Re: [Help-liquidwar6] Work in progress, again

[Kasper Hviid]

Hello there!

Damn, I'm  late (again) ... but impressive release you did there!

I like the new menu information. Even though I know my way around the
menu, it just feels better now. New players will undoubtly feel the
same!

I tried 'liquidwar6 --simulate-basic' which gave me this: "red: 9,3%,
green: 40,2%, blue: 27,7%, yellow: 22,8%"
So technically, red should have a bit of a handicap, but it felt quite
fair when I played it!

Should I still design some full-screen "pop-up" GUI? The small pop-up
windows look good too, so we could also use that instead. Or would it
be possible to "script" the current pop-up solution with images and
more advanced layout?

The map description could also tell if the game contained special
effect such as wrap-around. (This information could either be written
in metadata.xml or be pulled from rules.xml)

A danish translation would be fun, but I think I wait a bit, so we can
get the english text nailed down first. I remember being a bit unsure
about exactly how I should translate, but I think it is mostly because
I have not tried it yet. The unknown is always a bit intimidating.

One thing I have considered is to create a "character" for each color
team. They should of course be designed to have the same colors as
their fighters. Also, their look should suggest the nature of their
fighters: good defence = the character has some massive armor. They
could each have an individual name and they could be seen when using
powerups or at the HUD or player icons. On the negative side, it might
go against the abstract nature of the fighters. A bit like how ancient
text adventures had a really epic illustrations on their boxes.

It would be nice if there was some connection between the various design:
 * The homepage at gnu.org/s/liquidwar6/
 * The node at http://ufoot.org:8056/
 * The menu in the game
 * The level graphic

But what should the visual style be? What is it that we want? The menu
has so far aimed for a realistic underwater style, and then there's
the "dogma" of not favoring any color. But the visual style hasn't
been discussed much.

I think the current menu layout has a slightly clumsy feel to it. It
could give the impression that the game is something which has been
thrown together in a single weekend. This is a unfair way to present a
piece of software with so many years of development. I know I should
use my time on creating some actual content for the game, but I have
made some menu layout suggestions, based on the current menu elements.
I have tried to create something that looks somewhat pleasing, and
somewhat possible to implement:

A ) I have stretched the GUI-boxes all the way out, to give it a more
clean look, and replaced the sky background in the level with 100 %
black:
(A bad thing about this design is that the dominant box to the right
"breaks" the center-based layout of the menu)
http://img830.imageshack.us/img830/1617/lw6layouttesta.jpg

B) The same layout, but without round edges at the menu buttons:
http://img607.imageshack.us/img607/2373/lw6layouttestb.jpg

C) More experiemental: Trying to combine the breadcrumbs and the menu:
http://img843.imageshack.us/img843/2680/lw6layouttestc.jpg

D) Textured buttons with "simple" shadows. The level description has
been put into a box:
http://img593.imageshack.us/img593/3122/lw6layouttestd.jpg

BTW, you may have noticed that I have changed the font. I used Square
Antiqua from openfontlibrary.org

 - Kasper