Sorting skills in panel

[Simon]

Hi,

a frequent complaint by new users is how the skillset isn't sorted. Experienced users still have to look at the skillset at the onset of each singleplayer level. What shall we do now?

Sorting is generally nice, and custom sort-order dosen't seem worthy to implement. Maybe a sort-yes-or-no option that's on by default, that's okay. A full-blown sort order editor seems of too little use compared to its complexity.

[18:38] <SimonN> I'm considering dishing out a WIP version with mandatory sorting, and ask people to use that for a week or two
[18:40] <SimonN> thinking about it for several days now, the correct order in the right half is exploder-batter-blocker-cuber-builder-...
[18:40] <SimonN> and you and Clam make convincing arguments for why walker shouldn't come first [instead climber-floater-runner shall come first]; on the other hand, Fitts' law (button in corner is very easy to click) suggests walker first, and Neolemmix has it first also

But let's first see what you guys think.

I can post more considerations from IRC later.

geoo's proposal: climber, floater, runner, walker, jumper, batter, exploder, blocker, cuber, builder, platformer, basher, miner, digger
Clam's proposal
My proposal

-- Simon

[namida]

Personally I'd think Platformer should come before Builder, but that may just be the NeoLemmix influence talking - more importantly though, I think the two should be a bit more visually distinguishable, as they're curently quite similar (eg. in NeoLemmix, Platformer and Stacker have green bricks showing the direction of building, which stand out quite strongly). Also, should Batter really be between Exploder and Blocker? I think it'd make more sense to put it before exploder (or after Cuber, maybe). Apart from that, your proposal seems pretty good.

[Simon]

namida: Platformer/Builder icon is noted, and will become more distinctive once I feel creative/inventive.

About the ordering, here's the next radical idea.



Allow only one exploder per level, and present all skills in a fixed order. In the currently-forced resolution of 640x480, a button is now 34 pixels in length, not 40.

Maybe make the order customizable, but that's not the main problem right now.

If you want to test this, here's a work-in-progress Windows executable. Right now, only 12 skills are allowed at any one time, that limit can be lifted later. Skill buttons may be ugly in the editor skill dialog, and the in-play panel is a little ugly still.

Can we cut the runner from the game? Probably not, Proxima uses it in Charge of the Lix Brigade >_>; The lemforum pack uses it in about 20 levels, and Clam/Rubix use it in 30-40 singleplayer levels each.

-- Simon

[namida]

I believe the use of both exploders was nessecary for the remake of LPII's Panic Attack (in the community pack), though I haven't played the renake so I'm not sure exactly why.

[GigaLem]

This biggest problem with it is
the F-Keys
how do we adjust with 3 left over
do we make a hot key option in lix for the remaining 3
like
Slot 13[?]
Slot 14[?]
Slot 15[?]

[namida]

Get a keyboard that has more F keys.

[GigaLem]

Arn't those mac-only?

[namida]

There's a Mac version of Lix.

[ccexplore]

Experienced users still have to look at the skillset at the onset of each singleplayer level.

To be fair, I think I look at the skill set multiple times anyway when solving a level as part of working out various potential solution ideas.  I can understand some people wanting a fixed skill ordering there, but it's not that big a deal for me.

namida: Platformer/Builder icon is noted

I'm living proof of this as I had confused the two multiple times during my limited time with MP.  Maybe icon designs more similar to Lemmings 2's will help w/o requiring too much creativity/inventiveness.

Allow only one exploder per level, and present all skills in a fixed order. In the currently-forced resolution of 640x480, a button is now 34 pixels in length, not 40.

It might sound okay on first glance, but on further thought:
- "allowing only 1 exploder" seem to be bringing in baggage from the separate debate around the "two different" exploders currently present in Lix.  For example if we later decide to give the flinging exploder a more distinctly different skill name and icon, the restriction would feel slightly unnatural.
- we sure we don't want to ever add a new skill to Lix?  Sure, we can choose to redesign after that actually happens--and then people who are used to having all skills present would complain.
- namida's comments notwithstanding, Giga's observation seems valid--if we want to also implement a positional key system as a newbie option, it doesn't seem to work too well with the proposal to have all skills present
- speaking of new skills, I could be mistaken but I seem to recall we already have one (sort of) courtesy of NaOH's contribution to the community set.  Where will the "burner" skill fit in with your proposal?

