Re: [Help-liquidwar6] About rules.xml

[Christian Mauduit]

Hi,

On Mon, January 19, 2009 6:13 pm, Kasper Hviid wrote:
> I haven't seen breadcrumbs used in a program, except Adobe Bridge. It
> would be quite useful when navigating the extra-maps subfolders.
Yeah, extra-maps, that's where it's mandatory.

> It would also be possible to let all the navigation be based on the
> breadcrumbs, like this:
> http://img244.imageshack.us/img244/2094/breadcrumbsjw7.jpg
Nice. Will give it a try. But not a top-level priority I guess :/

> I think I have been using the escape key to step backward, so a back
> button might be a good idea.
OK.

> Sorry, I'll try again:
>
> My idea was some pictogram-like illustrations (such as toothed wheels
> for the options menu) to give the player some landmarks in the menu
> structure. I considered some simple pencil drawings.
>
> Technically, if the menus should have illustrations, it would probably
> be smartest to re-use the same code which is used to display the maps,
> which would mean that I would have to create a texture.jpeg and a
> texture-alpha.jpeg for each menu illustration.
>
> However, when I am in the 'Choose map' submenu, it takes about ½
> second to change from one map to the next. If it likewise would take ½
> second to go to navigate between submenus, because they had to load a
> fancy illustration, it would be uncool.
mmm, I see. Here is my position:

1) what you describe is sort of "associate a menu with an image", to fully
develop your idea, what we would need is sort of an "icon set" for
menuitems which would correspond to "backgrounds" for each menu. Well, you
mark point, indeed many GUI, typically wizards, installers, have big hudge
icons/backgrounds/animations, usually on the left tier of the window. That
might be an option in the long run. Rest that the whole set of
icons/backgrounds is yet to be drawn... That's a hell of a work.

2) regarding performance -> loading a 1600x1200 jpeg file is always slow.
1/2 second is still too long but LW6 does more than simply read a jpeg, it
performs various checks, has boundary controls, transforms the map into a
usable memory structure, resamples the jpeg if needed, and so on. A simply
jpeg could be loaded faster... but... there's a big but. There's one point
on which I'll be picky: menus should be extremely light and, moreover,
they should support "colorization", that is, use the colors of the map if
the player wants to. Problem : this colorization is slow on big textures.
But even without this, I think the navigationnal problems should be solved
without using such "brute force" solution as using hudge backgrounds.

I think there must be an intermediate solution, by combining breadcrumbs
and a *light* set of icons, ideally vectorial stuff, the situation can be
greatly improved.

> Anyways, I'm currently working at my very first map with layers. I
> think layer gives a good illusion of a 3rd dimension. So far, the map
> looks like this:
>
> http://img166.imageshack.us/img166/9657/mux2color1mp3.jpg
Wow!

Have a nice day,

Christian.

-- 
Christian Mauduit <address@hidden> - http://www.ufoot.org/ ___ __/\__
Liquid War 6 - http://www.gnu.org/software/liquidwar6/     / _")\~ \~/
"Les amis de la vérité sont ceux qui la cherchent et non _/ /   /_ o_\
ceux qui se vantent de l'avoir trouvée" - Condorcet     (__/      \/