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Re: [Enigma-devel] Enigma 0.60-beta


From: Daniel Heck
Subject: Re: [Enigma-devel] Enigma 0.60-beta
Date: Sun, 15 Dec 2002 12:04:36 +0100

Marcio Luis Teixeira <address@hidden> wrote:

> But I was a bit sad that this version seemed a lot less
> "finished" than the 0.50 version. There are more things
> in this version that seem to call out the fact that it's
> not complete. See in particular my suggestions 5, 6, and 7
> below. I understand that this game is very far from version
> 1.0, but version 0.50 did a better job of hiding it. My suggestion
> for 0.60 release is that the new unfinished features be hidden
> behind a command line option of some sort (this includes levels
> that aren't fully tested).

> 1) The menu that shows up when you hit "ESC" during game play
>    needs a "Exit" menu option. Currently, the only way to end
>    the game is to do "ESC", hit "Abort Level", then "ESC"
>    three more times. Not particularly intuitive.

Right, I'll change that.

> 2) On the screen where you get to select the level, the last
>    two buttons should be labeled "First" and "Last" rather
>    than "Start" and "End" (another option: "Top" and "Bottom").
>    The reason is that I thought "Start" would start the game at
>    the selected level and that "End" would exit the game.
> 
>    A better idea might be to have these buttons along the right
>    side of the screen with scroll bar like icons for up and down
>    and cassette-style fast forward icons for "Start" and "End".

The level selection screen is not perfect, I agree. Using "|<  <  >  >|"
buttons is a good start, but there are also some buttons missing right
now that I will have to add sooner or later,like "Start", "Back",
"Easy/Hard", and "Timer on/off".  I'm not sure where to put them; maybe
moving all buttons to the right of the screen would be a good idea. 
I'll do some experiments this week.

> 3) The "Options" menu has a "Back" button, but the other
>    menus don't. I think they should all have a "Back" menu
>    for consistency.

Right, I will add those.

> 4) On the list of levels in the "Enigma" set, the titles for
>    #74 and #75 run into each other. Perhaps two lines ought
>    to be reserved for titles, or the titles be truncated
>    with "...".

That's because I put a reminder in the title that these levels don't
belong into the "enigma" menu. This will disappear in 0.60.

> 5) The "todo" levels don't look very professional. I liked
>    it how it was before, without the placeholder levels.
>    Maybe have the game hide "todo" levels unless a special
>    command line option is used to start the game?
>
>    I understand you guys are trying to perfectly clone
>    the original Oxyd games, but for people who aren't
>    familiar with the originals, this isn't really that
>    important.
> 
>    The grouping of levels is a nice feature, and might
>    be good once all the levels are complete, but you
>    may want to consider disabling this feature for the
>    0.60 release. The way version 0.50 did things made
>    the game look a lot more complete, 0.60 seems to
>    want to emphasize the fact that it isn't complete.

I see your point; the level grouping will certainly be confusing for
everyone who has never heard of Oxyd.  I just thought of a solution that
might work. Putting all levels into one single menu doesn't -- there
are too many of them by now (~140 I think).  But we may default to three
Menus "Easy", "Medium" and "Hard" instead of "Enigma", "Esprit", ...
This would also (partially) compensate for the fact that there is now
way to change the difficulty of particular levels. Adding an option to
group the levels by game would then be easy.

> 6) The "Editor" button doesn't do anything. This is
>    obvious, but I suggest not adding a button until
>    this feature is fully implemented and tested.
> 7) The "Test Level" shouldn't be the first level
>    in the game

Forgot to remove those, sorry.


Thanks for you comments!
Daniel

-- 
Daniel Heck                             address@hidden
Bergheimerstr. 137
69115 Heidelberg                                   tel +49-6221-656047



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