With all that said, I'm not completely opposed to this proposal, just wonder if it's worth creating other potential problems for.

[Simon]

Thrown-together L2-inspired icons:



12 keys in a row are a problematic choice anyway. I discourage new players from using this. Aligning the buttons in a key-position-matching grid would force me to guess the user's keyboard layout (not hotkey choice -- the operating system's keyboard layout), and violate Fitts's law, by not aligning stuff along the screen edge for mouse users.

ccexplore, thanks for the many reasons. Unnatural merging of to-be-distinct exploders, hmm. Will ponder some more. Reasons like these is exactly why I'm throwing around loose ideas right now.

About the burner: I'd cut the assignable burner, as I've proposed to cut having both exploders in the same level. When only one or two levels rely on them, schematic usability guidelines take priority. When a whole community with many levels relies on them, that's a grown-out environment to serve.

The annoying situation right now is: We have 12 panels for 14/15 skills, that's extremely weird. Having absolute positions for these 14/15 is standard. I really want to do at least something here. Offering only a subset made sense for L2, where the entire set was much larger than the largest offerable subset.

-- Simon

[GigaLem]

That makes it less confusing

[namida]

Definitely like the improved icons!

[ccexplore]

What do you think of moving some of the buttons like zoom and single-step to the row above (ie the row where the SI buttons are currently located)?  Not sure how feasible it is to redesign their icons to fit he much smaller height (or whether there'd be enough horizontal room in that row to fit more buttons), but it would definitely provide more space in the skills buttons row.

[Simon]

Hmm, so you'd feel 14 buttons to be too crowding in the current setup. This was my initial hunch. However, I'd say 12 buttons were already too much then. Possible fix: Making the icons a tiny bit smaller, and printing the white numbers slightly thinner, by 1 pixel in width or so per digit.

I was discussing this with Clam in IRC before:

[11:35] <SimonN> the other control buttons in the lower right, they must be somewhere, to keep the interface discoverable. They can't be cut
[11:38] <SimonN> the cramming is a serious downside
[11:39] <SimonN> people already complain when the status bar is overwritten with mouse-over stuff
[11:39] <SimonN> shortening the status bar would lead to overwritage with '3 Platformers (RCF)'

So, if 14/15 buttons are the correct solution, but are too cramming, I'd have to enlargen the GUI bar, or add a second GUI bar at the top/left/right.

I'm a little reluctant to make ffwd, zzz, restart, nuke all as tiny as the savestate/loadstate buttons, and then pile them all into the lower right corner. This would gain one panel width over what we have now. It's something to keep in the back of the head.

[12:04] <Clam> so here you have 15 (or more?) distinct "resources" (compared to Starcraft's 3 resources, or Age of Empires's 5)
[12:05] <SimonN> yes, and they are clickable buttons
[12:05] <SimonN> so must be large and nice, everything else is bad
[12:07] <SimonN> I've considered putting the skill buttons along the left/right side
[12:08] <SimonN> then have the entire bottom for the status bar and control GUI buttons, but that bar would require less space than the buttons
[12:08] <SimonN> this makes the screen more tall than wide, not sure how good that is
[12:10] <SimonN> oh my, why is this so hard, I'm sure 14 sorted buttons in a row is the local optimum, without reordering everything

For comparison, here's the L1 bar shown against the 14-button Lix bar:



Each single button is still wider than what L1 did. Minimap isn't feasible on y-scrolling maps. Of course, what L1 did is bad surprisingly often, compared to modern UI design. So being wider than L1 isn't a saving grace yet.

Materializing my idea from the beginning of this post: Printing the 2-digit numbers with the narrower font alleviates some of the crammy feel. 3-digit numbers need some further fixing, they're too wide now.



-- Simon

[namida]

Is there a limit on how many skills a single level can have? If so, a possible solution may be to dynamically resize the empty slots, and perhaps (if nessecary) abbreviate multiple empty slots to just a single one.

[ccexplore]

Hmm, so you'd feel 14 buttons to be too crowding in the current setup.

