Probably wise a decision merging my thoughts into this thread, but I wanted to avoid the toxic stew of the unrealistic weird crap in this thread.

Too much crazy talk for me in this thread, I was referring to more pedestrian things.

That being said ...

Appreciate you, Shambler! 

"Wrong. There were mouse-driven GUIs for Quake engines before, and most of them never inspired other engines to follow suit. Even Makaqu has a mouse-driven GUI with a minimalistic approach, which uses the mouse wheel and buttons instead of a pointer and is therefore faster in most situations when we get used to it."

Load up Mark V current beta build. http://celephais.net/board/view_thread.php?id=61375&start=1835

I'm sorry, but every other engine has tried mouse driven menu has done it wrong.

The Mark V implementation smokes all past failures because it is actually done right.

The closest to "done right" in the past is Spike's implementation in FTE.

The implementation in Mark V nails it.

Try it, I dare you to disagree after trying it.

I am a classic player purist player before I am an engine developer. And this ultra-conservativism is why the menu succeeds.

I went "full retard" to get it how a classic "stick in the mud" would want it work.

I look forward to your "Fuck, I hate to admit it because but you are right Baker and you nailed it!" post, hahahaha!

Btw: I am not kidding. Everyone who has tried said I nailed it. Because I DID NAIL IT! 

May I ask for you try to the mouse driven menu in Mark V build 1050 and share if you if I completely fucking nailed it?

You are a big "stick-in-mud-conservative" which means your opinion is only kind I value.

(If you doubt me, ask Mugwump if I think I value your opinion some time ...) 

I'm sorry if I'm missing something here, but what exactly defines (in this case, at least) if a mouse-driven interface is 'done right' or 'done wrong?' 

Proven good taste for classic Quake is self-evident. If you have to ask, you are not the target audience for such a question.

People with appreciation for the taste of classic Quake and conservative credentials are never in doubt.

They never ask such a question and are pre-loaded with conviction of their righteousness. 

Look -- I don't believe in sugar-coating. I truly don't. I have come to the conclusion that is what ruins most games and millenials.

If I were to rephrase to be more it would go like this: "If you don't know, fuck you".

I'm sincerely not trying to be dick, and I mean that from the bottom of my heart, but isn't your entire screaming "I have shit for taste".

I just CANNOT sympathize with that.

I think that mindset ruins gaming, every game and every form of game.

Now, if you have an open mind, perhaps you can see why I am tearing into your "WTF is good taste" qualification.

I am saying "If you have to ask, FUCK YOU -- disqualified -- go pound sand".

I am do mean that. Without reservation.

If you don't trust your own judgement, go fly a fucking kite, you are the poster-boy for bad taste.

If you understand, and I expect you do. 

And I thought I had some bad rants. 

I wanted to post with just the face but I have to put some words here, I guess. 

My "bad rants" are purely philosophical perspective and conservative prudeness, otp. Your bad rants tend to be personal.

My "bad rants" are impersonally "perspective oriented", even here.

12 beers down and my honest 3rd person critique of a point-of-view is kinder than yours which has many times been euphemistically "quite unkind".

Baker + 12 beers > bigger morale compass than otp. I still care and am not looking to offend the person. Life lesson for otp perhaps? 

So .. regardless of my rants .. let's hear your honest thoughts.

Try the various mouse driven menus listed above, post your thoughts ..

Don't question your judgment .. just state what you feel ... 

You have already demonstrated you have talents that care for the betterment of Quake. Everyone has seen this.

Why not go with that?

You can't spell anti-hero without hero, so quit being such a dick for no reason maybe?

I'm just saying ...

We all know you have the capacity for good. 

I'm well aware of, and actually quite enjoying, my moral compass not being fully functional, so that's hardly a life lesson.(If anything, your bragging sounds like classic compensation, which is fully plausible, considering some of your older, absolutely callous musings in certain threads)

But I'm still capable of doing good, as are you - so I'm hoping once the drunken haxe wears off, you will reflect on what you've done, which is scream profanities at a potential user for asking an unobvious question.

