UI improvements for 1.15

skyjake · 2014 Dec 15

We are getting close to the stable 1.15, so during the past few weeks I've been fine-tuning Doomsday's UI in various ways. Here's a gallery of all the changes:

General

Fixed inaccuracies when calculating font metrics with Qt's font rendering (Windows/X11), causing partially chopped text.
Mouse wheel events handle touchpads and actual mouse wheels separately (thanks to Qt 5) and now support Windows system preferences for the amount of lines to scroll per wheel step.
There's a new Close (x) icon shown next to destructive actions in the UI (delete, unload, etc.).
Windows: The light font weight is emulated by reducing opacity. (Light fonts are used in many places in the UI, for headings and to convey semantic information.)
Fixed the styling of the Aux Button widget (button with another small button inside).
Improved performance of UI background blurring (however, blurring the game view remains slow).
Menu annotations can be hidden if you already know what the actions do:

Home

Tweaked formatting of savegame info popups to match the text styles used elsewhere.
Savegames can be deleted via the Game Selection menu (Home screen or Switch Game dialog).
Task bar background is blurred in the Home screen.
Game filter controls at the top have a background that reduces clutter when scrolling the menu downward.

Tutorial

The progress widget has a new "dotted" mode suitable for step-by-step progress.
Tutorial: added button for navigating backwards and a position indicator.

Settings

Audio volumes are shown on a more intuitive 0..100 scale (the cvar ranges are still the 8-bit 0..255, though).
The MIDI soundfont can be chosen via the Audio Settings dialog using a native file picker.

Console

Reorganized the Console menu so that there are separate Log/Prompt menus.
The "Clear Log" action in the Log menu really deletes all entries from memory (and thus has the X icon).
There's now a "vid-fps" cvar for showing the FPS counter. While not instantly apparent, this is one of the handful new DS variable mappings made accessible via the simple console command syntax. At some point, the console internals will be migrated to run on Doomsday Script, so all the current variables are destined to be aliases for the real Config variables.

Vermil · 2014 Dec 16

May I suggest something like a bin icon for delete buttons instead of an X; just because X is also used by the UI and also OS' in general, to mean close.

Tiny other little thing; I note that in the HeXen save game dialog example, that it details if random class is selected. That seems kind of redundant information about a game that has already started; maybe it could be replaced with a field that states the players actual class instead?

Unless of course you plan a future enhancement where the players class randomly changes every time they die, respawn (i.e in MP) or enter a portal

The soundfont selector is a big step toward Dday without Snowberry (i.e Dday being able to open the OS' file browser)

I notice though, that it accepts any file currently, regardless of whether it's a soundfont file; if one selects a non-soundfont file, the UI still states it as the loaded soundfont, when really it isn't.

DaniJ · 2014 Dec 16

Re: Random classes in SavedSession info

SavedSession metadata includes a full copy of the game rule configuration at the time the game is saved. This includes (among other things) the current skill level and yes, whether or not player class randomization is enabled in Hexen.

Future versions will see more of the current game/server configuration reimplemented using game rules. So in time you'll see more info appear here.

UI improvements for 1.15

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