Feedback on latest UI

[mklokocka]

Several points I have on the UI changes in the latest beta:

• [ ] Confusing levels.
• [ ] Patterns are not properly documented and the UX for them is bad. I would consider removing them until a better UX is thought through.
• [x] A lot of the settings from older versions are lost (I would bring back all of the relevant ones honestly, such as not deleting source files, disabling/enabling compression of BSA, etc.). The older formatting of the UI felt better as well.
• [x] Log in pop-up window would be better moved back into a separate tab - UI felt cleaner and more compact. However, the older versions had issues with scrolling jumping around to the end of log.
• [x] Logging could be improved (mesh optimizations logs when mesh optimizations disabled, filepaths would be very appreciated).

[Guekka]

Thanks for the feedback @mklokocka

The UI feels crowded if we integrate the log in the tabs

What do you think of hiding the main window during the process instead?

[mklokocka]

Hmm, actually you are probably right and it makes sense to have another window for the logs and progress.

[Guekka]

Can you give more details on confusing levels? Also, I'm open to suggestions regarding patterns

[mklokocka]

Re levels: I am not quite sure what is the point of them - I could probably see having a Simple and Advanced mods, with the simple mode using some sensible defaults per game profile, and advanced mode having full configurability (with options that do not make any sense just being omitted - what I mean by that is for example not showing Mesh optimizations tab for FNV - I think something like that is already happening in the "middle" level, but I am unsure).

Re patterns: In general I can see it being a useful functionality to fine tune configuration. However, I don't believe a lot of people would actually be using (and even understanding) them. Especially with the current UX.

To help the UX side I would probably:

1) Group the pattern selection with the configuration tabs, removing the (pattern) name from tabs as that would be implied by the grouping. 2) Rename pattern to file pattern to make it clearer what it represents. 3) Explain properly how a pattern is supposed to look like (I tried to put in some random strings, but I always got a pattern created just named *, so probably a bug somewhere).

Even with these changes, it's not clear how patterns would be prioritized (length of match with the filepath? order of patterns in some internal list?).

The BSA configuration also kinda stops making sense for patterns - i.e. what does it mean having pattern * with Create BSA enabled and pattern something with Create BSA disabled? Similarly to dummy plugin options etc. Would probably make sense to have a "global" BSA configuration with the basic options and a pattern specific configuration which would just have something like Pack into BSA.

Those are just some points that came into mind while thinking about it quickly, can't properly visualize it at the moment.

[Guekka]

I'm going to think about this, thanks

Re (patterns) and (general): these are present to differentiate between settings that apply to specific files (meshes, animations, textures) and settings that apply no matter what (bsa). So we already have that global BSA configuration, we just need a way to make it clearer

[mklokocka]

An interesting thing I noticed is when trying to purely resize textures:

1) Uncheck Process textures 2) Check resizing

Dry run shows that textures will be resized. Full run doesn't do anything.

After checking Process textures with compress textures and generate mipmaps unchecked, it works in full run.

Also it is questionable to remove mipmaps on resizing, without the "generate mipmaps" option checked. I think the behaviour should be to generate them if they are removed from the input due to resizing. Mipmaps are very important for proper functioning of the textures in game.

[mklokocka]

Another questionable choice is writing a lot of the internal settings from bethutil to settings.json without any validation that, for example, the formats are matching.

What this means that making changes to bethutil won't be noticed by users without regenerating their profiles.