I have never used a mouse-based menu in Quake, so out of pure curiosity I would be seconding Spud's question. What's in it for me, as another Quake-conservative player? Or does that question reflect on my tastes and design sensibilities (which have been an asset so far) as well?

If it is such a revolutionary implementation, it shouldn't be difficult to explain. 

And no, thanks, I'll be an actual hero where I think it matters, which is not the Internet. 

If it is such a revolutionary implementation, it shouldn't be difficult require installing numerous other, allegedly inferior implementations to explain. 

I downloaded the new Mark V build despite not really wanting to after that drunken outburst (if your faculties are impaired through impending liver failure, consider not going on the internet), and here's the verdict: it feels like a mouse driven menu. Seen it before in ezquake, with much the same functionality- left click to select things, right click to go up a menu, hold left click to slide a slider.

Plus points for highlighting the menu option you're hovering over and for using the system cursor and sensitivity instead of an ugly green one like ezquake. Minus points for not moving the spinning Quake icon when mousing over SP/MP/options/etc, for the scroll wheel not scrolling in the Levels menu or other similar scroll-bar-equipped screens (i.e. the demos menu if you have a whole bunch of demos), and for being advertised as * Fully mouse-driven menu despite the mouse not appearing when the console is open, meaning highlighting text for copying is only possible in the entry prompt itself through holding shift and using the arrow keys to move the cursor and you're out of luck for copying error messages or similar.

I mean, it's neat, but it's still slower than just tapping enter a few times to start a new game, or tapping escape/~ for the console and typing in whatever map you've just downloaded and plunked in your \maps folder. Also, so far as I can see the main menu isn't already open when you launch the game so while the demo is playing you still have to press any key on the keyboard to open it and bring the cursor up.

just state what you feel ...
'What you feel' is a pretty poor way to judge things, though, isn't it? I can think of a number of ways that you could separate a 'good' mouse interface from a 'bad' one, with just a few things experienced not only between source ports of this game, but in various older games themselves: Does the scroll wheel scroll properly? Does the mouse have forced acceleration (or deceleration) in the menus, and does it use a separate, nonadjustable sensitivity different from your OS setting? Is it more sensitive when moving the cursor horizontally than vertically (this shows up surprisingly often now that most people are playing at 16:10 or 16:9)? Do you have to navigate to click a tiny [x] or [Back] button to exit a menu if Escape doesn't work? And so on and so forth.

Not sure if all this belongs in this thread now, but fuck it, we'll do it live. 

@otp

You have a taste for conservative Quake, all of us know you do.

Load up Mark V 1050 and give us all your honest unbiased opinion.

Nut up, man. 

Thanks for the feedback, even though your feedback differs from other feedback I have received and I had reason to question to your judgment from the start, don't think for a second I won't take your feedback into consideration.

I'm hardcore that like where I consider the feedbsck from all.

+1 for rising to the occasion.

OTP. Let us hear your opinion. 

Yeah, I am .. well .. it's 17 beers down at this point.

A sincere thanks for your feedback.

I get what you say about the mouse wheel, but I strongly disagree for reasons that are too detailed for me to explain right now (but make perfect sense -- either you honor the mouse position or you don't and in that case you must take the mouse position over the mouse wheel for behavior reasons).

I reiterate that I do respect you. You manned up. I always respect anyone who manned up. You did. Case closed, you have my respect.

I wanted to convey that. 

That was an interesting last 20 posts....

I wanted to avoid the toxic stew of the unrealistic weird crap in this thread.

Too much crazy talk for me in this thread

Oh okay then.


My "bad rants" are purely philosophical perspective and conservative prudeness, otp.

My "bad rants" are impersonally "perspective oriented", even here.

...

Baker + 12 beers > bigger morale compass than otp.

quit being such a dick for no reason maybe?

...evidently so.


You are a big "stick-in-mud-conservative"

I'm not entirely sure about that, given that half the old skool maps I play on stream I comment with "This would be really nice with some subtle fog and coloured lighting and AD-style breakables", and that I have started a thread about modern improvements to Quake. I suppose I am a big "gradual-improvements-and-harmony-with-current-Quake-style conservative", tho.