Actually based on the screenshot alone (no PC access yet), 14 looks fine.  My suggestion is more thinking about future-proofing as well as naturally wondering whether some of the lower-right buttons really deserve the amount of space currently allocated to them.

If we go with this idea and 14, then may I suggest for the "few" levels featuring skills outside of the "chosen 14", level author can optionally override the default scheme to present skills in an ordering of their choosing (but strongly recommended to be as consistent as possible with the standard).  Levels using only the chosen 14 will not have this option honored (skill placement will always be standard).

[ccexplore]

Is there a limit on how many skills a single level can have? If so, a possible solution may be to dynamically resize the empty slots, and perhaps (if nessecary) abbreviate multiple empty slots to just a single one.

Possible, but in that case it starts to feel like you might as well just leave no empty slots at all (enforce an ordering but not specific slots)?

[Simon]

Limit of different skills: currently 12.

With any redesign to fit more buttons on the panel, this limit becomes oddly arbitrary. It has come only from the UI restrictions. Since 14/15 isn't much more than 12, I'd love to get rid of this limit.

One alternative is to keep only 12 buttons, and sort, producing such abbreviated gaps. That's already much better than unsorted panel. But it would maintain the strange number of 12 buttons for 14/15 skills.

Enforce ordering without gaps: That's the first thing I tried, and I have working code that does that. Then I felt the problem to be in the strange number of skill panels.

ccx:

Hunch about too much space allocated to non-skill buttons: Thanks, interesting feedback. I'd have imagined them more important.

Future-proofing: These days, I'm actively discouraging ideas for new skills. Looking back at the past 5 years, I have regrets about having implemented the runner, despite people liking it. The batter is a must-have. The runner only makes sabotage better, which is strong enough without. Should the game ever get more skills, which I consider unlikely in the next 3-5 years, then another UI change is in order. And people would then have to live with 20 skills allowed at the same time, or re-impose a limit of skills per level, then fix existing levels.

New skills would increase the burden on new players. For experienced players, the single-hand hotkey layout is already full, and can't take additional unique keys well at all. You don't want to put distinct skills on the same hotkey. If you put similar skills on the same key, then they're probably similar enough to cull one from the overall design.

If I got to cull skills without people revolting, I'd cull L1-exploder first, then runner, then floater. Climber stays in, it is amazing and makes excellent use of the rodents-navigate-pixel-terrain core idea. Everything else gets eaten by the clam.

-- Simon

[ccexplore]

Hunch about too much space allocated to non-skill buttons: Thanks, interesting feedback. I'd have imagined them more important.

I specifically mentioned the zoom and framestepping buttons as 1) they seem more geared for advanced players (who also are more likely to be using hotkeys anyway) and 2) they seem more likely to be used while the game is already paused (in which case player likely can target the mouse more accurately).  I actually also thought from the screenshot that the pause button look rather big, though clearly that button is important (but important enough to warrant the extra width of a second paw? Hmm...)

Future-proofing: These days, I'm actively discouraging ideas for new skills. <snip>

The points you listed feel like very multiplayer-centric arguments, except for the one about burdening new players.  I do have to admit that maybe runners don't add as much to the game as some of the other skills (maybe it should be a more generic double-speed skill?), though it could also just mean I'm not as good utilizing it in singleplayer as more capable level designers.

Floaters being on your cull list was a little surprising.  I suppose it's not as amazing as the climber and perhaps serves a similar purpose (granting a limited number of lemmings immediate access to certain areas of a level), but enough so to warrant culling?  Wonder what other people make of it.

[ccexplore]

The points you listed feel like very multiplayer-centric arguments

After a shower, it dawns on me that the same can be said of my view being singleplayer-centric.  Ultimately, if we accept the following three points:

1. Lix's primary reason to exist is multiplayer, regardless of the actual proportion of SP vs MP usage.
2. Hotkeys are the best way to handle MP play.
3. Hotkeys work less and less well against growing number of skills.

It is rather inescapable conclusion that Lix should discourage growing the number of skills and perhaps even cull a few, even if there may be moderate gains on the SP side with the addition of skills (and corresponding losses with culling).  In this context, I think I might actually accept Simon's proposal as-is down to even the "only one bomber type per level sharing same slot" part.  Maybe even the runner-culling part too, though perhaps we should at least try to push that to a last resort.

