[Scummvm-devel] Detection hints in the Add Game browser

James 'Ender' Brown ender at scummvm.org
Sun Jul 30 08:50:32 CEST 2006


On Sat, 2006-07-29 at 22:30 +0200, Max Horn wrote:
> Am 29.07.2006 um 21:27 schrieb Ori Avtalion:
> 
> > Hi,
> >
> > I noticed a slight usability problem in the "Add Game" dialog. I will
> > outline it and offer a solution.
> >
> > Since the file list in the browser only displays directories, the  
> > actual
> > clicking of the "Choose" button is done when nothing is on the screen.
> > I think this disorients some users (for one example, see
> > http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1663029591101855863).
> 
> Agreed.

Concurred! :)

> But before we go for any of those, I wonder if we couldn't just use  
> plain Engine_XXX_detectGames after all. The advantage would be that  
> we get guaranteed uniform behavior. And at least on desktop machines,  
> it should be fast enough. The only problem I see right now (mind you,  
> of course there maybe many more which I am simply not seeing ATM) is  
> the MD5 detection, which at least for SCUMM games currently still  
> scans 1 MB of file data. That could be reduced to 40-128k, though,  
> with minimal effort, as I outlined here previously.

Having done some quick tests on my DS (using compact flash),
detectGames() seems to execute on a tree of about 6 games quite quickly.
Judging from the overall opinion and a bit of fiddling today, calling it
without lowering the MD5 size should be fine.

As long as the list is generated in a thread, or iterated via timers,
and the directory chooser remains responsive... I can see little
negative impact and a whole-lot-of-positive from the Users point of
view.

Cheers,
	Ender
-- 
James 'Ender' Brown <ender at scummvm.org>





More information about the Scummvm-devel mailing list