Replacing the options menu in user mods

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Kinsie
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Re: Replacing the options menu in user mods

Post by Kinsie »

Graf Zahl wrote:I see there's no sense discussing this.
So it was just a Feature Announcement!
Graf Zahl wrote:Apparently you people simply don't get it: The option menu is not supposed to be replaced by ANYTHING!
It's not whether it's supposed to be or not - it's whether it's been done for at least half a decade as it is. The damage, such as it is, has been done. Restricting things now will create more headaches than you're trying to resolve.

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Re: Replacing the options menu in user mods

Post by Overacheiver »

Nash wrote:R.I.P non-Doom mods / standalone TC menu aesthetics
TCs can deal with it by having a single "options" item (a custom minimal one) in the main menu with an "advanced settings" somewhere at the bottom of it that leads to the vanilla options menu. Shadow of the Wool Ball does this.

This way, pwads with AddOptionMenu still work and people who know what they're doing (everyone here) can adjust settings without resorting to config files and console. Even if you don't include such an option (it still somehow ruins the aesthetic), people can still use "openmenu optionsmenu".
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Re: Replacing the options menu in user mods

Post by Rachael »

Kinsie wrote:
Graf Zahl wrote:I see there's no sense discussing this.
So it was just a Feature Announcement!
Kinsie, I know you're not truly that dumb. I implore you - please - take a moment to calm down before you post such quickfire nonsense.

When Graf (or anyone for that matter) says there's no sense in discussing this - or even just a simple "we're done here" - it means just that. It means that the arguments have been expressed, considered, and rejected. It means that the person saying it doesn't have time for such nonsense, and all they're doing is repeating themselves at that point, which is a waste of their time and everyone's time.

It would really help if your arguments were more constructive - and honestly some of the things you say are, I will give you credit for that at least - but some of the things you say are kinda quickfire and not very well thought out.

It was not my intent to stir all this controversy regarding the menus. It was merely my intent to put in a safety override switch - to still be able to use a mod but access GZDoom's internal menus from within the mod that usually get overridden, with the intent that you are done you restart back with the mods old menus. Now, I see we need an opposite switch - "-useoldcustommenus" or something like that, but that will come in due time when the shit here has started to calm down. This is already more angry shitposting than their needs to be and I will ask you now to calm down before we have to start taking more drastic measures.
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Re: Replacing the options menu in user mods

Post by wildweasel »

Graf, I'd really, really like to implore you to reconsider this - this affects a lot more existing mods than just a small handful. Many of those mods' authors aren't even around anymore. I, myself, have a sizable handful of mods that do menus the "wrong" way, and most frustratingly, I was never told that I was doing them wrong. Now I have to remember which of my mods had custom menus up to this date, and go back and issue fixed versions of them in anticipation of that. That's something I don't necessarily have the time or patience for, and while I can appreciate that you don't either, I feel like handling it in the manner proposed could stand to damage a lot of the goodwill between the modders and the developers that has been building up for so long. It's bad enough that users are recommending (or bundling) outdated versions of GZDoom due to script errors that weren't errors before the ZScript merge, but this is going to cause even more unfortunate setbacks and distrust of newer versions. People aren't going to want to update anymore if it means mods are being broken seemingly on purpose.

Call me crazy, but I feel like the modders and developers just aren't talking to each other enough about issues like this, and if that means we're getting solutions like this, that disconnect needs to be remedied, before we get any more "sledgehammer" solutions to problems that should have been brought to the modders first.
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Rachael
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Re: Replacing the options menu in user mods

Post by Rachael »

I am going to weigh in on this and add - I think that unilaterally and unconditionally blocking the redefined menus entirely might be taking it a bit too far. Even if it was possible to get them renamed and then added to the stock options menu - as, say, "Mod-specific Options Menu" down at the bottom - would be better than just blocking it out entirely.

On Discord, modders pretty much unanimously came out and said this would break mods - even Adventures of Square breaks with this change.

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Re: Replacing the options menu in user mods

Post by Graf Zahl »

So what to do here?
Leave the feature in and break the menu or keep it out and break the mods. I absolutely don't get it why seemingly everybody used this wrongly. One thing is clear: If the ability to replace these menus is kept we are going to see far, far worse problems in the future because people will just continue doing this stuff. D4D is ample proof because it was more important to move the new entries to the top of the menu than to consider robustness. But since this attitude seems to be the norm here it's obvious that only a hard block will cure the problem.

The Square menu is basically the epitome of doing it wrong squared (pun intended) For no good reason it replicates half the content of the options menu and replaces it with horrendously outdated content, not to mention disabling the localization. Keeping this crap out is precisely why I blocked it.
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Re: Replacing the options menu in user mods

Post by Rachael »

What if we renamed the internal menus, protected those, instead, and then had them check for the presence of these redefined menus and give the user access to them if they exist, through a separate menu-accessible option?

