GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 722450
Use separate buttons for New Game and Change Difficulty
Last modified: 2014-04-17 10:27:38 UTC
I'd prefer that when a user loses, that the field size will stay the same upon clicking new game and to change this "difficulty setting" would require a separate button, either in a menu or on-screen. This functionality can be achieved in a plethora of ways, but a couple simple options would be to change the text of the New button to "Change Difficulty" and add a restart button, or change the text to "Restart" and add a "Change Difficulty" button. This allows the user to select their difficulty once and not have to reselect it many times. Thanks
Allan, could you take a look at this? Thanks! --- I'd argue that new game screens are a tremendous improvement over using the preferences dialog for this purpose, but having to set the same options at the start of each game is indeed a disadvantage and it's been something I've been a little worried about. I'm surprised that this is being reported against Mines, though, since Mines only has one single screen to click through, which doesn't seem very disruptive to me. I was more concerned about games where we might need multiple such screens, like in this Chess design [1]. Or are you using the Custom Game button, which adds an extra click (but does remember your previous settings)? I don't think we want multiple New Game buttons in the window. We don't have a toolbar in 3.12 and there's no text on the buttons, and I don't think we really need any, so there's not really any clear way to do this without confusion. [2] is the current (probably far-off) design, but the actual button layout will be similar to that in 3.12. (We'll likely end up using a single tri-state button for pause, resume, and new game, which has worked well in the development versions of some other games.) In 3.10 (and probably several older versions) there is actually a Replay Game option in the application menu that does exactly what you want, but I removed it in master since I didn't think it was worth the additional complexity, and since it's in the app menu it's not very convenient to access, but convenience is the only reason for that item to exist in the first place. [1] http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5031519/chess-start-wizard.png [2] https://raw.github.com/gnome-design-team/gnome-mockups/master/games/mines/mines2.png
Created attachment 266810 [details] Concept art A "back" button may be the solution to the missing "restart" functionality
Excuse my terseness on the image upload -- I wasn't sure if that was going to submit without the message I had written prior. I had written: Hi Michael, I was using 3.10 and I see that the restart functionality is in the top menu. It does what I would like it to do, so seeing that as a button during normal games and after a game would be the ideal solution for this issue. I built master and now I see the new design, the restart functionality has been removed, just as you said. Perhaps the solution to this would be to add another button which would serve to bring you back to the difficulty selection screen. I've made a quick mock up (which looks pretty awful but works) to show how this would look. The current new game button would be used to restart at the current difficulty (field size) and the back button would take you to select a different field size. Let me know what you think of this. I know that adding buttons can get out of hand quickly when there's too many, but I think this addition looks appropriate. Thanks, Nick
(In reply to comment #1) > Allan, could you take a look at this? Thanks! Thanks for including me in this! > I'd argue that new game screens are a tremendous improvement over using the > preferences dialog for this purpose, but having to set the same options at the > start of each game is indeed a disadvantage and it's been something I've been a > little worried about. I included a new game screen in my recent mockups for Mines, but I definitely see what you're saying. I think that new game screens are probably most appropriate when games aren't (re)started all that frequently, or when difficulty is more important to how the game is used. In the case of Mines, I can imagine some players playing a lot of games at the same difficulty level. A new game screen could be annoying here. If a new game screen isn't desirable, the question then becomes - how should the user change level? Since changing the level requires that the game be restarted, perhaps it would be appropriate to have two buttons to restart - one which keeps the current level, and one which includes level selection. Perhaps something like this, where the "settings" button would take you to a select difficulty screen: https://raw.github.com/gnome-design-team/gnome-mockups/master/games/mines/mines2-new.png
Hi Allan, That mockup looks great to me.
I've restored the Replay Size functionality (the new game action that skips the new game screen): in 3.12 you'll be able to use Ctrl+R. Unfortunately I can't say if the new button layout will be ready in time for 3.12 (probably not). There's also the issue of not having room for both Change Difficulty and New Game buttons on the scores dialog, which currently opens after every win.
It should be easy to implement the button pattern in the lower-right of Allan's design separately from the rest of the task.
The mockups have just been updated - the new designs show "New Game" and "Change Difficulty" when the game is paused.
OK, we now have separate Play Again and Change Difficulty buttons in master, thanks to Robert Roth.
Awesome!