Minor suggestion for user interface

[Grautvornix]

First of all congratulations to designing and implementing such a phantastic and beautiful game! Played it since a few years now (starting in Alpha 0.20) with ever increasing admiration of artwork, historic alignment and game mechanics getting better and better with every version.

There is one small thing that I would like to suggest however:

The available mods windows (mod.io) window is obstructing the installed mods list, particularly the installed version numbers. Could it be possible to make that window moveable for checking if that particular mod version is already installed or not?

Sorry for the long text on such a minor item...

[Stan`]

It is unfortunatelt not supported by the engine to move windows around.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

7 minutes ago, Grautvornix said:

First of all congratulations to designing and implementing such a phantastic and beautiful game! Played it since a few years now (starting in Alpha 0.20) with ever increasing admiration of artwork, historic alignment and game mechanics getting better and better with every version.

There is one small thing that I would like to suggest however:

The available mods windows (mod.io) window is obstructing the installed mods list, particularly the installed version numbers. Could it be possible to make that window moveable for checking if that particular mod version is already installed or not?

Sorry for the long text on such a minor item...

There are several improvements I'd like to see with the general UI, akin to your suggestion. I find the mod.io download screen and the mod list screen in general to be kind of confusing. There are a lot of not-obvious things like the difference between a  mod "Name" and a mod "Label" and why mod names can't have spaces.

[Stan`]

11 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

mod "Name" and a mod "Label" and why mod names can't have spaces.

Labels can have spaces and are the pretty names.

Names cannot because then you run into all kind of funky stuff on different filesystems. They usually are the folder names.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Just now, Stan` said:

Names cannot because then you run into all kind of funky stuff on different filesystems. They usually are the folder names.

Right, the "Name" has to be identical to the folder name, else it won't work in multiplayer. @Freagarach and I ran into that trying to test Delenda Est one time. It's just unintuitive. To any normie, the "Name" of the mod should be Delenda Est, not delenda_est_a26 (which is identical to the folder name, also listed). Some attention needs to be given to such things, but of course I know manpower is always short.  Just noting the odd incongruencies for end-users. 

[Stan`]

Just now, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Right, the "Name" has to be identical to the folder name, else it won't work in multiplayer. @Freagarach and I ran into that trying to test Delenda Est one time. It's just unintuitive. To any normie, the "Name" of the mod should be Delenda Est, not delenda_est_a26 (which is identical to the folder name, also listed). Some attention needs to be given to such things, but of course I know manpower is always short.  Just noting the odd incongruencies for end-users. 

I mean IMHO we shouldn't display the Name, only the label and description. Name is a technical object and shouldn't be shown to non technical people.

[Grautvornix]

2 hours ago, Stan` said:

It is unfortunatelt not supported by the engine to move windows around.

Ok, fair enough.  This is really a minor inconvenience.

(As analternative, could the mod.io list be displayed below the installed mods list in the same window? Then, both what is installed and what is available for download would be visible simultaneously.  )

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

5 hours ago, Stan` said:

I mean IMHO we shouldn't display the Name, only the label and description. Name is a technical object and shouldn't be shown to non technical people.

The term is misused then. You still need the real "Name" of the mod, not just its description and folder name. lol

[Gurken Khan]

24 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

The term is misused then. You still need the real "Name" of the mod, not just its description and folder name. lol

Yeah. I cancelled my previous draft of a reply, because I didn't know what "Name" is supposed to mean.

Personally, I'd expect to see a "Name" like "Delenda Est" and maybe a version number. Why would I want something like a label or a path?

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

11 minutes ago, Gurken Khan said:

Yeah. I cancelled my previous draft of a reply, because I didn't know what "Name" is supposed to mean.

Personally, I'd expect to see a "Name" like "Delenda Est" and maybe a version number. Why would I want something like a label or a path?

Yeah, the path could maybe show up in a tooltip or something.

[Stan`]

2 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

The term is misused then. You still need the real "Name" of the mod, not just its description and folder name. lol

Well that's what Label is for?

Name: delenda_est_a26

Label: Delenda Est

Description : A nice mod. ?

 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

It should be:

             Name             Version    Description                        Dependencies      Website

<mod icon>   Delenda Est      0.0.26     An overhaul mod...blah blah        0ad>=0.0.26       http://

 

[Stan`]

1 hour ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

It should be:

             Name             Version    Description                        Dependencies      Website

<mod icon>   Delenda Est      0.0.26     An overhaul mod...blah blah        0ad>=0.0.26       http://

 

Yeah, but it will use the label behind the scenes probably  

[hyperion]

17 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Right, the "Name" has to be identical to the folder name

Just like public for 0ad.

