From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 6502 invoked by alias); 4 Sep 2004 17:46:02 -0000 Mailing-List: contact xconq7-help@sources.redhat.com; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: xconq7-owner@sources.redhat.com Received: (qmail 6494 invoked from network); 4 Sep 2004 17:46:01 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO rwcrmhc11.comcast.net) (204.127.198.35) by sourceware.org with SMTP; 4 Sep 2004 17:46:01 -0000 Received: from [192.168.181.128] (c-67-172-156-222.client.comcast.net[67.172.156.222]) by comcast.net (rwcrmhc11) with ESMTP id <2004090417460001300aur12e>; Sat, 4 Sep 2004 17:46:01 +0000 Message-ID: <4139FF56.9070801@phy.cmich.edu> Date: Sun, 05 Sep 2004 01:48:00 -0000 From: Eric McDonald User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 0.7.1 (Windows/20040626) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Lincoln Peters CC: Xconq list Subject: Re: Changing the Standard Game References: <20040903061032.12825.qmail@web13121.mail.yahoo.com> <1094277237.32432.6242.camel@localhost> In-Reply-To: <1094277237.32432.6242.camel@localhost> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-SW-Source: 2004/txt/msg01102.txt.bz2 Lincoln Peters wrote: > On Thu, 2004-09-02 at 23:10, Elijah Meeks wrote: > >>For most of the people who pop on here >>and post once or twice, this game IS XConq > > > A better interface (specifically a better "Welcome" screen) might make > it clearer to most players that Xconq is not just one game (important > for those who enjoy strategy games that are based on something other > than World War II). Well, I think that part of the problem might be simply that when you call one game the "standard" game, it implies that the others are either substandard or offshoots of it. When I first tried out Xconq back in 1999 or 2000, this was one of the things that kept me away from the other games. And I barely did more than open a few of the others before I abandoned Xconq then because the UI was not very good. Even when I came back to it in the middle of 2003, I started playing the Standard game on the Tcl/Tk interface, because I assumed (possibly correctly) that the Standard game would give me the best playing experience. There is this perception that the Standard game is brought to you by "the developers", whereas the other games are just made by "other people", if you know what I mean.... >I can envision a "Welcome" screen that looks like > the following (which, as usual, I designed with Glade without having to > write any code): Of course, code would still have to be added for event handlers for the various UI elements, so that a click on, say, a radio button will translate into the proper Xconq internals being updated. > http://homepage.mac.com/lmpeters/welcome1.png > http://homepage.mac.com/lmpeters/welcome2.png > http://homepage.mac.com/lmpeters/welcome3.png > http://homepage.mac.com/lmpeters/welcome4.png > http://homepage.mac.com/lmpeters/welcome5.png > http://homepage.mac.com/lmpeters/welcome6.png Looks interesting. > Furthermore, as soon as you click "Apply", you could theoretically jump > to the existing SDL interface and thus leave behind anything that even > remotely resembles an Office app. I would suggest the "Apply" button be relabelled to "Accept" or "Start Game". What you propose is interesting. This would certainly save time in the development of the startup screens, a task I have only half been looking forward to. The tradeoff is that the Windows installer would get quite a bit larger, because we cannot reasonably assume that a Windows user would have the GDK, GTK+, Pango, etc. libraries on his/her system. Eric