Restart on GUI

[Eizzoux]

I think it could be pretty reasonable to add restart button not just as a shortcut, but also as additional button for panel. Not sure about fully adding it to the vanilla game, but at least as a button anyone could implement into their levelsets/graphicsets.
Also, possibly, buttons related to some other shortcuts, especially on editor: element rotation/switching, selected element highlight [Alt].

[Holger]

Adding an optional restart button really is a good idea, and I think I should add this (to be used in custom games for now).

Regarding the editor buttons, I'm not sure yet if it's worth it, as it could also only be used with custom artwork...

[Eizzoux]

Regarding the editor buttons, I'm not sure yet if it's worth it, as it could also only be used with custom artwork...

Returning to this topic, the point of this idea was just higher accessibility to object rotation for mobile users, for example. They can't manually rotate objects, nor easily highlight all similar/identical tiles.
For the first one, I think there could potentially be just two buttons like I've shown back in 2019 in this topic for rotating left and right, except instead of highlighting the one you need to select, it's just whatever mouse button you click on any of these two buttons with, the element of that slot gets rotated (sort of like in MM before 3.0.0, where you could rotate elements by clicking on their slots).
Or if that idea may not really work, at least it's better if you actually add all variants of some of MM and DF elements because there's no real other way to do that on mobile, unless you copy them from other levels, which is... ridiculous, to say the least. Or have a primarily inserted editorsetup conf with all needed elements.
Anyways, just few examples:

• Here's what I want to create

  

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• But for now mobile only allows this at max

  

  a1.png (200.83 KiB) Viewed 4630 times

  
  

For rotatable mirrors and polarizers, that is not that critical, because they are getting randomized anyways, but for fixed DF mirrors and DF grids (both fixed and rotating), which are all listed only in their first variants - that may become quite problematic, because the puzzle above becomes basically impossible to recreate. Oh yeah, and I'm including rotating grids, because they're synced together, starting from whichever angle they were put on, and they all have to be at different angles to align perfectly for the puzzle, but on mobile... yeah, you just put them down, and all of them are on the same angle, making the puzzle unsolvable.
Another example:

• Another clear pattern where all fixed mirrors are placed on very specific angles to be completable (don't look at the fibre optic in the end, it's not funny)

  

  b2.png (122.61 KiB) Viewed 4630 times

  
  
• And without the ability to place them on different angles, it's.. yeah, dead end right away...

  

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Also, just curious, is the GUI restart button taken for a consideration? I mean, like, is it going to be a thing, potentially? I'm asking because if it is going to be added, then I already have alternative button pattern for the pause+stop+restart ready for RF's screen.

ygbkbfe.png (44.58 KiB) Viewed 4630 times

[Holger]

the point of this idea was just higher accessibility to object rotation for mobile users

That's right, but the question is: Are there really any people out there which create new levels on a mobile device?

I think R'n'D should definitely be playable on mobile devices, and it should also be possible to go to the level editor and have a look at the level (and maybe do some temporary changes to try out the level with these changes, like skipping some hard passages for "training" or testing purposes). But, in fact, I cannot really think of somebody doing serious level creation work on a mobile device, followed by the challenge to copy the finished level set from the mobile device to a PC to be able to package and contribute it. Or am I wrong?

That is, my assuption so far is that real level creation work will be done on a PC in 99,9 % of all cases anyway.

But you may be right that placing pre-rotated MM/DF elements in the level editor is not too obvious when working on a PC either, so maybe I should improve this.

Also, just curious, is the GUI restart button taken for a consideration? I mean, like, is it going to be a thing, potentially?

Definitely yes! In fact, I have just forgotten about it, so thank you for reminding me of this task again. Adding such a button should really be simple and not much work, so it should be no issue to just add it for the next version. Please beat me if I should forget about this again!

[Eizzoux]

Please beat me if I should forget about this again!

Sorry, but I don't really want to get physical.

But jokes aside, okie.




Also, I just got a silly idea on how we could possibly switch to element's other variations. Basically, if an element has some related elements (whether it's similar tiles or just it's variations), it's properties page will display a "+" button, which, if clicked, will show a little window with all of it's variations you can potentially click on and therefore switch to it's properties page instead.

Here's few mockups I did (obv. fake):

plusminus1.png (249.36 KiB) Viewed 4510 times

plusminus2.png (258.1 KiB) Viewed 4510 times

plusminus3.png (160.89 KiB) Viewed 4510 times

plusminus4.png (169.51 KiB) Viewed 4510 times

And one more thing, just curious, whichever ideas are you also planning to add in the future? Will there also potentially be some ideas I gave in this topic?

[Holger]

I think it could be pretty reasonable to add restart button not just as a shortcut, but also as additional button for panel.

Please have a look at the new R'n'D version 4.3.8.2 which I released yesterday. It more or less just adds that restart button, to be used as a game panel button, extra panel button and/or touch button, as follows:

Code: Select all

gfx.game.button.restart ... (graphics definition)

gfx.game.button.panel_restart ... (graphics definition)

gfx.game.button.touch_restart ... (graphics definition)

game.button.restart.x
game.button.restart.y

game.button.panel_restart.x
game.button.panel_restart.y

game.button.touch_restart.x
game.button.touch_restart.y

New graphics for the normal game panel button (and touch button) are already included, but not used yet.

Not sure about fully adding it to the vanilla game, but at least as a button anyone could implement into their levelsets/graphicsets.

