Make the ini file a bit more intuitive.

[Spladam]

I'm recently trying to set the game up for a friend (I'm making a folder with several source ports, including the PSX total conversion and Doom 64, with shortcuts for most of the legendary WAD packs and such, completely unzip and go portable) and after going through the ini folder I would suggest making it a bit more intuitive for new users. Putting the key bindings at the top for starters, and putting commonly used bindings at the top, and similar bindings next to each other.

You might want to put all movement bindings next to each other, even the move forward and backward are several lines apart. I had a hard time figuring out what the "toggle run" binding was (I don't even know if I got it right, I have not checked yet) Directional movement would be easier if they were right next to strafe, and all the most common bindings like these (the ones people are probably there to set) should maybe be grouped together. The "strafe" binding is not called strafe, it's called move left and right, and the turn left and right is just called left and right. Maybe put some commenting in it to explain what some of the more obscure terminology or settings are.

Thanks for your time,
Adam.

We appreciate the effort in this source port, you guys are doing an amazing job. Thanks for all the hard work.

[Graf Zahl]

The INI file is machine generated, the options for manual editing are limited by that fact mainly.

[Rachael]

This is really not something that can be done easily, if at all. If you're really lost in that thing the best action to take is to ask for help on how to do X or Y.

GZDoom has hundreds of CVARs and a plethora of different situations for when one copy of a CVAR may be loaded or not. Making the INI file more intuitive with this in mind is simply not possible. The only section that's really meant to be accessed by users are the autoload sections. Everything else is - you either know what it does, or you don't.

[Graf Zahl]

I have been thinking about using JSON to store the INI, so that hierarchial content is easier to access. The downside, of course, is that JSON has much stricter syntax rules.

[Rachael]

If you do that then you'll need to externalize the autoload sections or anything else that's meant to be accessed by users. Either that, or design some sort of interface for adding them.

[Graf Zahl]

That's why I didn't do it.

[Spladam]

I see, that does sound like a pain. Thanks for the replies to the suggestion though.

I just found the "zdoom_portable.ini" option in the wiki, going to use that in this case so I don't have to make links with the command line switch for custom ini and it will work for whomever pass it to, glad that option was put in there.

You guys are doing God's work, so again, thank you.