Extend options menu

[michalove]

Here we can collect what options should be available in the menu. Currently we only have key-assignment.

We should add:

• toggle fullscreen
• volume of sound and music

Do we need more?

[Germanunkol]

Since we might add more shaders we should probably add: Shaders on/off.

It might be that shaders work on a system but make it slow - this way people could manually make it run smoother.

[Germanunkol]

List of all available commands (feel free to edit):

• Toggle Fullscreen
• Toggle Shaders
• Toggle Shadows
• Toggle background Music (on, off)
• Sound effect volume (0% to 100%)
• Music volume (0% to 100%)
• Keyboard assignment (submenu)
• Gamepad assignment (another submenu)
• Graphics quality (slider or settings for background tiles, parallax)

[michalove]

I think we will remove the shadows altogether, so we don't need this option. At least, we don't have any use for the shadows gameplay-wise. But we can discuss this somewhere else. After all, you did all the work to get the shadows working in the game.

I also want to have an option for the graphic complexity. For example, when I turn of the parallax background the game runs faster (on my old machine). For accesibilty, we might want one of these two options:

• A slider for "graphics complexity" or "graphics quality", with maybe 3 or 4 different settings (turn of parallax, turn of background tiles...)
• A toggle for each of these (more transparent and more control for the player, but also more difficult to understand the meaning).

[Germanunkol]

I will think about it. If you have any preferences, which of the two we should use, please tell me. I need to implement sliders for the sound anyway (I think I'll use "descrete" sliders, i.e. steps of 10% for the volume) so they could be re-used for the graphics quality. I also think a parallax background without the tiled-background doesn't make much sense, so maybe we should just use the slider...?

[michalove]

Right. A slider will be enough.

[Germanunkol]

I started work on the new settings menu on the panelMenu branch. Could you give a bit of feedback on whether it's going into a good direction? I think some parts might be working well, but I don't want to continue if you don't like the overall look and feel.

Of course, as always, feel free to exchange images/animations. I'm just throwing together images so that I have something to work with some (the sound icon, for example) could look much better.

[michalove]

I like how it is. At some places we can experiment with the layout a bit, but these are only details. Besides these: Good work.

Here are the details, we can try:

• The slider-bars should look different. Maybe we should try a horizontal line with "ticks" and a thick slider on it. (Like this: http://www.fmsinc.com/microsoftaccess/controls/components/slider-bar/sliders.gif or maybe better without "ticks")
• I noticed that I don't like the look, when icons scale up and down by a small factor. The lines get very blurry. Maybe we should try to restrict ourself to jumping and similar things (We can do this afterwards, of course)
• We should put some thought into where we need text in the menus and where we can do without text. Deep in the options menu, we definitely need text. If someone is looking for something specific, he must be able to find it immediately. But where should the text be? Currently it is: "Text Ninja Icon CurrentSelection" Can we change this to "Ninja Icon CurrentSelection" and reformulate the Selection so that it is clear what this means. For example: Instead of Fullscreen ... on/off, we could simply write "Fullscreen" and "Windowed". And instead of "off" "simple" and "complex" we could put "complex background", "background off" and so on. I can't tell right now, if this is better or worse. Maybe we simply need to try it out.

[Germanunkol]

For the first point: I was actually thinking of using a piece of bamboo which "grows" to the right as you press the right key... The problem is that this doesn't scale well. But I can also make it more slider-like, that might be easier. Second: In the end, I'd ask you to modify the animations/images anyway, where needed. You have a hand for that and since it's now all in the animationDB, we can simply polish that later. It's no longer embedded into the menu code at all. Third: Done. You're right, this is much better. Do you like it the way it is now?

[michalove]

• Bamboo is cool, too. But I think the slider is easier to understand on first sight. We can test, what it looks like, if the slider itself is made of bamboo (and the line is just a black line).
• This is again one point where it pays off that we structured everything well :)
• I will have a look tonight

[Germanunkol]

I changed the look of the slider. Do you like it?

[michalove]

Yes, they are awesome.

[Germanunkol]

Update:

• [Done] Toggle Fullscreen
• [Done] Toggle Shaders
• [Not needed] Toggle Shadows
• [Not needed - set Volume to 0] Toggle background Music (on, off)
• [Done] Sound effect volume (0% to 100%)
• [Done] Music volume (0% to 100%)
• [Done] Keyboard assignment (submenu)
• [Done] Gamepad assignment (another submenu)
• [Done] Background quality

Some of these functions aren't assigned yet (music volume, parallax background settings) and some don't work perfectly yet (fullscreen switching is still slow), but menu-wise they're all done.

[michalove]

Cool. Thanks.

I might put all non-key-assignment options into one large menu. But otherwise, we are done here.

[Germanunkol]

Yes, I agree. The other menus are relatively small. I thought they'd be larger, but we don't really have that many options...