Anyway, I tried the mouse-driven menu in MarkV, I concur with Spud - it feels exactly like a mouse-driven menu and if I actually wanted a mouse-driven menu then this is just the sort of mouse-driven menu I'd go for. HTH. 

"Anyway, I tried the mouse-driven menu in MarkV, I concur with Spud - it feels exactly like a mouse-driven menu and if I actually wanted a mouse-driven menu then this is just the sort of mouse-driven menu I'd go for."

Thank you for taking the time to try out the mouse-driven menu, I invested a lot of time and effort in it.

I'll take this as a good start for today.

Perhaps, tomorrow I hope to win your heart and your soul completely over. I may not have entirely accomplished this today, but I will take that I at least partially won your over.

That will have to do for now.

I appreciate your feedback and thank you for taking the time to do this, Shambler. 

Based on me barely having a total of 17 beers-worth of alcohol in the last 2 months.

Mouse-driven menus - never felt a need for it.

Improved AI - why not, I wouldn't mind it if it's done well. Not a fan of uber-strafing bobs and nehahra enemies, and z-aware ogres have to be used sparingly, but some better chasing AI could be pretty fun if used well. Like everything, introduce it carefully. Also better tactical negotiations between different enemies could be funny as long as it doesn't override infighting.

Real-time lighting / high res textures - both completely out-of-place and jarring with the current level of detail and especially the current Quake models. However these things are constantly improving and if/when all the Quake models are improved and a higher level of design / detail becomes standard (subject to mappers being able to do it easily / comfortable), then both of these more advanced graphical effects would be pretty welcome.

I've said it before and I will say it again:

Subtle, incremental, careful, and harmonious improvements to Quake's graphics are great

There's already been a lot of good stuff added: coloured fog, coloured lighting, breakables, transparencies, cobwebs/vines, particles, the new Shambler model (not perfect but I like it and it does fit in) etc. All of these have been small changes that still fit well with the relatively crude models / texture resolution / detail levels, AND they have often been used really nicely and carefully by mappers to enhance their maps. Hopefully there is more of this to come, and in time bigger graphical leaps like hi-res tex, RT lighting, soft smoke etc, will be able to fit in well too. 

I'm tempted to add a big laundry list of stuff, but I'll just mention one thing for now.

- Some kind of thing that works as follows:

Create a brushmodel, place it in your level in a nice position, and flag it as "always draw". Now, throw sky brushes around to seal all your rooms in a sensible "I understand vis-blocking" way....but...plot twist! Wherever you see sky, you can also potentially see your special "always draw" brushmodel, drawn in front of the sky but otherwise sorted with the rest of your geometry.

This would allow the creation of town / city style maps with cool skylines that don't make the engine draw literally the entire level at once.

To make it more optimised you could even give the mapper ability to turn it off in places where you don't need it. 

Keyboard focus should not be tied to mouse focus. I'm not going into the specifics, but there are good reasons why all operational systems' GUI keeps both focuses independent.

All major operational systems have user interface guideline documents describing what makes an interface to be good. From the ones I've read, the Microsoft one was the best, despite their product still having major design flaws. There's also the Apple one, and some others from some Linux distros.

Anyway, for Quake itself, in which mouse aiming has become the main control scheme, the purpose of a good mouse-driven interface should be to remove the need for the user to switch his/her right hand from the mouse to the keyboard. Just that. The mouse should enable the user to do anything that the keyboard would require his right hand for, minus typing text.

So, the main measure of good mouse-driven interfaces in Quake should be that the less right hand movement needed, the better. Arm injuries such as Carp Tunnel Syndrome are very real and some players have them, so the developers must take this kind of issue in consideration when designing their UIs.

User interface design is not a subjective mysterious art. 

- More widespread adoption of lit water (cough, cough QS)

- FTEs "software banding" option adopted/copied in more engines (cough, cough QS). Quake feels too sterile without it. 

*carpal tunnel syndrome, not carp.