by Kinsie » Tue Jun 04, 2019 3:42 am
Caligari87 wrote:Would there be any way to rearrange the engine startup to allow a minimal "ingame" menu before IWADs and PWADs are loaded? Basically a GZDoom-native picker instead of an OS-native popup picker. (maybe showing the load list as well)
This has a number of pros and cons that I can see.
CONS:
- Would likely require a lot of engine retinkering to enable a "pre-game" state where a game hasn't been loaded, and new archives and data can be loaded in while the engine is running.
- Would require reinventing a lot of wheels and basically writing a whole new UI toolkit that no other project is likely to use.
- Would be very easy to make dog-ugly unless either serious effort is put in by UI/UX designers (of which there aren't many around here), or additional tech is added to emulate certain elements of the existing startup windows (truetype fonts etc.)
PROS:
- Would get consistent results across all platforms
- Could reuse stuff from the game side of the engine for special startups
- Additional launcher-style capabilities could be added during the process
- UI tech created for it could be potentially made available for usage in mods in some form
- Could be an excuse to enable changing mods/iwads at runtime ala Quakespasm's "game <foldername>" console command.
In short, it'd take a whole lotta heartache. Whether that's worth it or not when there are hordes of other much desired features (vulkan, client/server etc.) begging for man-hours is up for debate...
gramps wrote:That's not a bad idea, but wouldn't it be even better (or at least just as good) to have a menu option for each iwad, maybe all in a submenu, so you could skip the popup? That would be a pretty typical (optional) thing for an installer to set up, and would be more convenient than poking around in the registry or SendTo folder.
Maybe for some people? Feels a little fiddly to me, though. But I guess workflows are very personal things...
(Also it only took me like two minutes to set up with an old freeware tool, so...)
Either way, I don't think removing the launcher and outright
requiring users to work with a third-party launcher for multiple-IWAD setups is a good idea. It'd be kind of a step-back, to be honest. Making it (and the auto-search of Steam/GOG installs) a compile-time option or an option in gzdoom.pk3 would make sense, though.
[quote="Caligari87"]Would there be any way to rearrange the engine startup to allow a minimal "ingame" menu before IWADs and PWADs are loaded? Basically a GZDoom-native picker instead of an OS-native popup picker. (maybe showing the load list as well)[/quote]This has a number of pros and cons that I can see.
[b]CONS:[/b]
[list]
[*]Would likely require a lot of engine retinkering to enable a "pre-game" state where a game hasn't been loaded, and new archives and data can be loaded in while the engine is running.
[*]Would require reinventing a lot of wheels and basically writing a whole new UI toolkit that no other project is likely to use.
[*]Would be [i]very[/i] easy to make dog-ugly unless either serious effort is put in by UI/UX designers (of which there aren't many around here), or additional tech is added to emulate certain elements of the existing startup windows (truetype fonts etc.)[/list]
[b]PROS:[/b]
[list]
[*]Would get consistent results across all platforms
[*]Could reuse stuff from the game side of the engine for special startups
[*]Additional launcher-style capabilities could be added during the process
[*]UI tech created for it could be potentially made available for usage in mods in some form
[*]Could be an excuse to enable changing mods/iwads at runtime ala Quakespasm's "game <foldername>" console command.[/list]
In short, it'd take a whole lotta heartache. Whether that's worth it or not when there are hordes of other much desired features (vulkan, client/server etc.) begging for man-hours is up for debate...
[quote="gramps"]That's not a bad idea, but wouldn't it be even better (or at least just as good) to have a menu option for each iwad, maybe all in a submenu, so you could skip the popup? That would be a pretty typical (optional) thing for an installer to set up, and would be more convenient than poking around in the registry or SendTo folder.[/quote]Maybe for some people? Feels a little fiddly to me, though. But I guess workflows are very personal things...
(Also it only took me like two minutes to set up with an old freeware tool, so...)
Either way, I don't think removing the launcher and outright [i]requiring[/i] users to work with a third-party launcher for multiple-IWAD setups is a good idea. It'd be kind of a step-back, to be honest. Making it (and the auto-search of Steam/GOG installs) a compile-time option or an option in gzdoom.pk3 would make sense, though.