[Scummvm-devel] GUI options/layout/etc

[Johannes Schickel]

On 11/24/2011 11:04 AM, A. Milburn wrote:
> 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..

Sounds like a good idea. If we had more space for the tab buttons we 
could call it "Enhancements" though, which IMHO expresses the options on 
this tab a bit better.

> * 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?

Defaulting to 44kHz on seems fine. Personally I use 48kHz and never had 
too many problems with it.

> * 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?

The "True Roland MT-32" and "Roland GS Mode" settings are in fact really 
only relevant when you have real MIDI hardware to connect. The latter 
option is in fact only used by the SCUMM engine to set GS synths to a 
MT-32 compat mode to allow a bit nicer playback of MT-32 tracks on them 
(it's far from perfect though, since IIRC the devices ignore the 
instrument change sysExs).

> * 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.)

I don't see why we should rename the tab to "Music" though.  It doesn't 
seem to have too many only music related settings (i.e. none?). The 
AdLib emulator also isn't really just related to music, but also to sfx.

// Johannes