So... this is just a "would be nice to have" thing, I really don't want to sound like I'm making demands when not only has namida put a ton of work into NeoLemmix, but the result is that 12.10 looks really, really nice and is a
huge step up from previous versions
However, there are still problems, as evidenced by
this recent topic and my own struggles to find a window size that's exactly what I want.
NL's menu and preview screen have a native size of, I believe, 864 x 486. However, if I set my window to exactly that, then at 3x zoom, a 160-tall level doesn't quite fit and becomes vertically scrolling; but at 2x zoom there's a lot of unused space.
So, I've set my window to 864 x 560, which works best for me: 3 x 160 = 480 for the level and 2 x 40 = 80 for the skill panel. But then the menu isn't using the full space and there are black bars at top and bottom of both the main menu and the level preview. Not a huge problem, but not ideal.
Now suppose I want to try out high-res mode. The level area then has to be either 320 or 640 pixels tall, and I don't like how small the window is if I go with 320, so let's go with 640. I then
have to have the skill panel at 80, since 640 + 160 = 800 is already too tall for my monitor. So I set my window to 1280 x 720 and put high-res mode on. The result: everything works fine if I am using the full skill panel, but if I have the compact skill panel, the skill panel decides it wants the extra space and takes it away from the level area.
And even if I make suggestions that would be dead right for my monitor and preferences, that may well end up messing things around for someone who has a different monitor size or different preferences.
So, here are my suggestions, ordered from (what I guess would be) least to most radical:
* If the window isn't exactly in 16:9 proportions, the main menu should tile the background rather than having black bars.
* Settings should allow the user to control the zoom levels of level area and skill panel separately, to avert the "skill panel hogs the space" problem.
* Have a setting for how the preview window is split between level area and text space. If the text space is made taller than 9/16 of the width, centre the text and again, tile the background instead of black space.
* Instead of having to choose either the full or compact skill panel, allow the user to decide which buttons they want to have. (Of course, release rate and skill buttons would be mandatory, since even you have hotkeys, you need the buttons to see how many of each skill are available. Everything else, even pause and nuke, could be optional, since we assume that a user knowledgeable enough to go into settings and remove the pause button would also be able to set up a hotkey for pausing.) There could also be a setting for width of the minimap.