Given the statistics above, I would like to discuss the following changes:
Remove all debug optionsNone seem to be using them, so it seems safe to remove them completely.
Remove option "Only Cancel Replay on Cancel Hotkey"As noone uses this option, this seems a pretty obvious candidate for culling.
Reduce options in "Manually Saved Replay Naming"It seems that adding timestamps supersedes asking for overwriting files, so I suggest culling the option "Auto, Confirm Overwrite".
Regarding "Auto, Overwrite Old File": Exit is the only one using it. As Exit auto-saves all replays anyway and does not use the "Save Replay" hotkey, I suspect this setting gets very little usage as well. Exit, are my assumptions on your usage correct? If so, I would recommend culling this option, too.
Remove or replace option "Don't Replay After Backwards Frameskip"Apjjm is the only one using this option. Could you please tell us how important this setting is to you?
IIRC, möbius suggested this option, but complains that it doesn't work as he expects. So perhaps instead of completely removing this option, we can replace it by something that möbius and Apjjm like better?
Improve Online optionsWhile the basic online features seem very well-liked, the more specialized ones seem less used. So I wonder whether we should replace them by buttons on the option menu? E.g. one could have one button that displays either
- "Try downloading new NL version" (if basic online features are disabled) or
- "Download new NL version" (if basic online features are enabled and NL out of date) or
- "NL is up to date" (if basic online features are enabled and one uses the current NL version)
But this might need a longer and more detailed discussion, so perhaps this thread is not the ideal place to put this suggestion forward.
Remove option "Lemming Count Blink"Currently only Gronkling is using this option, who I would like to encourage sharing their thoughts on this option. Personally I feel that this is a relic from the times, where only the "total-save-requirement" got displayed and not the "still-to-save" and "currently-living-lems". So depending on Gronklings opinions, we might decide that this option is obsolete now.
Disable success and failure jingle by defaultCurrently these jingles are enabled by default, but the majority changed this setting. So I think the default should reflect this in the future.
Reformulate option settings to avoid double negationsWhen compiling the results of this poll, I realized that some of the options are formulated using a negation. They are probably better understandable if we reformulate them in a positive way. To cite
Microsoft's User Interface Principles:
When writing the text for a check box, make sure it is easy to know what will happen when it is selected and when it is unselected, or cleared. The recommended option is to write the text directly as the result of the check box being selected. For example, write "Send me helpful information from your partners" instead of "Do not send me helpful information from your partners." While I can imagine many marketing people arguing about this particular example, I'm sure you know what I mean.
So I propose the following changes:
OLD | NEW |
Don't Replay After Backwards Frameskip | Replay After Backwards Frameskip |
Disable Background Images | Display Background Images |
Disable Skill Shadows | Display Skill Shadows |
Moreover (but less importantly) I suggest the following changes:
OLD | NEW |
Save Successful Replays Automatically | Automatically Save Successful Replays |
Enable Online Features | Use Online Features |
Enable Update Check | Notify me of new NeoLemmix versions |
Remove some of the less-used hotkeysSpecial Skip: This is a very recent addition, so let's keep it for now.
Select Unused Lem: Only namida uses this hotkey and even him only very rarely. It might be useful for talismans demanding no more than one skill per lemming, but as far as I know only 5 such talismans exist at all (and all of them in LPI-IV). So I suggest culling this hotkey.
Cheat: I am the only one using this hotkey regularly, so I say: Cull this hotkey!
Show Athlete Info: Only IchoTolot uses this hotkey. While I can see that it might be in some situations useful, it doesn't seem important to most players. So depending on IchoTolot's opinion, I would either cull this hotkey completely or at least do not assign any default key to this function.
Replay Insert Mode: At the moment only namida is using this, but this might again be due to being a relatively recent addition. So I would suggest keeping it for now, but check again after a few months, whether usage has increased or not.
Next/Prev Skill: Only Exit is using this hotkey. Given that we have specific hotkeys for skills and buttons on the screen, I wonder whether these hotkeys should be kept. Depending on Exit's opinions, I would either cull this hotkey completely or at least do not assign any default key to these functions.
Release Mouse: Given that this is only useful in windowed mode, 2 users out of 5 is not too bad. So let's keep this for now.
Nuke: Simon and bsmith are using this hotkey. Simon doesn't say anything about how often he uses this hotkey and bsmith uses it "less often but still regularly". As we have a quit hotkey and a nuke button, I would like further feedback, especially from Simon and bsmith whether this hotkey should be kept.
Inc/Dec RR: Currently these seem barely used. I would suggest keeping them, but not assigning any default hotkeys to them. See also the next suggestion.
Cancel Replay: Honestly, this surprised me! Given that the corresponding option is not used at all, there are still users who prefer to cancel replays via a hotkey instead of clicking on the screen. bulletride, Gronkling and Dullstar, please correct me if I misunderstood something.
Add a hotkey to wap between the minimum and maximum RRThere has been a discussion in IRC some days ago, how to make the RR hotkeys more useful. One suggestion was to have hotkeys that jump to the most frequent RRs, namely the minimum and the maximum 99. To avoid having too many hotkeys, I therefore propose to combine these two hotkeys, which jumps to RR 99 whenever the current RR is less, and it jumps to the minimum RR if the current RR is 99.
Rename "Select Walker" to "Select Walking Lemming"Given the new walker skill, I feel that the current name is ambiguous and should be more clearly distinguished from "Select Skill: Walker".