Re: [Enigma-devel] Enigma 0.60-beta

[Marcio Luis Teixeira]

Hi,

Ok, I said I wasn't going to bug you folks again, but I lied.

I tried out the new beta for a while. This is definitely has
some very cool improvements. The side-scrolling animation is
awesome, as is the timer, I love the check-marks on the
completed levels, and the "up" and "down" buttons on the
level selection screen are very good improvements to the
interface.

But I was a bit sad that this version seemed a lot less
"finished" than the 0.50 version. There are more things
in this version that seem to call out the fact that it's
not complete. See in particular my suggestions 5, 6, and 7
below. I understand that this game is very far from version
1.0, but version 0.50 did a better job of hiding it. My suggestion
for 0.60 release is that the new unfinished features be hidden
behind a command line option of some sort (this includes levels
that aren't fully tested).

Anyhow, I'm definitely having fun working through the
different levels. This game rocks. I don't have any feedback
related to game play yet, but I'll post to the list if I run into
any problems which appear to be bugs.

----

Here are some other suggestions:

1) The menu that shows up when you hit "ESC" during game play
   needs a "Exit" menu option. Currently, the only way to end
   the game is to do "ESC", hit "Abort Level", then "ESC"
   three more times. Not particularly intuitive.

2) On the screen where you get to select the level, the last
   two buttons should be labeled "First" and "Last" rather
   than "Start" and "End" (another option: "Top" and "Bottom").
   The reason is that I thought "Start" would start the game at
   the selected level and that "End" would exit the game.

   A better idea might be to have these buttons along the right
   side of the screen with scroll bar like icons for up and down
   and cassette-style fast forward icons for "Start" and "End".

3) The "Options" menu has a "Back" button, but the other
   menus don't. I think they should all have a "Back" menu
   for consistency.

4) On the list of levels in the "Enigma" set, the titles for
   #74 and #75 run into each other. Perhaps two lines ought
   to be reserved for titles, or the titles be truncated
   with "...".

5) The "todo" levels don't look very professional. I liked
   it how it was before, without the placeholder levels.
   Maybe have the game hide "todo" levels unless a special
   command line option is used to start the game?

   I understand you guys are trying to perfectly clone
   the original Oxyd games, but for people who aren't
   familiar with the originals, this isn't really that
   important.

   The grouping of levels is a nice feature, and might
   be good once all the levels are complete, but you
   may want to consider disabling this feature for the
   0.60 release. The way version 0.50 did things made
   the game look a lot more complete, 0.60 seems to
   want to emphasize the fact that it isn't complete.

6) The "Editor" button doesn't do anything. This is
   obvious, but I suggest not adding a button until
   this feature is fully implemented and tested.

7) The "Test Level" shouldn't be the first level
   in the game