Interface improvement

[spaar]

The current interface is rather ugly, ideally a skin closer to the game should be provided. Additionally filtering methods and a clear button for the console would be nice.

• [x] Looks, ideally a skin closer to the game
• [x] Filtering of console messages
• [x] Font
• [ ] Save window positions in Configuration

[ZiMMy]

Would a Consolas font be suitable for the console?

[spaar]

I think Consolas would work quite well. It's monospace and designed for code or code-like things. Do you know anything about its availability? I'm pretty sure it's shipped with Windows, but is it also availble on Mac and Linux? Or does the game/Unity already contain it?

[ZiMMy]

It's pre-installed on Windows only. We can include it as a resource, though.

The game only contain Arial and GOST Common fonts, AFAIR. And I don't think there is a monospaced font available on all systems by default.

[spaar]

Can we include it though? Since it's by Microsoft, I'm not sure if its license would allow that. I realize it's unlikely to get any problems due to it but I'd still rather not violate any licenses with this project.

[ZiMMy]

Oh well, then we can use Inconsolata, for example, or any font from https://www.google.com/fonts I like Droid Sans Mono and Cousine.

Is support of non-latin characters needed btw?

[spaar]

Inconsolata looks nice. Also, thanks for the link to Google Fonts, never knew that existed.

I don't think that's particularly important since Besiege doesn't support any language other than English itself at the moment.

[ZiMMy]

Do we need a feature to save window positions to the config?

[spaar]

I suppose that would be a nice-to-have. I wouldn't say it's too high on the priority list though, some other stuff would be first. I'll make a check-list in the top post and include it there.

[ZiMMy]

Actually, I think we need some sort of plan. Let's add all critical and urgent things that must be done to the issues list and then you create a milestone (that includes them) for the next release. After implementing all of them and testing, release a new version.

Then begin implementing next new features.

[spaar]

Sounds good. I was actually thinking, what do you think about the next version being 0.2 instead of 0.1.4? It's starting to become a pretty big update and also introduces API changes for mod developers (while staying backwards-compatible for now).

[ZiMMy]

I'm for 0.2

[spaar]

Okay, that's at least 2/3, I'll call it that.

[spaar]

Do you think I should add this to the milestone? I think we can postpone pretty much all of this to a future version, the next update is already getting big and this isn't really critical.

[ZiMMy]

My list:

• https://github.com/spaar/besiege-modloader/issues/20 - critical
• https://github.com/spaar/besiege-modloader/issues/2 - only KeySettings window (make it more tidy and compact, I can do it), others later
• clear button for the console

Everything else isn't urgent and works fine enough.

[spaar]

Sounds good. So... should I add the issue to the milestone or not?

[ZiMMy]

This one? Probably not. We're only gonna solve a small part of it.

[L3tum]

I was currently coding on the console...should I make a separate issue for that? Also, I'd like to chat on something else than GitHub, because the different chats are hard to follow and my E-Mail gets spammed^^

[L3tum]

Oh, and also, if I have time, I'll make a pr for the changes to the keys...I think. I have to look what you've done so far.

[ZiMMy]

Let's create a skype group?

[spaar]

Meh, does that mean I need to install Skype? ^^ But sure, sounds good.

[L3tum]

Yeah, skype group sounds good...at least better than GitHub... Also, I'd like to make a rule that there are only pr in the morning and in the afternoon, and one per day there you upload everything... it's kinda hard because I updated my project, then next commit, updated it, next commit...^^

[spaar]

I don't like that idea at all. There should be one pull request per change or one per related group of changes, not one per day. With git it, new commits appearing while you work shouldn't be a huge problem. Unless the commit significantly altered the code you were working on, it should be easy to integrate. And if it did change the code you were working on significantly, moving it to another time wouldn't really change that either. You don't necessarily immediately need to merge/rebase after each commit, just before pushing/creating a PR.

[L3tum]

Yeah, but it's hard to stay up to date if you're not online for a day or so. Like..for example, I was working on the config, and then commit, and I have to check if I have already done this or if I need to merge it.

[spaar]

I can see how it becomes problematic if two people are working on the same feature at the same time. Still, I think a time limit is not at all a good way to deal with this.

Also, just wanted to say: I decided to add both of you as collaborators again. Nevertheless, please create a pull request for any significant changes so that at least one other person can look over the code. It's alright to just commit&push small changes though.

[L3tum]

Ok, thanks :) Yeah, it was the first idea that came up in my mind... It's hard to make something like this if you're not a company or something... Maybe no time limit, but to try to make most of the changes together? Like not 10 prs per hour, rather collect them together or something..

[L3tum]

@ZiMMy maybe a Whatsapp group? Skype sucks my RAM out and together with Visual Studio my PC would get pretty slow(it's 4 years old^^)

[ZiMMy]

How about Raidcall or Teamspeak?

[spaar]

I would be fine with all options discussed so far, though I have never used Raidcall. But if it works, why not? Another suggestion: Slack. I've never used that either but it seems to be quite popular with developers and apparently has nice GitHub integration. Might be worth a try.

[L3tum]

I don't know Raidcall^^ And Teamspeak could be a problem since we're all not native english speakers and probably hard to understand. Slack is as far as I can see very good. It seems that they also have an app, don't they?

[spaar]

Indeed, they have clients for iOS, Android, Windows and Mac.

[ZiMMy]

@L3tum We don't have to use voice communication, every client has a text chat.

[L3tum]

Yeah, but the TS client's text chat isn't very....good or much used^^

[spaar]

So, what's your favorite idea of these? They won't do much good until we actually do something ;) My favorite would be Slack. As I said, I have no experience with it, but it looks pretty nice. Whatever one we try first, we can of course always switch again if we don't like it anyway.

[L3tum]

I would prefer Slack, too. I haven't got experience, too, but it looks pretty nice and capable. We could also write our own communication client ;)

[L3tum]

You have to provide a company name for slack.

[spaar]

Give me a few minutes, I'll set something up.

[spaar]

Alright, I set up a team. You'll need to send me your email address to which I should send an invitation. Don't really care how, you can post it here, PM in the forums or whatever.

[spaar]

Closing this, the interface is very much reworked at this point and looks great (IMO).