 

12 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

The term is misused then. You still need the real "Name" of the mod, not just its description and folder name. lol

A unique identifier if a number often is called ID, if a human interpret-able string a name or qualified name. So the use here is perfectly valid. Label or Display Name are rather common denominators for what is shown in UI as "name".

Displaying the name property is sort of having debug info shown, same for Folder, so I agree with @Stan` to possibly drop those columns and rename Mod Label column but leaving the underling meaning untouched. This then ofc makes the Dependencies column less obvious to interpret and might require an adjustment as well.

 

The current mod selection screen really isn't that great. @wowgetoffyourcellphone, you seem to have a rather clear idea what you want the mod selection screen to look like, beyond just column names, mind sharing a mock-up?

 

PS: What I think would also be nice is having pyrogenesis be a multi-call binary, so if invoked as 0ad, it loads 0ad, if invoked as hyrule_conquest or delenda_est correspondingly.

[Stan`]

23 minutes ago, hyperion said:

 

PS: What I think would also be nice is having pyrogenesis be a multi-call binary, so if invoked as 0ad, it loads 0ad, if invoked as hyrule_conquest or delenda_est correspondingly.

alias hyrule_conquest 0ad -mod=hyrule_conquest ?

[hyperion]

8 minutes ago, Stan` said:

alias hyrule_conquest 0ad -mod=hyrule_conquest

Sure, but would be neat if plain pyrogenesis would pop up a neat game selection screen, where game would be any of the full conversion mods. Also does something like alias exist on Windows?

[Stan`]

2 hours ago, hyperion said:

Sure, but would be neat if plain pyrogenesis would pop up a neat game selection screen, where game would be any of the full conversion mods. Also does something like alias exist on Windows?

So basically a fancy mod selector, like what spring does and that got them in trouble ?  

Apparently so Console Aliases - Windows Console | Microsoft Docs

[smiley]

2 hours ago, hyperion said:

Sure, but would be neat if plain pyrogenesis would pop up a neat game selection screen, where game would be any of the full conversion mods.

Isn't this the existing behavior? Engine would start with mod mod which is pretty much a game selection screen.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

3 hours ago, hyperion said:

A unique identifier if a number often is called ID, if a human interpret-able string a name or qualified name. So the use here is perfectly valid. Label or Display Name are rather common denominators for what is shown in UI as "name".

C'mon. I'm talking about how it's presented to the end user, who likely knows nothing (and does not care) about how the files are organized on the backend. 

[alre]

14 minutes ago, Stan` said:

So basically a fancy mod selector, like what spring does and that got them in trouble ?  

how so? BAR is still like this, isn't it? 

[hyperion]

37 minutes ago, smiley said:

Isn't this the existing behavior? Engine would start with mod mod which is pretty much a game selection screen.

Not quite but similar. pyrogenesis would be like pyrogenesis -mod=mod but would only present main mods aka games in a fashion closer to the current map browser. Each game mod could have it's own (enabled) mod list modifiable by the current mod selector or a successor thereof which ofc would only present dependent mods then.

 

Well, this is only an idea that came up at the spur of the moment, not well thought out, it appears there might be issues, though I don't know what @Stan` was referring to when mentioning troubles for Spring.

[Stan`]

6 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

C'mon. I'm talking about how it's presented to the end user, who likely knows nothing (and does not care) about how the files are organized on the backend. 

Basically we all agree the UI is bad, just not about what to do on the backend  

6 hours ago, hyperion said:

 

Well, this is only an idea that came up at the spur of the moment, not well thought out, it appears there might be issues, though I don't know what @Stan` was referring to when mentioning troubles for Spring.

 

6 hours ago, alre said:

how so?

That would be https://video.fosdem.org/2020/K.3.201/gamedev_spring_steam.webm 

[hyperion]

20 minutes ago, Stan` said:

That would be https://video.fosdem.org/2020/K.3.201/gamedev_spring_steam.webm 

"You can't trust developers to do ui testing, because then they use text files", made my day

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

4 hours ago, Stan` said:

Basically we all agree the UI is bad, just not about what to do on the backend  

The backend is fine, but we can present it anyway we want to right?

[Stan`]

Yes.