Menu Revamp - Need feedback

[wrkq]

Oh I see that's a fair point. Perhaps it can do a quick check to see if there's custom settings and then warn the user that custom settings will be overwritten with either GZDoom defaults or "vanilla" settings. From there maybe it's on them if they want to use it, since they've been warned? How would others feel about that?

I mean, something like that already exists in the map compatibility flags menu, right?

Could have a "Current preset" entry with a couple of options like "Graf's Recommended", "Vanilla-Like", "I want to make my GPU scream", etc, and have it show "CUSTOM" if options are changed manually from the more detailed menus.

Maybe - if it'd be possible to do easy(ish) - have a second option below called "Apply Preset" that the user has to hit Enter on, that way there's no risk of accidentally switching away from your customized settings and irreversibly losing them with just one click/keypress.

[Player701]

I'm sorry if this has been brought up before, but I couldn't find anything relevant after having done a quick search in this thread.

Regarding the new "Simple options menu", which appears to be enabled by default with some recent commits... I'd be very happy if mod-side extensions of the normal options menu (AddOptionMenu "OptionsMenu" {...}) also affected this new simple menu as well. Otherwise it will be much less trivial to access mod options, which may scare off less-experienced mod users if they can't find these options easily.

Note that updating the mod itself is of course a possible (and probably even the recommended) solution, but it's unlikely that every single mod developer out there would do that, especially for mods that are no longer developed at all.

[Graf Zahl]

Surely that can be done. But modders really need to let go of that attitude and put their own "mod options" item in the main menu, like some bigger mods have been doing.
Lumping the mod options with the engine's option menu is not going to make things easy for the end user, no matter whether it's the simple of full menu.

[Player701]

But modders really need to let go of that attitude and put their own "mod options" item in the main menu, like some bigger mods have been doing.

I'd really like to do this for my own project, but is it possible to extend the main menu without redefining it completely? I don't want to rewrite its contents from scratch because it wouldn't be correct from a technical point of view (and also due to potential backwards-compatibility issues).

Upd: Ideally, new items added to the main menu should always go before "quit game" so that the usual sequence of key presses (Esc, up arrow, Enter, Y) does not lead to unexpected results.

[Graf Zahl]

You cannot add to the main menu, you'd have to redefine it. But the main menu is 5 or 6 items, so that's no big deal.

[Player701]

You cannot add to the main menu, you'd have to redefine it. But the main menu is 5 or 6 items, so that's no big deal.

Looking at the MENUDEF file within gzdoom.pk3, there are also a lot of conditional blocks for different games. Considering that I also distribute a HUD package that can run in non-Doom games as well, I'd rather not copy-paste the entire menu code like that. Perhaps I'll instead work on a PR to implement a feature to extend this menu so that adding custom items can be done in the proper way...

BTW, there is at least one other drawback to this approach: if a PWAD adds custom graphics for main menu items (say, Alien Vendetta), an extra menu item in there would look really ugly. Not going to argue that it's indeed better than adding to GZDoom's options menu, though.

[Blzut3]

Since I feel like this is the best place to bring it up since I was checking out the simplified menus: is queryiwad false actually legitimately used by anyone? Maybe I'm just blind since you only hear about it when people accidentally tick the box and then wonder how to get the picker back. I would argue that if one doesn't want the iwad picker to show they should create a shortcut with -iwad. It does feel like this option only exists since it was always there and is just a UX disaster. At the very least remove the checkbox from the iwad picker and then it can be removed from the simplified menu, but really wonder if the feature should be there at all.

[Rachael]

If I could count the number of times something got removed because it *seemed* harmless to remove it...

So my question is what does it hurt having that checkbox there, that would be worth removing it despite the inevitable outrage that would cause?

[Graf Zahl]

Take the most pointless feature, remove it and you can be certain that someone out there was using it - for whatever reason.
Personally I think that this checkbox has outlived its usefulness a long time ago. It made a little bit sense when there was Doom and Doom 2 to choose from but these days it tends to cause more problems than it solves - but wanna bet that some people still activate it for whatever reason?

[Rachael]

I think the checkbox could be protected by a modal that when you click it accidentally it asks "are you sure?", giving the instructions (using SHIFT) right then and there, rather than warning/reminding you as the window is closing to start the game.

That's probably a better idea than outright removing it.

I personally don't use it but I am also not a huge fan of pissing people off when there's a way to avoid it.

[Blzut3]

So my question is what does it hurt having that checkbox there, that would be worth removing it despite the inevitable outrage that would cause?

Like I said in the my previous post: The checkbox existing means that you need to have the option to restore the iwad selection dialog in the simplified menus. Plus the confusion when the user doesn't read and accidentally disables the dialog. It's simply bad user experience unless you're one of the two people that apparently want to hold shift to get an iwad selection or something.

OK, lets assume that someone out there is using it for whatever reason, what about my suggestion of just removing the checkbox and the menu items (or just the simplified menu item) and forcing users that want the behavior to toggle queryiwad manually?

On a somewhat related note, given that the iwad selection dialog has been expanded to included a few options for some time now. Does it still make sense to hide it when there's only one game installed?

[Graf Zahl]

IMO it makes more sense to rename it to 'always show this' so that it can be enabled even with a GAMEINFO specifying an IWAD. The curremt behvior is rather useless.

[i2van]

There is a useful menu Option Search. However selecting it requires hitting Enter before start typing what you are looking for; otherwise all the typing done just vanish...

[Graf Zahl]

Yes, that's how the menu works - the normal mode of operation is item selection, not editing text.

[i2van]

I expect start typing after entering search, not hitting Enter (what I always forget to do).