Indeed I would like to replace the old (and not really useful) "play" button on the game panel with the new "restart" button! But I would like to do this in a way that existing custom artwork won't be affected. This can affect both redesigned buttons (like in BD2K3, where buttons are at the same place, but look differently -- the new restart button would work fine here, but would look differently), but especially totally redefined graphics (where button positions have been changed, and a new restart button would suddenly appear at the default position, where it would most probably disturb the redefined artwork).

It would probably be solvable by some extra compatibility code (again)... :-/

[Holger]

Some more answers to your last post:

Also, I just got a silly idea on how we could possibly switch to element's other variations.

I think it is really a good idea to make it possible to quickly access all "related" game elements (that is, those that are highlighted together with the current game element when holding the "Alt" key pressed, for example).

Your proposed solution to implement this looks quite practical. Another possibility could be to add a third tab "related" which lists all related elements, ready to be clicked just like in your proposal (and would require the same number of mouse clicks to reach those related game elements).

And one more thing, just curious, whichever ideas are you also planning to add in the future? Will there also potentially be some ideas I gave in this topic?

Although I haven't answered this topic yet, it has some good ideas that could be worth implementing! And some of them should really be implemented, in fact, like missing graphics and sound configuration possibilities (and those shouldn't be too hard to do).

It's just that the MM engine is currently not that much in my focus, although I know that those things would be useful, needed or required for your Reflektor project. So I should check which changes would have the best practical use while requiring only small effort. But I should best write a separate answer directly to the original post.

[Eizzoux]

Please have a look at the new R'n'D version 4.3.8.2 which I released yesterday. It more or less just adds that restart button, to be used as a game panel button, extra panel button and/or touch button, as follows:

Code: Select all

[insert lines here]

Oh neat, all three variants as well! Just tested that out in RF and... yeah, at least panel_restart and touch_restart both work as they should! Tested both on Windows and Android. And considering that RnD now has restart button of it's own, then I assume it should indeed work.

On Windows

rf_restart.png (361.12 KiB) Viewed 4275 times

On Android

Screenshot_2024-02-25-16-02-56-995_org.artsoft.rocksndiamonds.jpg (558.62 KiB) Viewed 4275 times

Also, regarding the Android, there have been some improvements which I assume were introduced in some of the latest updates.
First, I don't remember how much time ago I tested game's adaptive rotation when you turn your phone around. It seems to be handling that much better than I remembered back then.

Second, remember my report on global animations fading out specifically on Android and specifically together with the touch buttons? Well, that issue doesn't seem to happen anymore, touch buttons fade in, then fade out, and global animations actually stay. Although there is still one little problem. For some reason specifically the touch stop button doesn't fade in, but instead just pops into view without any effect. Here, I tried to catch a screenshot of it on my phone.

Look at the stop button, look at the stop button

Screenshot_2024-02-25-16-04-45-208_org.artsoft.rocksndiamonds.jpg (534.17 KiB) Viewed 4275 times

By the way, could there potentially be a way for us to test touch buttons on the PC versions? Like, a debug menu where we could potentially just test some things we normally can't without transfering the levelset to another platform. Or a debug setup page where we could turn these on PC? Or perhaps even a start up flag for a desktop shortcut like:

"...\rocksndiamonds\rocksndiamonds.exe" -debug

Anyways, third, is ".alpha" also appicable to touch buttons? If so, do I apply it to the texture definition or the object itself? Like, is it "gfx.game.button.touch_pause.alpha" or "game.button.touch_pause.alpha"? Like, I know these are buttons, but they have that sort of "global anim" nature, so I assume they have such alpha and fade behavior support. And speaking of, since you added the fading effect, can you potentially make touch buttons a bit more customizable by adding a ".fade_delay:" to them? Like, by default it's around 50 frames/1000 ms for them, but we could potentially make them fade in and out with different speed.

Fourth, about the fading, this is indeed a nice feature! It also allows me to basically get rid of the "rf_fade.png" in Reflektor because I can now just make it use a black background from any other file, unmask and apply fading effect to it. But that also makes me wonder about something I haven't yet tested out - combining both masked and unmasked with alpha AND fading together. Just in case if there is any misbehavior, which I will try to test some time later.

Finally, last, one thing I don't exactly remember happening before. Since Reflektor doesn't use any screen fading effects, it's transitions are instant. And such instant transitions do have some little weird behaviors happening. To be more specific, earlier when going to editor, the transition from main menu to editor was pretty much seamless, but nowadays for some reason once you click the editor button in main menu, the "door_1" of editor appears for a split frame and then on next frame gets obscured by the global animations (the RF doors). I assume this is a result of this fix.
And I think in general the game doesn't fully disable screen fading when ".fade_mode: none", considering that the FADING global anims can still appear just for a short frame before vanishing again. I assume what happens here is the game just shortens the fading screen to one frame which is what leads to such weird flickering on transitions. Is it possible to make game actually completely skip FADING phase if the fade mode is disabled?

[Holger]

These are a lot of questions and suggestions. I have just read it all again, but I will have to test most things to say something meaningful about it. (Especially testing things on Android is always a pain in the rear part.)

At least regarding touch buttons and testing them on non-touch devices: There is no debug switch to test them on other systems, but so far I have to enable it by re-compiling with some modifications. Yes, it would be nice to be able to just test this by setting a command-line switch.

Please remind me if I should forget to answer all those questions. I'm currently too busy with all the work on the new native BD game engine...