[SUGGESTION] [CONTENT] [ADDED] Improved buttons in main menu

Started by Nepster, January 16, 2016, 09:38:48 AM

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Nepster

Status: V1.40n has added improved buttons when playing packs that are made for (or upgraded to) V1.40n or higher; retroactively applyinging them to older packs is probably more hassle than it's worth.

Nepster

Problem: The default buttons used by LemMain and the FlexiToolkit are currently the ones used in the original lemmings, which are far from user-friendly.

Solution: Use new button texts as default. These should be something along the lines of
- F1: "Play" or "Play Level" instead of "1 Player"
- F2: "Password" or "Enter Password" instead of "New Level"
- F3: "Options" instead of a picture of two gears
- F6: same button but with "Talismans" (or perhaps something even more descriptive?) written over it.
- Esc: "Exit" instead of the slightly outdated "Exit 2 Dos"

At least these should be the default buttons for LemMain and be used for the Introduction Level Pack. Designers of already existing packs should be strongly encouraged to update their packs using the new buttons.
Whether to keep the old buttons in the original games for nostalgic reasons is up to debate.

This change wouldn't even be much work: LPIV already uses improved buttons for Play, Password and Exit. So these can be reused. (Thanks to namida for pointing this out)

namida

#2
This relates more to content than the player or LemMain themself, so I've modified the tag to that.

This does make sense, though. But I might put it off until I revise the MAIN.DAT system altogether. Although, at least changing the defaults in the next Flexi Tool update could be something to do a bit sooner...
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)

namida

#3
Alright, since I'm working on the change to allow using PNGs for many custom images rather than needing to customize MAIN.DAT (with the eventual goal of dropping MAIN.DAT altogether, but for a while it'll probably be a somewhat hybridized system, with fonts and animations coming from MAIN.DAT, while the single image type stuff comes from PNGs), I felt this was a good time to work on this change.

I didn't touch the default rank signs (I probably won't; especially now that adding them is simpler, I strongly encourage use of custom ones anyway, but if someone wants to make better default ones, I'll be happy to include them - let me know if you're interested in doing this, so I can give you the more-technical details of them), and didn't modify the config or talismans ones yet apart from adding the proper black borders.

Everything shown in the image is default (including the new default logo), except for the background - default background is the same as its always been, but it's just as modifiable via PNG files.

The new graphics would be automatically applied to any newly built packs, or those recompiled with new versions of the Flexi Toolkit; but like with the music change, it won't retroactively apply to existing NXPs (due in part to that this would mean having to detect whether they use custom images or not - annoying but possible - and whether or not replacing them with newer default ones is suitable, which is probably impossible to detect automatically).
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)

namida

With the release of V1.40n, I'd say we can consider this implemented. There's possibly room for further improvements to the images, but I'm fairly happy with them as they are. If anyone does want to make further improvements, feel free to PM them to me (use the defaults as a starting point) and if I like them, I'll integrate them into a future update.
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)