Screen start box should not be a small square [EDITOR] [SUGGESTION]

Started by Nepster, April 12, 2017, 04:06:49 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 2 Guests are viewing this topic.

Nepster

In the new editor, the screen start box is a pretty small squear with diagonals. As the screen size can now change and the screen start position is now defined via the center on the level screen, I can totally understand why this change was made. On the other hand, the current setup doesn't give me any indication how much of the level an average player (like me! ;)) will see resp. where the borders actually are. Here are two suggestions, how to adapt the screen position indicator:
A) Simply resize the current box to 320x160 pixels (keeping the drawn diagonals), in the expectation that players will usually see roughly this size, especially if they updated to V10.13 from an earlier player version.
B) Or go fancy: Read the user's player setting file, in particular window size and zoom factor/full-screen. Then use these values to determine the size (in pixels) of the level screen and adapt the screen start rectangle according to them.

mobius

Yeah I think most people are going to have a screen size of the same kind of rectangle it's always been or similar anyway. I want the start screen indicator to indicate where the edges will be. Even if it's not exact. The new box is way too small.
everything by me: https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=5982.msg96035#msg96035

"Not knowing how near the truth is, we seek it far away."
-Hakuin Ekaku

"I have seen a heap of trouble in my life, and most of it has never come to pass" - Mark Twain


namida

There is the issue that 320x160 is no longer even close to a safe assumption for what portion of the level a user may have visible initially, unless that's the level's size exactly.

Instead, if we're wanting something better than the crossed box that marks the center, I think it's best to display a region (or perhaps two or three regions, even) that would represent a fairly common case.

From what I can gather, the most common screen sizes among the community appear to be 1920x1080, 1366x768 and 1024x768. These would give default zooms of 5x, 3x and 3x respectively, which (once the screen area used for the skill panel is subtracted - and I'm going to again assume default settings, ie: not the compact panel, here) give display areas of 384x184, 455x229 and 341x229. Perhaps if we display the screen start position with rectangles displaying these three sizes? We could perhaps take out the one for 1366x768 - I'm not sure here. On one hand, it is a VERY common display resolution, but on the other hand, it's just shy of defaulting to one zoom level higher, which means it gives somewhat unusual results in terms of how much level area is visible at the default zoom.
My projects
2D Lemmings: NeoLemmix (engine) | Lemmings Plus Series (level packs) | Doomsday Lemmings (level pack)
3D Lemmings: Loap (engine) | L3DEdit (level / graphics editor) | L3DUtils (replay / etc utility) | Lemmings Plus 3D (level pack)
Non-Lemmings: Commander Keen: Galaxy Reimagined (a Commander Keen fangame)