That would be the best solution, imo. That way you can have your cake and eat it - the internal menus are still protected, and blocked from modification, and the mods that "do it wrong" are not unilaterally destroyed by this change.
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Re: Replacing the options menu in user mods

Post by Caligari87 »

The consensus I'm seeing on Discord says that most people who used it wrong simply weren't aware it could break things. I haven't ever done menus but in my mind when I considered doing a standalone game the first thing I thought was "do I really have to redefine all the regular menus? Aw, that's gonna be a pain..." I didn't realize there was a right and wrong way :?

It's like the ZScript documentation: If you don't tell people how to do it, documentation will go wrong. Much like the sounds and FMod issue of mistaking formats for actual sound effects Simply telling people wasn't enough, because not everyone sees every post, and not every user can be expected to go into the source and figure out how it works. Most of us simply don't understand it that well so we rely on the wiki and word of mouth.

Unfortunately the time for a drastic move like this is past. That ship has sailed, and breaking old mods is just going to create more headaches than already existed from people who had to deal with overridden menus. Weasel is right, modders and users are starting to distrust newer versions and it's hurting everyone. Rachael's solution sounds forward-thinking and user-friendly enough for me, so I'm gonna throw my support to that, for whatever it's worth.

8-)
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Re: Replacing the options menu in user mods

Post by Graf Zahl »

I am still thinking about a better solution. But whatever gets done, it's a complete mess. I never thought that modders would be THIS careless with the menus! It should have been clear to everybody that there were some changes to the internal menu with nearly every release and yet some people just assume that taking, for example the options menu from ZDoom 2.7.0 would be fine until all eternity.

Again I cite the Adventures of Square menu: It's not only clobbering the OpenGL options submenu by replicating everything from ZDoom, it also got sound options that are meaningless and is missing others that are crucial because the base is so old. And thanks to being old it amputates half of the engine's settings that have been moved around recently. And what for? To insert single isolated options into each menu? I wouldn't even want to present such menus as a fallback alternative without first culling their content from everything obsolete and duplicated.
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Re: Replacing the options menu in user mods

Post by wildweasel »

Graf Zahl wrote:Again I cite the Adventures of Square menu: It's not only clobbering the OpenGL options submenu by replicating everything from ZDoom, it also got sound options that are meaningless and is missing others that are crucial because the base is so old. And thanks to being old it amputates half of the engine's settings that have been moved around recently. And what for? To insert single isolated options into each menu? I wouldn't even want to present such menus as a fallback alternative without first culling their content from everything obsolete and duplicated.
I realize we can't change the past, but this is the sort of thing that AddOptionMenu should have been around to prevent, from the very start. Because it's so new of an addition, older mods didn't have access to it and had to get by. And, like I said in my previous post, nobody knew any better because none of us were ever told we were doing things wrong!

[edit] In case this comes off more as me blaming you, it really isn't supposed to be - I do just want to say that this is kind of just a shitty situation all around and it's not so simple that it can be blamed on any specific person.
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Re: Replacing the options menu in user mods

Post by Tormentor667 »

After reading all that I also agree with Rachael. Breaking old mods is always the worst decision for points mentioned but if the thing must be changed for all costs, a consense is the right choice to go for.
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Re: Replacing the options menu in user mods

Post by Graf Zahl »

wildweasel wrote:nobody knew any better because none of us were ever told we were doing things wrong!
Apparently nobody was also thinking this through. The mere fact that there were differences between ZDoom and GZDoom in some of the submenus should have been a clear signal.
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Re: Replacing the options menu in user mods

Post by Graf Zahl »

BTW, one of the things that some mods did what is really bad is adding new keybinds to the menu.

Why? Because these new keybinds are not categorized, they are dumped into the global namespace! I just noticed that by happenstance when analyzing why ZDCMP2's custom settings persisted through other mods, constantly generating console warnings.
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Re: Replacing the options menu in user mods

Post by Rachael »

Graf Zahl wrote:I never thought that modders would be THIS careless with the menus!
Graf - I know you don't agree with everything we do here, but please be careful with such statements. There's a fire here and statements like this are only fanning the flames. Right now, people are upset because AddOptionMenu was not well documented and advertised like it should have been - they didn't even know - not to mention they feel quite insulted by this remark.

Remember - not everyone has time to read every single post on this forum (there's quite a lot, per day, especially these days when GZDoom and mod development tends to be quite a bit more active than it usuaully is) - so blaming people for doing it the wrong way is only going to create unnecessary animosity between you and those people, and I really don't think that's working in your favor when you ask for things like bug reports and what not.
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Re: Replacing the options menu in user mods

Post by Caligari87 »

Personally, until this morning I thought the options menus were additive and self-protecting anyway. It just made sense in my brain, and I saw no information to the contrary. Not everyone thinks like a dev, not everyone can read the sourse code, not everyone reads every forum post. Expecting everyone to just "get it" without proper documentations or safeguards means people are going to take the first path that seems to work. In this case, the way of most obviousness was the wrong one.

But regardless, it is what it is. I'd rather we focus on useful paths forward than griping about who did what wrong and what should have happened but didn't. That's not productive.

8-)
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