New Settings Panel Prototype

[pseudografx]

..you would lose the seldom/often functionality, but the fish choice is a bit more clear. Anyway I still think there is some better way to make that selection screen.

[feldon34]

and only having 3 fish in the tank. Is this even possible. With the sliders as shown if you want less than 7 fish you have to make a choice about what those fish are going to be (i.e. you can't have a random choice of less than 7 fish). You would need a separate box to say how many fish you wanted to show.

You're right. With my method, it's difficult and non-intuitive to specify less than 7 fish if ANY of them are random.

Well, if we were going to start from scratch, I see Prolific's idea of dragging fish or a Question (?) mark into 7 or 10 slots (since the 3D background version will have 9-10 fish slots) and then having a separate panel "Customize Random" similar to my prototype above.

Also, invertebrates could be integrated into this design.

Let me do a new prototype.

[Socrates]

Originally posted by feldon23


You're right. With my method, it's difficult and non-intuitive to specify less than 7 fish if ANY of them are random.

Well, if we were going to start from scratch, I see Prolific's idea of dragging fish or a Question (?) mark into 7 or 10 slots (since the 3D background version will have 9-10 fish slots) and then having a separate panel "Customize Random" similar to my prototype above.

Also, invertebrates could be integrated into this design.

Let me do a new prototype.

The Pseudografix one plus the one you originally posted are perfect. One panel with "Never-Rarely-Sometimes-Often" sliders for "Random Fish Settings" and the slot settings for "Fish in Your Tank".

After some thought I had this idea (and edited this message):

[feldon34]

Alrighty.

Here's a new attempt at a prototype. I'm trying to focus on usability and something that looks good and is easy to figure out, based on all the comments here so far.

I don't know if Jim has reconsidered the Invertebrates limit. I put 10 fish slots and 4 invertebrate limits.

To make things easy for users, I think dragging an invertebrate to a fish box should automatically move it to the inverts box and vice versa. No point in hitting the user over the head with a beep or dialog box when the Aquarium can sort it out in such a way that satisfies 95% (the other 5% will be upset that the last slot on either the fish or inverts got replaced with whatever they dragged).

It might make sense to remove the Advanced tab and make it a button that appears on the Fish & Invertebrates panel at the bottom that only appears if you have at least one random fish selected.


This is pretty close to Prolific's idea of how fish selection would be done, except I have an Advanced tab for Random fish. To have multiple random slots, drag multiple question marks to as many slots as you wish, replacing fish if needed.

Note that 1.0 and future versions have fish set to all 7 or 9-10 slots set to random, so it might be nice to have the Advanced tab available without a second step. I don't know if new users will understand going to the Fish & Invertebrates window for the first time and seeing 10 question marks.

Maybe we need a better icon to represent Random.

Click here to go back to the first page and see the new Settings Panel B.


Oh and...

[83bj60]

After voting and before looking at the latest posting, I lked Morgan's original settings panel the best, as long as it follows the standard windows color schemes of course

Now I just realized you've poseted an even better one!!! This is great, keep up the good work!!!

[Socrates]

I use the widescreen version on my 19" monitor. It's not a widescreen monitor but I bought the biggest viewable area that I could afford just to run a wide screen resolution for the aquarium. I did this because Jim said wide screen would be native in the 3d background version.

THE PROBLEM:
I noticed that the resolution list you have there does not have widescreen settings to use on normal ratio monitors.

Does Jim plan to allow choices for widescreen ratios in the resolution area?

I am going to be majorly bummed if I bought this monitor for nothing.


PS. You need an "X" Icon in the list to remove a fish from one of the slots. The new idea looks very good.

[feldon34]

I've just updated Settings Panel B to reflect more robust Widescreen resolution support.

16:9 resolutions are supported in all versions of the Aquarium (not just the WS version) through the "Use Desktop Resolution" selection. But I agree that resolution selection would be nice.


I struggled with the idea of a "None" icon. I'd rather use the Macintosh way, which is to take a fish you don't want (or a slot you simply want to abandon), pick up the icon, and drag it out of the slot. The slot will simply be vacated and return to the green background.

It's intuitive to me, but maybe not to others.

[Socrates]

Originally posted by feldon23
I thought about the Widescreen.

I forsee two scrolling lists of the available 4:3 and the available 16:9 resolutions for your video card, stacked above each other.

For now, 16:9 resolutions are supported through the "Use Desktop Resolution" selection (have been since 99K).



I struggled with the idea of a "None" icon. I'd rather use the Macintosh way, which is to take a fish you don't want (or a slot you simply want to abandon), pick up the icon, and drag it out of the slot. The slot will simply be vacated and return to the green background.

It's intuitive to me, but maybe not to others.

I use a 4:3 for my desktop 1152x864 and a 16:9 for the widescreen saver 1280x720. So the use desktop thing won't work for me.

I think you should do both. You should be able to drag it off or drag a blank over it. That covers everyones thinking and the more possibilites covered, the less emails and calls support gets.



