Sorting skills in panel

[Simon]

Hi,

a frequent complaint by new users is how the skillset isn't sorted. Experienced users still have to look at the skillset at the onset of each singleplayer level. What shall we do now?

Sorting is generally nice, and custom sort-order dosen't seem worthy to implement. Maybe a sort-yes-or-no option that's on by default, that's okay. A full-blown sort order editor seems of too little use compared to its complexity.

[18:38] <SimonN> I'm considering dishing out a WIP version with mandatory sorting, and ask people to use that for a week or two
[18:40] <SimonN> thinking about it for several days now, the correct order in the right half is exploder-batter-blocker-cuber-builder-...
[18:40] <SimonN> and you and Clam make convincing arguments for why walker shouldn't come first [instead climber-floater-runner shall come first]; on the other hand, Fitts' law (button in corner is very easy to click) suggests walker first, and Neolemmix has it first also

But let's first see what you guys think.

I can post more considerations from IRC later.

geoo's proposal: climber, floater, runner, walker, jumper, batter, exploder, blocker, cuber, builder, platformer, basher, miner, digger
Clam's proposal
My proposal

-- Simon

[namida]

Personally I'd think Platformer should come before Builder, but that may just be the NeoLemmix influence talking - more importantly though, I think the two should be a bit more visually distinguishable, as they're curently quite similar (eg. in NeoLemmix, Platformer and Stacker have green bricks showing the direction of building, which stand out quite strongly). Also, should Batter really be between Exploder and Blocker? I think it'd make more sense to put it before exploder (or after Cuber, maybe). Apart from that, your proposal seems pretty good.

[Simon]

namida: Platformer/Builder icon is noted, and will become more distinctive once I feel creative/inventive.

About the ordering, here's the next radical idea.



Allow only one exploder per level, and present all skills in a fixed order. In the currently-forced resolution of 640x480, a button is now 34 pixels in length, not 40.

Maybe make the order customizable, but that's not the main problem right now.

If you want to test this, here's a work-in-progress Windows executable. Right now, only 12 skills are allowed at any one time, that limit can be lifted later. Skill buttons may be ugly in the editor skill dialog, and the in-play panel is a little ugly still.

Can we cut the runner from the game? Probably not, Proxima uses it in Charge of the Lix Brigade >_>; The lemforum pack uses it in about 20 levels, and Clam/Rubix use it in 30-40 singleplayer levels each.

-- Simon

[namida]

I believe the use of both exploders was nessecary for the remake of LPII's Panic Attack (in the community pack), though I haven't played the renake so I'm not sure exactly why.

[GigaLem]

This biggest problem with it is
the F-Keys
how do we adjust with 3 left over
do we make a hot key option in lix for the remaining 3
like
Slot 13[?]
Slot 14[?]
Slot 15[?]

[namida]

Get a keyboard that has more F keys.

[GigaLem]

Arn't those mac-only?

[namida]

There's a Mac version of Lix.

[ccexplore]

Experienced users still have to look at the skillset at the onset of each singleplayer level.

To be fair, I think I look at the skill set multiple times anyway when solving a level as part of working out various potential solution ideas.  I can understand some people wanting a fixed skill ordering there, but it's not that big a deal for me.

namida: Platformer/Builder icon is noted

I'm living proof of this as I had confused the two multiple times during my limited time with MP.  Maybe icon designs more similar to Lemmings 2's will help w/o requiring too much creativity/inventiveness.

Allow only one exploder per level, and present all skills in a fixed order. In the currently-forced resolution of 640x480, a button is now 34 pixels in length, not 40.

It might sound okay on first glance, but on further thought:
- "allowing only 1 exploder" seem to be bringing in baggage from the separate debate around the "two different" exploders currently present in Lix.  For example if we later decide to give the flinging exploder a more distinctly different skill name and icon, the restriction would feel slightly unnatural.
- we sure we don't want to ever add a new skill to Lix?  Sure, we can choose to redesign after that actually happens--and then people who are used to having all skills present would complain.
- namida's comments notwithstanding, Giga's observation seems valid--if we want to also implement a positional key system as a newbie option, it doesn't seem to work too well with the proposal to have all skills present
- speaking of new skills, I could be mistaken but I seem to recall we already have one (sort of) courtesy of NaOH's contribution to the community set.  Where will the "burner" skill fit in with your proposal?

