[GerbilSoft]

Many of the windows in Gens/GS have the same layout from Gens, and sorely need a redesign due to usability issues. In this topic, I will post screenshots of the current windows, and if anyone has any ideas for redesigning them, you can post a redesigned window screenshot as a reply.

Main window:


About:


Color Adjust:


OpenGL Resolution:


Country Code:


General Options:


Controller Configuration:


Directory Configuration:


BIOS/Misc Files:


Select CD-ROM Drive:


Plugin Manager:


Archive File Selection dialog:


(Plugin) Game Genie:


(Plugin) Sonic Gens:


(Plugin) VDP Layer Options:


(Plugin) Blargg's NTSC Filter:

This post has been edited by GerbilSoft: 09 December 2009 - 01:49 PM
Reason for edit: Added zipsel_dialog.

[Andlabs]

Color Adjust:
OpenGL Resolution:

These should be merged — Video Options?

Country Code:
General Options:

These should also be merged somehow. Dialogs with this few options don't really need to be separate.

Controller Configuration:

Can this be made thinner?

Select CD-ROM Drive:
Directory Configuration:
BIOS/Misc Files:

Maybe these should be merged into a single Files and Folders dialog.

I don't have interface design tools available at the moment; when I do I could post what I see these dialogs could be redone as.

[Overlord]

Couldn't this just be replaced with a dropdown box of normal resolutions, making sure to include the current system resolution as an option in the list no matter what?

[Black Squirrel]

The FPS counter/message colours could be changed to allow the user to pick any colour rather than just restricting it to four.

But then again I seem to remember Gens+ fiddling around with these options and allowing you to change fonts, so maybe it might be wise to see what they've done. It's been a while since I've used that emulator myself mind you so I might be getting confused with something else.

[GerbilSoft]

The FPS counter/message colours could be changed to allow the user to pick any colour rather than just restricting it to four.

But then again I seem to remember Gens+ fiddling around with these options and allowing you to change fonts, so maybe it might be wise to see what they've done. It's been a while since I've used that emulator myself mind you so I might be getting confused with something else.

Gens doesn't use the operating system font renderer for the onscreen display. Gens+ includes a few different fonts, which is why it allows you to select which one you want to use.

Gens/GS currently uses a variant of the C64 font. The next version will use a combination of UNI-VGA (a VGA-like font) and GNU Unifont (mostly for fullwidth characters). I can add support for selecting any color instead of just those four colors relatively easily. (The main reason why it was restricted to four colors is because the original Gens used a shaded font, which only worked properly with hard-coded palettes.)

[SegaLoco]

Not sure what you plan to do with the debugger, but could it be put into a separate window, and realtime?

[Oerg866]

Put these in, already >:(

[Vague Rant]

(Plugin) Game Genie:

This could really use a way to enter multi-line codes, etc. With a couple of parsing methods, it could be set up to allow copying and pasting from pretty much anywhere. Right now it's a chore to enable a code like this:

CODE

REPA-C6YR + REPA-C6YT + REPA-C6YW + REPA-C6YY
+ RFJT-C61Y + RFJT-C610 + RFJT-C612 + RFJT-C614
+ RF6T-C6V0 + RF6T-C6V2 + RF6T-C6V4 + RF6T-C6V6
+ RHPA-C6V0 + RHPA-C6V2 + RHPA-C6V4 + RHPA-C6V6
+ RHPT-C6VE + RHPT-C6VG + RHPT-C6VJ + RHPT-C6VL
+ RFPT-T6YC     Disable Super Transformation Music

To the point where I'm not even bothering. If it was set up to identify codes by say, any place there's a line break and/or a _+_, or some similar (maybe parsing comma-separated codes as well), things would be much simpler. I'm aware that codes can be converted to hex and written directly to the individual .pat file, but that's really not something I'd consider to be more convenient, so much as convoluted and time-consuming.

[SegaLoco]

(Plugin) Game Genie:

This could really use a way to enter multi-line codes, etc. With a couple of parsing methods, it could be set up to allow copying and pasting from pretty much anywhere. Right now it's a chore to enable a code like this:

CODE

REPA-C6YR + REPA-C6YT + REPA-C6YW + REPA-C6YY
+ RFJT-C61Y + RFJT-C610 + RFJT-C612 + RFJT-C614
+ RF6T-C6V0 + RF6T-C6V2 + RF6T-C6V4 + RF6T-C6V6
+ RHPA-C6V0 + RHPA-C6V2 + RHPA-C6V4 + RHPA-C6V6
+ RHPT-C6VE + RHPT-C6VG + RHPT-C6VJ + RHPT-C6VL
+ RFPT-T6YC     Disable Super Transformation Music

To the point where I'm not even bothering. If it was set up to identify codes by say, any place there's a line break and/or a _+_, or some similar (maybe parsing comma-separated codes as well), things would be much simpler. I'm aware that codes can be converted to hex and written directly to the individual .pat file, but that's really not something I'd consider to be more convenient, so much as convoluted and time-consuming.

Well, if you know coding, you could write a parser for those .pat converters

[MainMemory]

(Plugin) Game Genie:
[img]

This could really use a way to enter multi-line codes, etc. With a couple of parsing methods, it could be set up to allow copying and pasting from pretty much anywhere. Right now it's a chore to enable a code like this:

CODE

REPA-C6YR + REPA-C6YT + REPA-C6YW + REPA-C6YY
+ RFJT-C61Y + RFJT-C610 + RFJT-C612 + RFJT-C614
+ RF6T-C6V0 + RF6T-C6V2 + RF6T-C6V4 + RF6T-C6V6
+ RHPA-C6V0 + RHPA-C6V2 + RHPA-C6V4 + RHPA-C6V6
+ RHPT-C6VE + RHPT-C6VG + RHPT-C6VJ + RHPT-C6VL
+ RFPT-T6YC     Disable Super Transformation Music

To the point where I'm not even bothering. If it was set up to identify codes by say, any place there's a line break and/or a _+_, or some similar (maybe parsing comma-separated codes as well), things would be much simpler. I'm aware that codes can be converted to hex and written directly to the individual .pat file, but that's really not something I'd consider to be more convenient, so much as convoluted and time-consuming.

Well, if you know coding, you could write a parser for those .pat converters

But then you still have to enable each line separately.

[SegaLoco]

No, for putting in a .pat file... You just load that up in the file menu.

[MainMemory]

Yes, but it would be nice if you could have one line with multiple codes.

[GerbilSoft]

I finished updating the onscreen display system to allow for any RGB color to be used for text. (The standard color picker dialog is used to select a color.)

Instead of showing the four color buttons for FPS and Message, it now shows one button that says "Change...". The background color of this button is the current color for that item.