Re: Some suggested improvements for in-game text

[Janne]

As I'm not subscribed to the list this answer may be erroneously sorted;
sorry about that.



> > Second screen:
> > "..change slowly."
> > Should be "slowly change."
> 
> Shouldn't "to change slowly" be replaced with "slowly to change"? Left
> it as is for now.

No. If  my suggestion is not good, then it's better to keep it as it is.
The original is grammatical, if a little clumsy. "slowly to change" is
not.


> > "While you on the other side can practice there"
> > "You can, on the other hand, practice"
> 
> I choose "You may," instead of "You can," since it sounds better to me.
> Correct me if it's wrong.

Even better!


> > "available, you have"
> > "available, so you have"
> 
> Doesn't make sense to me.

Sorry; I meant it without the "if":

"Sometimes no other actions are available, so you have..."

> 
> > Eleventh mission:
> > "in control, the Blocker"
> > "in control; the Blocker"
> 
> Possible but very unusual in my experience.

Well, with the comma it becomes a run-on sentence. Something is needed
there, and I personally am a fan of the semicolon. :) Other options
would be to use a binding word (don't remember what it's called in
english):

"...rest of the Pingus in control, [so|and|thus|therefore] the Blocker
action will help."

A third option would be to terminate it:

"rest of the Pingus in control. The Blocker action will be of help."


> > I haven't seen any further, as the persistant lag and jumping
> > unfortunately prevents me from completing any more missions.
> 
> Did you try --min-frame-skip, --fast-mode?
> You may also try to compile Pingus and ClanLib yourself using "-O2
> -march=whatever_you_have" as CXXFLAGS using GCC 3.2.2 This may too help
> to speed up the game. Low performance is a known problem and will
> hopefully be adressed soon.

Once I shut down some background stuff, the lagging all but disappeared.
As you say, it is still a bit of a resource hog, but it's certainly very
playable now!

Again, this is nit-picking, but it's the kind of polish that a very
well-designed app can benefit from. 

If you want me to, and you haven't changed most of the texts already in
cvs, I could post suggestions for the rest of the texts as well.

-- 

Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.

Tel.    +46-046 222 8588             Dr. Janne Morén (mr)
Home:   +46-046 211 4973             Dept. of Cognitive Science
Fax:    +46-046 222 9758             Kungshuset, Lund
                                     S-222 22 Lund, Sweden