Posted: 6/2/2014 8:55 PM
Post subject: [Testing wanted] Hourglass-Resurrection menu re-vamp
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Warepire
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Every once in a while I have to take breaks from adding mouse support because it's very taxing and I don't want to burn out. One thing that has been bothering me about Hourglass have been the clunky GUI, in order to attempt to fix a few things I had to switch to a different menu generation method, so I re-vamped the menu layout in the process with the goal to make it easier to navigate. Please test navigation easiness / clarity! IMPORTANT: • The provided build is ONLY for comparing menu navigation and clarity with nitsuja's Hourglass r81. • It is NOT meant for TASing, due to this the .dll side is NOT included. • A lot of the existing functions are broken or unreachable for the moment, I am aware of this, do not point that out, they are meant to return in other locations. Here's the build: https://www.dropbox.com/s/homlf8n5uy4iqqk/HourglassResurrectionNewMenuLayoutTEST.rar
Posted: 6/3/2014 3:25 AM
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Ji-chan
Joined: 7/30/2013
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Looking nice. I like the save states list, the lack of it was annoying in r81. Good work!
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Posted: 6/3/2014 4:06 PM
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Warepire
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Thanks for testing Ji-chan! Would be much appreciated if there could be some more people taking a look and giving some feedback.
Posted: 6/3/2014 4:25 PM
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Tseralith
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It feels more structured now with sound, imput (and probably graphics as well later on) at the same place. Much easier to find and navigate them. I also like the new Movie menu, though I have a feeling it would fit better between File and Options instead to the far right. That way the Open Executable from File and Open Movie from Movie will be next to each other. Including the Frame Advance and the Capture AVI options in the Tool menu is a good call, however I'm unsure whether Load/Save States should be in File or Tool menu. I feel like it's considered a tool, but it's cluttered with so much already. The File menu is already quite empty too, so I'm not completely sure what the best option is. I guess Debug is either a new name for Runtime or just a placeholder for it. All in all it's a nice improvement. I like it.
"An artist who can’t take constructive critique on their work is only hurting themselves and their potential. Conversely, and artist that can’t communicate a critique in a constructive way isn’t helping anybody."
Posted: 6/3/2014 4:30 PM
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Masterjun
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So I looked around a bit and what I can already say is that it improved. Now it's more natural and comparable to other emulators. Though there are a few things I'd like to say. In my opinion the positioning of "Debug" should be between "Movie" and "Help" so that it goes: File, Options, Tools, Movie, Debug, Help. I would also switch the "Sound" and "Input" inside "Options" as it is important to configure the Hotkeys as you first use the emulator. I don't know how often it's used, but Debug > Logging > Print/Trace > (a lot of things)... looks like a lot of work to activate specific options and deactivate ones you don't want. Maybe another window with some checkboxes would be easier to use. But other than that, I really like the new grouping of stuff and the more familiar look of the menu. edit: I forgot one thing, I don't like the fact that hourglass has a "Stop Capture" option. I think it should only be there if you are actually recording or maybe it should replace the "Record Video" option. I'm used to stop the recording by going exactly where I started the recording in the menu (which didn't work in hourglass r81, making my encodes too long).
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Posted: 6/3/2014 5:10 PM
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Warepire
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Tseralith: In all emulators I have used Load/Save state have been in the File menu, I thought this was a "standard" of sorts. The ordering in which Movie is far from the File menu I took from VBA, since that is the emulator I used most, that is the flow I am used to and feels the most natural to me. I will consider moving the Movie menu closer to File. Masterjun: Consider Sound and Input switched. I agree that it would be a better flow and probably more in line with other emulators. Debug is now only for stuff to debug Hourglass itself, and in the future this menu will disappear from release-builds entirely. I will however still consider making it an option window instead as it may become easier to use for debugging purposes. Regarding the AVI capture, the way AVI capture is implemented in Hourglass might make that difficult, since the setting has to be sent directly, but nothing is captured until the first frame-event, this can make it tricky to collapse the menu items like that, but I do like that idea and it sounds better than what I have so far. I have to look at how the AVI capture is implemented and how much I can change the menu before an AVI rewrite is required. It's a lower priority for me at the moment as I would have to learn an entirely new thing, and I am currently learning GUI programming and DirectDraw. DirectDraw being quite hard to understand for this kind of usage. Thanks a lot for the feedback! More feedback would be much appreciated if anyone else wants to step up.
Posted: 6/3/2014 5:19 PM
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got4n
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Pretty neat, nice team guys!
