[Scummvm-devel] GUI options/layout/etc

[A. Milburn]

Hi,

A few ramblings about GUI options so they don't just get lost in the IRC
logs. They're not complete but they *are* trying to be practical rather
than ideal solutions which we might never get around to implementing
(also I don't have much time this week, so if I said something really
stupid, sorry!):

* I'd like to suggest just adding an 'Extras' tab for all the argued-over
  enhancements. 'EGA undithering', 'mixed AdLib/MIDI mode', 'original
  save/load dialogs', 'copy protection' and 'prefer synthesized effects'
  could all go there, it would provide a single place for users to go
  for this stuff, and it would help with arguments about defaults if we
  can just have an obvious place in the global options where people can
  go and make their game 'better', without compromising the idea that
  we should default to original interpreter behaviour.

  There's enough space for 6 checkboxes in there, more if we made the
  labels shorter. I realise that there might be an argument about this
  making the UI trickier on 320x200, but it doesn't seem that bad to me.
  The only trouble would be that we don't have the space for single-game
  options (like the alternative intros), but as far as I know no-one is
  too bothered about those.

  I think we can probably get rid of other less useful options and free
  up some space anyway, which leads me to the rest of this..

* The 'Output rate' combobox seems a bit pointless to have in the main
  GUI. A lot of the backends override this themselves, and everything
  except some of the SDL-based ones (not all) and the PSP backend
  ignore the config setting.

  We seem to default to 22khz on desktop platforms, something which dates
  back in commit history to the first sound support. Can we not default
  to 44khz on backends which can reasonably handle that and don't just
  ignore the config anyway, and otherwise leave this as a fairly obscure
  config option?

* The 'Graphics mode' combobox seems a bit oddly used too - on various
  backends it's empty because there's no choice of mode, the Dreamcast
  backend provides one single mode, the PSP backend seems to use it to
  provide 'keep aspect ratio' and 'full screen' options. Obviously it
  *is* used on many backends though, so this is just an observation.

* Is the 'MT-32' tab necessary for backends which can't be connected
  to real hardware but can run the emulators? Would it be possible to
  just move the combobox to the 'MIDI' tab if the only options are
  emulators for which we know whether they support GM/MT-32 natively,
  or are those options important even with an emulator used?

* In that vein, can't we rename the 'MIDI' tab to Music, plonk the
  'AdLib emulator' option into it too, and then move the 'Volume'
  tab into 'Audio' with the space left by removing two comboboxes,
  at least on small-screen devices? Crazy? (I haven't tried it.)
  But it would be less confusing to *me*, at least.

  (Obviously if we could instead just have a single tab with the
  audio device configuration that might be a much nicer way of doing
  it, I just know that *I'm* not capable of making that work.)

Comments/mockery/etc are welcome.

- fuzzie