[+][PL] Preview Screen text - type casing, colours, info, etc.

[Simon]

CE 1.1.2

This is a minor typesetting bug. All presented information itself is correct.

Go to a preview screen of a level that has exactly 1 regular lemming and exactly 1 zombie. It will say: "1 lemmings, 1 zombies".

The issues here are:

• Both "lemmings" and "zombies" should be singular. This is usually excusable ("found 1 files" is fine for me) but NL already has code to handle singular/plural in this line. For example, NL will say "1 lemming" when the zombie is missing. It's a bug proper.
• The words "lemming"/"lemmings"/"zombie"/"zombies" should all be title-cased, i.e., the first letter should be capitalized. Everything else on the screen looks like it has proper title case.

The exact rules for title case can vary. I believe I use: Capitalize the first letter of every word unless the word satisfies all of the following: It's a preposition/article/some other niche type, it's not the first word of the phrase, it has 4 or fewer letters. If you're unsure, ask Proxima. Or ask me, but I'd have to find a style guide first.

Neutral lemmings can also appear here; the same fixes should apply to neutrals.

Proxima and I decree title case important! Lest our monocles plunge into our champagne classes, splashing our tailcoats.

-- Simon

[Proxima]

As I mentioned during one of your streams, the inconsistency ("20 lemmings" but "20 To Be Saved") bothers me, especially because this is something that was introduced in NLCE and is fine in vanilla NL.

But considering that nothing in the level stats is a title of anything (except of course for the level and rank titles), maybe it would be better to lowercase everything and capitalise only the first letter of each line (except when it's a number)?

And while we're looking at the preview screen, I prefer NL's uncluttered screen, with no release rate and no "Infinite Time". (Time limit should be pointed out when there is one, but this is very rare in NL.) Why were these changes made in CE, and was there ever a discussion?

[WillLem]

Go to a preview screen of a level that has exactly 1 regular lemming and exactly 1 zombie. It will say: "1 lemmings, 1 zombies".

This is now fixed. I've also capitalized the 'L' of 'Lemming(s)' for now to be consistent with everything else:



Fixed in NLCEPlayer commit 53f667d.

We can re-think the capitalization for sure. I'd suggest that we either capitalize every word, as in the above screenshot, or don't capitalize anything. Open to other suggestions.

But considering that nothing in the level stats is a title of anything (except of course for the level and rank titles), maybe it would be better to lowercase everything and capitalise only the first letter of each line (except when it's a number)?

Agreed, this could work.

I prefer NL's uncluttered screen, with no release rate and no "Infinite Time". (Time limit should be pointed out when there is one, but this is very rare in NL.) Why were these changes made in CE, and was there ever a discussion?

The changes were made mainly for 2 reasons:

1) Simply, to show the player more information on the preview screen.
2) Preview screen text color can now be customized on a per-line basis (using data/ce-textcolours.nxmi). Recoloring each line does make it look a bit less cluttered and easier to read (possibly why it was done this way in the Amiga version).

IIRC, there wasn't a discussion about this specifically. Looking back over the roadmaps/release topics, I don't think it got mentioned either, so apologies for this - it's a genuine oversight. I ported Preview Screen text creation over from SLX when implementing the ability to customise the text color (something that was previously specifically requested for NL), and I prefer the SLX refactor because it's a lot easier to deal with.

Anyway, discussion around Preview Screen text can begin here in this topic, or we can create another one. Of course, it should represent what the majority of the community wants. For now, consider it a demo feature whilst CE is still relatively new.

I feel I should also re-affirm at this stage that nothing that gets implemented in CE is final. Everything is open to suggestions, re-working, and possible removal after the fact if necessary. CE is not a 'WillLem project', I just happen to be the only dev on the Forums who has the time/inclination to take it on. If you don't like something, post a topic and we'll sort it out as a community. What I'm not prepared to do though is post a million topics about every little change and await feedback on every single one before actioning anything. That would be a recipe for nothing getting done. Better to keep development moving and respond to feedback on features already implemented IMHO.

[Dullstar]

I'm neutral regarding the presence of the extra information, though I will note that if we're going to include Release Rate, when the Spawn Interval setting is enabled it should probably respect it.

[WillLem]

if we're going to include Release Rate, when the Spawn Interval setting is enabled it should probably respect it.

I thought I'd already done that tbh. It's defintely done now anyway (NLCEPlayer commit a41d895).

I've always thought that having an extra line for 'X to be saved' is a bit redundant. We could eliminate that line by simply saying 'Save X of X lemming(s)', and then post an additional line if the level contians neutral and/or zombies.

If we leave it as it is though, I agree with Proxima that 'To Be Saved' does look a bit odd; let's change it back to 'to be saved' instead. Here's a demo:



Since Release Rate and Spawn Interval often get shortened to 'RR/SI', it feels right to capitalise that line.

Meanwhile, 'Infinite Time' can simply not be shown if a level doesn't have a time limit. Then, we'll only show a time limit if there is one.

Also, here's the same screenshot as above but making use of different line colours. IMO this looks much less cluttered, but we could perhaps re-think which line has which colour:



Thoughts?

[Guigui]

Quick thoughts that come to mind.

Is no time limit better than infinite time ?

The color for spawn inter is a bit too flashy, it makes this info stand out too much.

I'll leave the capitalization to English expert, but also asks the question of spacing around the : character.
In France it is one space before and space after.
Author : Anonymous

The flashy color can actually be used for the time limit when there is one, because this info should stand out.