State of Zelda Classic 2.5

[jman2050]

What's the complaint? Just look at it. It goes against every decent UI standard ever made. Let's look at a screenshot, shall we?

Holy fucking crap. This thing is a BEAST. And not in the awkward porno way. It's an insult to good UI design. Let's list through the problems here.

1. Bad placement. The golden rule of GUIs is to place the most important things at the top left, and the least important things at the bottom right. The whole thing is a mess. There's no real logical order to anything.

2. Too many options thrown at the user at once! Things are hidden behind sub-menus in most GUIs for a good reason. Throwing everything right into the users face is more likely to intimidate the user and wastes time, as the user has to spend more time visually scanning trying to find what they need. The only options that should be thrown directly into the user's face are the ones that need constant access.

3. The entire interface is... Cryptic, at best. Everything, when presented to the user, needs to be completely, 100% obvious. Any time that the user spends trying to figure out how to do shit is wasted productivity. Icons are almost always a big no-no, except for the most common, most obvious functions (New, Open, Save, Close Program, etc.)

4. Too big! Keyboard shortcuts are king. While they require a bit of memorization for new users, for experienced ones they're a godsend that shaves hours off of your work time. Not only is this interface not friendly at all to keyboard shortcuts, but the real estate the user has to move their mouse through just to get to stuff is daunting. Taking an extra second to do something may not seem like much, but when that something is something you have to do every few seconds... The wasted time and the frustration adds up quickly.

These are just my major complaints. I could go on all night about this if I felt like it.

These are all things we can take into consideration. The one thing that people seem to not be getting is that Large Mode in its current iteration is not final. Large mode will become the standard because I can no longer stand to shoehorn the GUI into a 320x240 pixel space. That doesn't mean that what you see is what you're gonna get no matter what. Obviously we can't please everyone, but we can look at different options and see what will work and what won't. The comments about things not being obvious, for example, is one I tend to agree with.

But, just to be clear, large mode is here to stay, so everyone please spend time thinking of how it can be improved instead of complaining that we should keep small mode around forever.

[Dark Nation]

I'd like to add that if someone can design a better GUI for the main screen (even if it means practically gutting the current way of doing things), then by all means, submit some mockups. If you want to generate text for your mockup, you can use the subscreen editor and edit a text object, then set the font to "Proportional", the screencap whatever you type. If you want the small font used on the main GUI, you can type your text into a message string, then assign it to a room, then look at the room info panel at the bottom to see the text in the small font.

I'd love to see what other people come up with.

Maybe we should have a contest or at least a collaboration.

[Pineconn]

I wouldn't say much of anything is wrong with the current GUI. My only complaint is the atrocious button icons at the bottom. If one thing needs to be fixed, we need to fix those icons.

[Deviance]

I wouldn't say much of anything is wrong with the current GUI. My only complaint is the atrocious button icons at the bottom. If one thing needs to be fixed, we need to fix those icons.

*Snickers* I do have to agree with the button icons. They are confusing as all hell. Maybe we should dump allegro and go SDL *gets shot*

[Ebola Zaire]

Yeah, instead of having little checkered boxes that we're supposed to see and think "Oh, those are the room warp destinations! Duh!" We could have, you know, text or something.

[Nicholas Steel]

They are confusing as all hell. Maybe we should dump allegro and go SDL *gets shot*

how does moving to SDL affect the interface design? I know, sarcasm :/

[Petoe]

More bugs have been fixed! That's about it.

Yeah, and more new bugs have born, right? Like always, it's a neverending cycle.

But thumbs up to the developers that they still haven't abandoned this hopeless project. However, seeing Dark Nation this active gives at least some hope, the guy is just that awesome. :)

[ShadowTiger]

Yeah, and more new bugs have born, right? Like always, it's a neverending cycle.

Holy crap, dude! Stop aging! Every second that you live, you get one second closer to death. Do you WANT To die!? Until you find that magical elixir, you're going to keep on aging no matter what you do. Same concept applies here with bugs. At least they're minor bugs and can be easily squashed. I mean, you say bugs like they're totally and completely game-stopping. Getting hit by a bus, for example, is a game-stopping bug. Getting a bad haircut is not.

Look forward to the future with a smile on your face. It's all we really have in this otherwise bleak human world.

Or, y'know, at least drop the pessimism. What good is it doing anyone?

[Shazza Dani]

Getting hit by a bus, for example, is a game-stopping bug. Getting a bad haircut is not.

Dude. A bad haircut SUCKS. ;_;

[cbailey78]

I am very proud of Dark Nation that he has been on task recently, I would say keep up the great work, Dark Nation! If I ever see him in person, I would make Christmas Cookies for him!