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Posted: 6/3/2014 8:19 PM
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creaothceann
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My opinion? Remove the menu, use buttons. Navigating a menu quickly becomes an exercise in frustration, especially ones with many levels and toggles. "Options|Input|Enable Input/Hotkeys When|..." are probably the worst offenders here. The only positive thing about menus is that they're easy to program. "File" can be converted to 5 buttons ("Load State" and "Save State" in drop-down style for the file lists), "Options" and "Debug" can open non-modal windows, "Tools|Slow Motion" can be a dropdown text field (like the Zoom Level control in Acrobat Reader and other document viewers). If you keep the menu, at least don't Capitalize every single word.
Posted: 6/3/2014 8:38 PM
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Warepire
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Thanks for your opinion creaothceann. I have never been a fan of toolbars because lesser used functions often need to be searched for by image instead of text. Each to their own. The menu is staying, some commonly used functions will exist as buttons in the GUI. And I did my best to not stuff commonly used functionality in too deep sub-menus. Many menu items have already been cut (almost 50), in favor of becoming tick-boxes etc in popup windows later on or completely removed as they were only there to cause extra confusion. Capitalizing almost every word: Again, I thought this was a "standard" of sorts. I myself prefer it in lower case. Will fix that.
Posted: 6/3/2014 9:20 PM
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Scepheo
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creaothceann wrote:
If you keep the menu, at least don't Capitalize every single word.
Oh well, at least it's not VS2013, which has every menu item in all-caps. (FILE, EDIT, etc.). Warepire: Seems like you got it to work, looks good.
Posted: 6/4/2014 7:23 AM
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CoolKirby
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Much better! I especially like the new set of commands for AVI capturing; being able to stop dumping to AVI but keep the movie running should make things easier. I also like that the sound format options were removed. It was cool to see all the different options for audio output, but I don't think I ever would have changed any of them. I noticed that the entire Runtime menu has been taken out. Is that one of the aims of Hourglass-Resurrection, to allow games to run properly without the user having to manually configure those options?
Posted: 6/4/2014 1:12 PM
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Warepire
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CoolKirby wrote:
I noticed that the entire Runtime menu has been taken out. Is that one of the aims of Hourglass-Resurrection, to allow games to run properly without the user having to manually configure those options?
All those settings were only changeable when nothing was running, they will return in another form, but many of them are marked for deprecation as they are hacks covering up implementation faults or missing core functionality. Some however cannot be removed as they eliminate bugs caused by newer hardware running code not intended for it (Games using multi-threading but designed to run on a single-core CPU) or to work around poorly written localization handling (Japanese games needing Japanese locale for example).
Posted: 6/4/2014 1:21 PM
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feos
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Didn't read the thread, but if considering the hotkey approach, just print a hotkey for each menu item that has/allows it, don't remove the menus, both camps will be happy.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Posted: 6/4/2014 2:05 PM
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Warepire
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feos wrote:
Didn't read the thread, but if considering the hotkey approach, just print a hotkey for each menu item that has/allows it, don't remove the menus, both camps will be happy.
The idea is for every menu item to be able to have as many hotkeys as the user desires, and default hotkeys will be written along-side the menu items when it is in place. (And of course the hotkey text will update as hotkeys are changed).
Posted: 6/5/2014 7:42 AM
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arandomgameTASer
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Much better.
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Posted: 6/8/2014 5:32 PM
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Warepire
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Thanks for the feedback everyone, I went ahead and fixed a couple of things. I did not find a more suitable ordering that would put the Movie menu closer to File sadly, I am still open to moving it if someone can suggest a more suitable location that will not make it weird to access the other menus. Debug did however move to the very end (right before Help). And those wondering about those missing options, here's my current layout for opening an executable (Screen cap is from Visual Studio designer, so no pre-sets etc are visible):
Posted: 6/9/2014 7:59 PM
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creaothceann
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The system time edit box probably needs to be a bit larger if you want to let the user set the date, too. Btw. I'd go with YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss, or just provide one pull-down menu per digit group.
Posted: 6/9/2014 8:14 PM
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Warepire
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creaothceann wrote:
The system time edit box probably needs to be a bit larger if you want to let the user set the date, too. Btw. I'd go with YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss, or just provide one pull-down menu per digit group.
For now the old system is retained when one explicitly sets the DWORD counter to it's starting value. (Previous default was 6000) It should however be updated to (at least something similar to) a standard date-time format, but right now I consider this a lower priority issue.