With all that said, I'm not completely opposed to this proposal, just wonder if it's worth creating other potential problems for.

[Simon]

Thrown-together L2-inspired icons:



12 keys in a row are a problematic choice anyway. I discourage new players from using this. Aligning the buttons in a key-position-matching grid would force me to guess the user's keyboard layout (not hotkey choice -- the operating system's keyboard layout), and violate Fitts's law, by not aligning stuff along the screen edge for mouse users.

ccexplore, thanks for the many reasons. Unnatural merging of to-be-distinct exploders, hmm. Will ponder some more. Reasons like these is exactly why I'm throwing around loose ideas right now.

About the burner: I'd cut the assignable burner, as I've proposed to cut having both exploders in the same level. When only one or two levels rely on them, schematic usability guidelines take priority. When a whole community with many levels relies on them, that's a grown-out environment to serve.

The annoying situation right now is: We have 12 panels for 14/15 skills, that's extremely weird. Having absolute positions for these 14/15 is standard. I really want to do at least something here. Offering only a subset made sense for L2, where the entire set was much larger than the largest offerable subset.

-- Simon

[GigaLem]

That makes it less confusing

[namida]

Definitely like the improved icons!

[ccexplore]

What do you think of moving some of the buttons like zoom and single-step to the row above (ie the row where the SI buttons are currently located)?  Not sure how feasible it is to redesign their icons to fit he much smaller height (or whether there'd be enough horizontal room in that row to fit more buttons), but it would definitely provide more space in the skills buttons row.

[Simon]

Hmm, so you'd feel 14 buttons to be too crowding in the current setup. This was my initial hunch. However, I'd say 12 buttons were already too much then. Possible fix: Making the icons a tiny bit smaller, and printing the white numbers slightly thinner, by 1 pixel in width or so per digit.

I was discussing this with Clam in IRC before:

[11:35] <SimonN> the other control buttons in the lower right, they must be somewhere, to keep the interface discoverable. They can't be cut
[11:38] <SimonN> the cramming is a serious downside
[11:39] <SimonN> people already complain when the status bar is overwritten with mouse-over stuff
[11:39] <SimonN> shortening the status bar would lead to overwritage with '3 Platformers (RCF)'

So, if 14/15 buttons are the correct solution, but are too cramming, I'd have to enlargen the GUI bar, or add a second GUI bar at the top/left/right.

I'm a little reluctant to make ffwd, zzz, restart, nuke all as tiny as the savestate/loadstate buttons, and then pile them all into the lower right corner. This would gain one panel width over what we have now. It's something to keep in the back of the head.

[12:04] <Clam> so here you have 15 (or more?) distinct "resources" (compared to Starcraft's 3 resources, or Age of Empires's 5)
[12:05] <SimonN> yes, and they are clickable buttons
[12:05] <SimonN> so must be large and nice, everything else is bad
[12:07] <SimonN> I've considered putting the skill buttons along the left/right side
[12:08] <SimonN> then have the entire bottom for the status bar and control GUI buttons, but that bar would require less space than the buttons
[12:08] <SimonN> this makes the screen more tall than wide, not sure how good that is
[12:10] <SimonN> oh my, why is this so hard, I'm sure 14 sorted buttons in a row is the local optimum, without reordering everything

For comparison, here's the L1 bar shown against the 14-button Lix bar:



Each single button is still wider than what L1 did. Minimap isn't feasible on y-scrolling maps. Of course, what L1 did is bad surprisingly often, compared to modern UI design. So being wider than L1 isn't a saving grace yet.

Materializing my idea from the beginning of this post: Printing the 2-digit numbers with the narrower font alleviates some of the crammy feel. 3-digit numbers need some further fixing, they're too wide now.



-- Simon

[namida]

Is there a limit on how many skills a single level can have? If so, a possible solution may be to dynamically resize the empty slots, and perhaps (if nessecary) abbreviate multiple empty slots to just a single one.