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i7 / kerkerkruip

Kerkerkruip - the interactive fiction roguelike game
kerkerkruip.org
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Add panels option to options page #82

Closed curiousdannii closed 11 years ago

curiousdannii commented 11 years ago

The panels option should be changeable in the options page

curiousdannii commented 11 years ago

Also, perhaps the question for new players could be altered and set both the graphics and panel options.

ektemple commented 11 years ago

Yeah, I can see having a NO to the new player's question silently turn off the panels as well as the graphics, on the assumption that the user prefers a simpler experience. That would make things easier for screenreader users while inconveniencing a minimal number of standard users.

But what would be the reasoning behind adding the panels to the options page?

curiousdannii commented 11 years ago

It was a comment from audiogames.net, that someone had looked there for a way to disable the panels, because they didn't know about the PANELS command. It seems like a simple enough addition, and the options page isn't overly crowded yet, so why not.

I think the help section might need a rewrite soon. That said, it's been a long while since I've looked at it.

ektemple commented 11 years ago

Yeah, why not? I think of PANELS as equivalent to VERBOSE/BRIEF and therefore not appropriate for an OPTIONS menu that controls stuff outside of the game proper, so I guess there's some clash between community expectations there!

curiousdannii commented 11 years ago

Verbose/brief could be changed in an options menu too. It started out as being just for resetting the game, but now that the graphical menu option is there, I think we could put all the options there. We can split it up into sections if that would be better. What do you think @VictorGijsbers?

ektemple commented 11 years ago

The Options menu is unfortunately not ideal for options like these, at least not without rewriting it so that's it built dynamically at runtime, because it can't tell you what the current state of the option is. You just have to put "toggle" and hope the player already knows it's not how she wants it to be.

curiousdannii commented 11 years ago

We can and should use text substitutions for that. It would also be good for the unlock everything option to say when that has already been done. I'm pretty sure the examples for Menus shows how that can be done.

ektemple commented 11 years ago

Well, my experience is that text substitutions, at least those that use "data value x", don't work in those tables. You may know the secret, but I've made various stabs at it, all fruitless.

curiousdannii commented 11 years ago

Ohhh, it's probably because I made them into indexed text columns (for the dynamic powers menu, which isn't currently in use.) Maybe we can let this sit until the next I7 version is released.

VictorGijsbers commented 11 years ago

OK, let's wait for the new Inform 7.

Speaking of which, I've been thinking about setting up a mailing list for prospective beta testers, to whom we could send a release candidate of the game about a week or so before we actually release it. This would be especially useful when the new Inform comes out, for who knows how many bugs that will introduce...

curiousdannii commented 11 years ago

How useful do you think it would be to have a system that would automatically compile each commit and put it somewhere online? It would be like kerkerkruip-latest.gblorb, except for each commit. (Maybe kerkerkruip-git.gblorb might be an appropriate name.) If you think that would help for testing, I could see what I could come up with. It would mean testers could use the latest code at any time, but without having to set up our build system. Which will be considerably easier with the next I7 version, but still harder than downloading a file.

VictorGijsbers commented 11 years ago

A nightly build would be awesome! (Or a commit-ly build, also fine. ;) )

ektemple commented 11 years ago

I'd just like to say that I don't think we should regard updating Kerkerkruip to the new Inform as mandatory. The current release works perfectly well. If this release is anything like the last one, it will likely take many, many hours of bug-hunting and workarounds to get it compatible. The benefits would have to be really high to outweigh that wasted hobbyist effort, IMO

I like the idea of a beta-testing crew quite a bit, and an auto-build of each commit and branch would probably be useful. Though it might be easier if we simply did a special commit that consisted of the latest gblorb itself for testing. That gblorb would then have a permanent web address, I believe (i.e., the github address for the raw file). Or am I wrong about that?

curiousdannii commented 11 years ago

I really want to update to the next Version because it will make working with our extensions easier - they will sit in the Materials folder and we'll never have to worry about copying them around. They'll always be up to date, and we can include any others we want too. I'm prepared to do the conversion work. There may be other new things we'll enjoy. I think the unification of text might be helpful in a few places (like menus).

It would be easy enough to include a built file in the repository, which could be accessed with the raw address. I'm up for the challenge of making a server to compile it automatically though.

VictorGijsbers commented 11 years ago

Rescheduling this to Future Flashy Release. (Since we're waiting for Inform.)