Hi all,

After a lotta time thinking about whether i should write that or not, i finally decided myself to post here in the forum.

I really love Nexuiz, and i want it to be more known and used.
... and i think it isn't enough nOOb-friendly. I'm persuaded that a lotta people just try it and don't go further coz they don't understand some things in the menus or dont find any help.

First point :

There could be huge improvements into menu navigation & design.
I don't tell it 'just like that', i really studied it a long time before posting... and ergonomic / user-friendly design is my work, i think i'm not wrong.

I dunno anything about the development and the nexuiz team, and i remember i've read somewhere that the menu is planned to be completely redone...
So i just wanted to propose you to provide an ergonomic review of the menu... like a listing of some usefull improvements with some screen examples.

Second Point :

Think the www.nexuiz.com domain is 'under-used' and that it should be more graphically attractive...
There too, if the team accepts some help / changes, i'm ready to make a full content / organisation / graphism review to give a second breath to that pale website


Well, its perhaps a bit confused, but i launched my proposal tell me if you think that kind of work could help.

i agree with the point of the menu, i also just had a course about usability at school, and the nexuiz menu realy isnt the best one from this point of view. the worst example are those 3 buttons on the bottom left.. and what does create mean? a menu item with the name create means nothing at all. of course if you know nexuiz you will find out that its here to create a server.
we could make a thread sometime about this

I agree the menu is "less then optimal". in fact its the one part of nexuiz i never realy liked. The design is one thing, tho not the best atm it is usable. The thing that realy bites my ass is the wacky controls - like the scrollbars that dont scroll and the pressing esc 16 times before the menu closes.

Im not sure how far along the recreation of the menus is, but unless its far gone alredy this would be a good time to submit any ideas for how to improve it.

tZork wrote:... and the pressing esc 16 times before the menu closes...

that's typically what i mean. actually you dont need to press it 16 times you need to press esc when the mouse cursor is NOT on a button

obi_wan wrote:

tZork wrote:... and the pressing esc 16 times before the menu closes...

that's typically what i mean. actually you dont need to press it 16 times you need to press esc when the mouse cursor is NOT on a button

Not always true, i pointed this out back in 1.2 and was told "dont have your mouse over a button" but that aint always it, im 100% sure this happens for other (to me still unknown) resaons too.

I agree, the menus could be re-organized. And I also observed the need for pressing Esc multiple times (although not 16 ) to exit the menu - NOT being over a button.
But even IF that was the reason, that's clearly a bug. Being over a button with the mouse should not affect Esc's function of closing the menu.



Also, what I think should definitely be added: An in-game menu for voting. I mean, if somebody starts a vote, there is just that little, tiny information on top of the screen and that's it. Nobody will vote, because you just don't recognize that there is a vote.
And besides that, some nice menu with a little bit of text is always some neat eyecandy

well one thing that cood be done is to make some menues like the "quit" and "credis" menu.. EI a "window"..
and have a "resume buton" and a "disconnect button"..

NEXUIZ DESPERATELY NEEDS A DISCONNECT BUTTON
so that when I am losing I can quit in anger quicker

Also, I know how programming in-game menus can be both hard and boring, so why couldn't there be a seperate settings program like other games have, it could also be used to edit config scripts and stuff. Plus you could make it in like 10 seconds using vb/python/java instead of editing the game code.

bind "p" "disconnect"

as easy as falling off a log

flatmush wrote:NEXUIZ DESPERATELY NEEDS A DISCONNECT BUTTON
so that when I am losing I can quit in anger quicker

Already implemented on F11

Also, I know how programming in-game menus can be both hard and boring, so why couldn't there be a seperate settings program like other games have, it could also be used to edit config scripts and stuff. Plus you could make it in like 10 seconds using vb/python/java instead of editing the game code.

Well... no.

First of all, these things tend to be even more annoying and you have to exit the game altogether to change settings. So you can't change video settings while connected.

Then - which language.
VB? Won't run on Linux or Mac.
Python? Won't run on Windows. The only Python GUI toolkit that works without problems on Windows is PyTk, and you don't really want that as Tk is probably the most ugly toolkit ever. Plus, Windows doesn't include Python so the user would need to install that first.
Java? A hassle to get running on platforms not supported by Sun, like Linux-PPC. Please not.

The answer is obvious... QBasic!

Cool, QBasic. Everone wants that.

Well, either it ends up using SCREEN 13 and drawing the GUI stuff using pixels... then one could as well use SDL.

Or it ends up drawing using ASCII characters... then curses is what one would use... (which BTW exists on Windows, thanks to cygwin).

But no, I doubt we want that...

hihi ascii menus in a modern shooter game, now theres originality!

Maybe being user-unfriendly is my fault too, couse with my devteam-mate ( *khmZORK! ) we left the n00bmaps project, thatcould teach newby players to all the basics around nexuiz, and in general in all FPS games. But that's a hard one, and I don't think two pplwould be nuff to finnsih it ever

I have to admit, the website is underused. We should get a CMS up there, and I'd be happy to template the current design. I use joomla for my site and my clan site, they have a good range of addons for it too.

The menu does need some work though. It should be more like a traditional FPS menu though, not like what they have now. There should be a backdrop for it. (anyone who has ipodlinux or rockbox and doom on their 4G ipod will know why)

I've had Joomla at my site and tried it out and IMO it's not as good as it says to be. First of it's demanding, hard on the net, you need good connection to get everything fast and you'd need people to administrate it and learning Joomla might not be easy for unexperienced people with web design. And there should always be more than one person for such a site. A simple HTML/CSS site does not require that. And lastly, you don't have that much freedom with design of the site unless you make own modules and components or find some on the net, and it's not always easy to install them either.

joomla is an exellent example of falling inbetween chairs.. its too heavy to be easy, and too siple to be advanced.. but its ok for setting up sites for customers whom you can tell "no you cant o that"

I mostly use eZ publish, wich is very heavy, but very very flexible, however, its hard to learn, but when you know it you save so much time.