[Scummvm-devel] Options dialog design (long!)

Torbjorn.E.Andersson at tietoenator.com Torbjorn.E.Andersson at tietoenator.com
Sun Mar 21 07:37:07 CET 2004


Max Horn <max at quendi.de> wrote:

> Consider this scenario: You start ScummVM into the launcher; you open the
> global options dialog. In here, you switch to the 2xSAI filter, then close
> the dialog. The kTransientDomain gets updated accordingly. Now you start
> Monkey Island by double clicking it in the launcher. For it, you had
> explicitly set the graphics mode to "AdvMame3x". 
> 
> Question: Which graphics mode should Monkey Island use now? 2xSAI or
> AdvMame3x ?

I would expect AdvMame3x. I see the global options as default settings which
the per-game options may override if they wish to.

> One possible solution for the latter problem would be to only allow
> editing the permanent settings. That is, make the hot keys change the
> settings in the config file, too (the opposite, only allow editing the
> temporary settings, seems undesirable, since this way the user has no way
> to edit his config file, short of using a text editor).

I don't know... I always saw the hotkeys as a sort of preview of the
different modes, and if I decided I liked it I would change the setting
permanently in the config file, or through the GUI. (Well... actually I
wouldn't use the GUI myself, but that's a different story. :-)

> The first problem ("inconsistency") can be solved by updating the dialog
> contents on the fly whenever settings get modified (e.g. via a hotkey).
> That then leads to the question: should changes made in the (global)
> options dialog be *immediately* activated, or only after pressing an "OK"
> button? Both approaches have merits:

Immediate activation doesn't seem very natural to me.

I was going to say that I've never seen any other application use it, but
then I remembered that the music volume slider in the Broken Sword 2 options
dialog does that. Hmm...

It might be worth noting that in Windows, the volume setting dialog uses
immediate activation, while the dialog to change screen resolution and
colour depth does not. Of course, changing screen resolution is much more
jarring than changing from, say, one 2x graphics filter to another...

Torbjörn

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