gets boring after awhile. Why not change it to something that looks glossy?

The user interface in professional games are much more slick/polished. Like if you hover your mouse over a button you will hear a sound and you see the button transform, or we could have a short animation clip in the main menu, like a trailer or game footage, it doesn't have to be 3D animation, but it sure could be nice to have some.

If wesnoth can't be 3D, then there must be some way to compensate for the lack of fancy graphics, most of the latest open-source games have been 3D or at least somewhat shifted towards it. I'm still looking forward to silvertree at this moment but it seems a far way from being completed.
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Post by Velensk »

cool evil wrote:What i think needs to be updated is the the general User Interface of wesnoth. It looks somewhat cartoony, and it gets boring after awhile. Why not change it to something that looks glossy?

The user interface in professional games are much more slick/polished. Like if you hover your mouse over a button you will hear a sound and you see the button transform, or we could have a short animation clip in the main menu, like a trailer or game footage, it doesn't have to be 3D animation, but it sure could be nice to have some.

If wesnoth can't be 3D, then there must be some way to compensate for the lack of fancy graphics, most of the latest open-source games have been 3D or at least somewhat shifted towards it. I'm still looking forward to silvertree at this moment but it seems a far way from being completed.
Please no... I like the graphic style wesnoth has, it has a kind of old feel, but without any practical defects. Things don't need to be fancy, they need to feel right, and work well, and I think that what wesnoth has now would work allot better for the style of game it is than any of the stuff you suggested.
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Post by megane »

I personally despise 3d, and I especially hate it when people assume that 3d is innately better than 2d. Pretty much all the 3d games I've seen, including recent things like Crysis and Assassin's Creed, look cheap and overdone, whereas little ol' Chrono Trigger is one of the prettiest things you'll ever come across.
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Post by VS »

Uhm, this thread was about ui, not 3d, was it now...

Cool evil, what you describe is already possible or present. Buttons change on mouseover - just the change is very subtle. Look and you'll see :) They also make sounds when clicked.
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Post by Weeksy »

What I really would want is someone who knows what they're talking about, to put a little tutorial on writing themes, and perhaps a good bit on the wiki about what's themable and what isn't. If people knew how to write themes (and especially if a good way of downloading them off the addons server were added), I'm sure that some great guis would get made, some perhaps usable in mainline, and a few perhaps with features to be integrated into the default theme.
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