Tooltip to Cancel Replay

[kaywhyn]

Having played Lix recently, a suggestion for the wording when replaying actions after rewinding or restarting. Currently, it says "Replaying. To play, click into air." However, I think what you really meant was "cancel" instead. Moreover, I wonder if we can do better and say "left-click." I guess "click" kind of implies left-click instead of right-click, but it's a bit risky to make this assumption. I just checked and yea, right-click does not work to cancel the replay, in which case specifying "left-click" in the wording is most helpful

[Simon]

It must guide new players to do the right thing. "Cancel the replay" is clear to us; is it clear to the new player? It will be negative wording (cancel the unwanted replay) and forces you to first understand what the replay ist.

It's probably a wash because it still says explicitly "Replaying." and it's moderately easy to guess what that means. I'll have to user-test "to cancel the replay" vs. "to play" with complete newbies.

yoyoz considered the replay a bug and wanted to build NL from source to kill the replay. His wording is indeed that some actions are "replayed" and he didn't want that. "Click to cancel the replay" would have been clear for him.

Months ago, I had "Replaying. To play yourself, click into air." I cut the seemingly useless "yourself" for brevity. If you click, who else should be playing, other than yourself? I think I put the "yourself" to contrast with the replay's playing.

The idea behind "to play, click" is also to tell the newbie that he is not playing. This is an underhand explanation of what the replay does, it plays for you.



Click without context is always left-click, and shorter. Fewer words are easier and more enticing to read. I believe the lack of precision here doesn't mislead the newbie. To fail this, you'd have to right-click because that's somehow more natural, then be confused, then still never try left to click.

But I'm open to be convinced otherwise. Again, the goal is to get newbies to read the text, and get the cancelling right.

There is "click" elsewhere. E.g., in the replay tweaker (filmstrip button during play) when the replay is empty, the text will tell you to "Click some lix. Later, tweak" and it too means left-click. Do you want all of those changed? Or is the consistency sufficient (they all mean left-click)?

-- Simon

[kaywhyn]

It must guide new players to do the right thing. "Cancel the replay" is clear to us; is it clear to the new player?

Indeed, new players is what I had in mind, since as you said how to cancel a replay is already clear to players like you and me while probably not being as clear to newer players how to cancel the replay. In particular, I'm used to the clicking air behavior to cancel replay mode from NL, therefore I don't need to adjust or learn new replay cancelling behavior when I'm playing Lix You can also use the C key to cancel, but I never use that, only mouse clicks to do so.

Click without context is always left-click, and shorter. Fewer words are easier and more enticing to read. I believe the lack of precision here doesn't mislead the newbie. To fail this, you'd have to right-click because that's somehow more natural, then be confused, then still never try left to click.

I haven't seen an option to invert the mouse clicks in the game, but if there was, then left-clicks will fail to cancel the replay instead of the other way

There is "click" elsewhere. E.g., in the replay tweaker (filmstrip button during play) when the replay is empty, the text will tell you to "Click some lix. Later, tweak" and it too means left-click. Do you want all of those changed? Or is the consistency sufficient (they all mean left-click)?

Just a mention of left-click for replay cancelling is enough IMO. No need to explicitly write it out for the replay tweaker, though for me it doesn't matter because I never use it anyway, whether in Lix or NL

[Simon]

I'll user-test some wordings:

"Replaying. To play, click into air." (as in current 0.10.15 and before)
"Replaying. To cancel, click into air."
"Replaying. To interrupt, click into air."
"Replaying. To cancel the replay, click into air."
"Replay is running. To cut it, click into air."

Forestidia says: WinLemm had two buttons to restart the level:

• Restart (= restart without replay), and
  
• Action Replay (= restart with replay, you can click to interrupt).
  

Even with these two buttons, the replay was confusing. When you see the mechanism for the first time, you don't exepct the action replay at all because games normally don't do this on their own.

-- Simon

[Forestidia86]

Forestidia says: WinLemm had two buttons to restart the level:

• Restart (= restart without replay), and
  
• Action Replay (= restart with replay, you can click to interrupt).
  

Even with these two buttons, the replay was confusing. When you see the mechanism for the first time, you don't exepct the action replay at all because games normally don't do this on their own.

My memory was a bit foggy. The restart without replay button wasn't called Restart but Replay Level.

[Simon]

"Replaying. Click to play from here."

We came up with this in Vienna. The "Replaying." conveys lots of information and is succinct. Let's keep it at the front of the message. This full message ("Replaying. Click to play from here.") also emphasizes how replaying is different from playing.

If nobody has opinions on this, I'll put it into the next version.

-- Simon