[Simon]

I love hotkeys in singleplayer, too.

Yes, the second post is how I'd put it myself. I'm reluctant to curb what the community has made good use of. If there were no existing levels nor tradition from Lemmings, I'd cull faster.

One exploder per level doesn't hit the community culture. Removing the runner would make a noticeable dent in the content, forcing lots of reworking. Bugfixing, I don't care if that breaks levels, making consistent physics is more important. However, the runner is not a bug, but a cute non-essential feature.

I've got something cooking again, shortening the control buttons from 40 to 34, and increasing the skill buttons from 34 to 36. This adds up exactly to the fixed resolution width of 640. I'll post images/test versions when the graphical bugs are ironed out.

Making zzz/zoom smaller is again a good idea to keep in mind, if this doesn't suffice.

-- Simon

[GigaLem]

There's a Mac version of Lix.

I have windows 7

[Ramon]

Personally I'd hate to see the runner go I'm sure over half my levels use that skill. It kind of provides interesting dynamics in combination with timing or the jumper skill.

I am also still in favor of keeping both bombers, but add distinctive icons to them. I'm no expert on things and it's just my opinion.

[Simon]

Runner will stay in for now.

I have fragile code for both 14 skills, and colored bars to visualize multiplayer score during play.

I'm getting erratic, rare crashes in places where I haven't touched the code for years. And I gotta prepare a seminar talk for next week. >_>; Don't expect anything to be out too soon.

-- Simon

[Simon]

I believe I've sorted out the crash.

I'd like to do some multiplayer testing tonight (Tuesday, June 2, around 20 to 24 UTC). Come online in IRC. :-) Testing versions will be given out there, release will be made in 1-2 days when it's proven to be stable.

I've striven to keep backward compatibility for replays and networking. Therefore, even with 14 sorted panels, only 12 can be used per level now. I will lift the limit when we've done some testing.

The user can change the skill sorting order.

The F1-F12 hotkey option becomes superfluous, use the normal keybinding options for the position-fixed skill buttons instead.



In multipalyer, a colorful bar graph displays saved counts and potential scores. It's obvious on first sight who is ahead, and who has lots of unsaved lixes on the map. This is so much better than the weird cups in the panel, few people have ever looked at those.

-- Simon

[namida]

Looks good! If I'm free at the time, I'll be happy to help out with the testing.

[Simon]

The above-described version 2015-06-02 has been released. 12 skills per level only for backward compat.

Roadmap:

• Allow for 14 skills per level instead of 12, and thus force update for networking.
• Introduce a field in the level format for preferred number of players. This will be useful generally. Allowed levels are changing anyway, so this is a good time.
• Make the appropriate UI in the editor skill menu. -- Done in my code, but not released yet. It allows for 14 skills to be written into the level once that's supported.
• Decide on the exploder problem, because that's relevant for the editor skill window. Current idea: Allow both exploders in both game modes. Slightly leaning towards L2 exploder always timed, L1 always untimed, for consistency. It's also the intersection of this change and singleplayer L2 untimed in addition. Make some statement in the linked topic.
• Make a better replay format. Changing skills should not be part of the replay at all. During playback, the currently selected skill should never change by the replay. Each skill assignment should carry information about both the skill and forced direction.
• Make something better in the options menu for assigning hotkeys to skills. Show the skillbar in the options menu. -- Done and released, see next post
• Nice to have: If exploder timing changes, do it in the same release as allowing 14 skills, so there is only one release that forces updates.
• After that: Next level button as proposed by Keiya, and stuff on the bugtracker and the wishlist.
  

-- Simon

[Simon]

Version 2015-06-04 has been released.

Download Lix.
View the changelist.
Feed a bug to the frog.

The single change over 2015-06-02 is in the options dialog. It displays a copy of the now-sorted skillbar, with a row of key-mapping buttons. This looks much nicer.

Maybe Giga should update, he loves to have hotkeys arranged like the skill buttons. Everyone else doesn't have to. (Still only 12 skills per level, etc., all backwards compatible.)



-- Simon