Quick thoughts/past notes: I expect that the preferences will be driven a lot by what actual hardware folks are running on.
If you only have a display that does 1024x768, then the Oroboros is the likely winner. But if you have a higher res display, that probably isn't a first choice, as you have a lot more display area than it uses. Now it may be that the client should try and be smart and choose a best default layout based on various factors, like screen resolution. Same could be said for things like map size. A better approach may be to have a basic configuration program (or window) that is used first time client is run by user (no .crossfire file). A fair number of commercial games use that approach - configure the display resolution/quality you want to use, configure sound, etc. That, however, is a fair amount of work, and ideally, the configuration dialogs used within the client match those initial configuration ones (don't duplicate code, but also easier for an end user perspective - if you see one set of configuration dialog the first time you run it that doesn't match the one you see later, may be harder to know what config options you used before, etc) Note that one reason I put the map window in the upper left corner is that to some extent it made using different map sizes easier. But I do have to say I don't find it ideal either (but I'm not sure what I find ideal). I'm also not wild about the way the stats are displayed in all the layouts (which really isn't changed) - that is to say being in a single row: Str 5 Dex 6 Con 10, etc as that never seems really easy to find for me, and I can't think of any other game that displays them - doing them as a column, with column to the right (or maybe several) may be more readable and more effective use of space, eg: Str 6 Speed 0.50 Dex 10 Weapon Speed 0.80 Con 18 Damage 15 Int 14 WC 6 and so on. As an aside, since exp now has its own statbar, there really isn't much reason for there also to be a display in the stat area. _______________________________________________ crossfire mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