PS. I've been thinking... how is this going to affect the file size. I think that eventlly they are going to have to abandon the idea that the porgram AND installer fit on one disk if they hope to keep advancing. One thing they could do is use some kind of two-floppy version for those that need to install from floppy. In otherwords download floppy 1 and 2 and copy them both.

[feldon34]

There is nothing to suggest that once the sound is ADPCM compressed back to 170kb (like it was in 99J) the Aquarium won't fit on a floppy still. The 3D background will be about 7 fish worth of textures and a few fish worth of geometry.

The icons I used take a total of 80kb uncompressed (probably 30kb compressed) and every single interface element including the blue-green fades can be generated procedurally by the Aquarium, without taking up any disk space.

[pipeta]

Another suggestion for the menu is a tab for a fish guide.

I took the info about the Addis Butterflyfish from http://www.whozoo.org/Anlife2001/lor...terflyfish.htm

[codgio]

Morgan,

Great job on your latest prototype I can't think of anything I would change. I particularly like the addition of the box to select a fixed view of the aquarium.

I quite like pipetta's idea for the fish info. Slightly worried about putting too much in the settings panel, but I think it can cope with this addition.

[pipeta]

Another problem with the screen saver is that many people ask for information on how to change settings which apear on the settings panel because they don't know that the pannel apears when they press the 'space' button. It was suggested before but I want to suggest it again under this thread. Jim should add a message saying "press the space bar to see the settings pannel" which apears on in the corner of the screen on the first time the aquarium runs and reapears every time the aquarium is activated until the user hits the space bar for the first time. That way it will save alot of time to the moderators of this site, Prolific (as the SereneScreen site moderators) and to the users who have to search for help here on the net.

[The_Thrill]

Wow these control panels really improve with each new post!!! I really like all the ideas! The only things that I would say would be in the latest design by Morgan, I would create Sub-groups on the page where you drag the fish icons. One for Fish and one for Invertebrates. That way users know where to put them. Im sure an error message would pop up if a user tried to put a fish in a invertebrate box and visa versa but a little more organization never hurt anything.

I also think that the link to the wesite should be a blue link written right on the control panel. Thats just something I have always thought was cool though nothing crucial

And lastly, Morgan if you want to be a true perfectionist, then your latest control panel screens are all mostly on the Advanced tab. They don't switch with each respective screen. (Meaning: the Fish and Invertebrates panel is on the Advanced Tab and so is the Settings panel.)

Awesome Work!!

[feldon34]

Ah yes, I forgot to do that. I've uploaded the corrected panels with the tabs marked properly at the top.

pipeta, I don't mind the fish guide, but doesn't that make my website obsolete? hehe just kidding.

I have mentioned to Jim before that there are thousands of users who think there's no Settings panel or don't know how to get to it. I think the Aquarium should run with a "Press SPACE for Settings" on-screen until the user goes to Settings and unchecks a box on the Settings panel "Show 'SPACE' hint on Aquarium".


By the way, it's interesting to see these prototypes other people are creating. However most of them show a lot of fish selected and maybe one or two randoms. I'd like to think that the majority of users, given the chance, would rather have very few fish manually specified and then a weighted list of randoms.

Maybe I've been using TiVo too long.

[feldon34]

as long as it follows the standard windows color schemes of course

Standard Windows color scheme on 99% of systems is grey. I picked blue on purpose.

[pipeta]

Morgan, I don't believe the Fish Guide will make your site obsolete (although you were kidding I still believe I should say this). Your important contribution to the screen saver (the way I see it) is providing information for users about the next versions and creating this community.
I believe the fish guide is an important feature for the aquarium and should be an integral part of the program. Most users (like me) are ignorant in these subject and would be happy to know something about these fish. This feature will not take more than 10 additional killobytes of memory in the screen saver, it's just text and code. If someone doesn't want the guide he doesn't have to look at it at all.

Anyway this thread is the most interesting one in the past few months (since v0.99L's bug fixes thread). I hope Jim will implement these things in the screen saver because it would greatly improve the product. (btw, did you read this Jim? Do you have any comments?)

[hpman77]

I really love the new design... can I change my vote to the new design?

I would love to see these ideas implemented too, and I think the fish guide suggested by pipeta is a neat idea, as I also have no idea, and my knowledge about those fishes is just something like "hey, this one's nicer.... and it's name was...." 5 seconds later, I'm loading feldon's site (and eating feldon's site bandwidth)

And, as pipeta asked before... is Jim reading this? What does he think about all this?

[Jim Sachs]

Yes, I have been following the discussions, and the fish-choosing requester will eventally be greatly improved. Morgan's designs are beautiful, but there are problems which I must overcome.

These examples are written in web-based languages like HTML, JAVA, etc., which can do things in one line of code which would take dozens of lines of C++ code, if they are possible at all. You would more or less tell the computer to "Draw a blue box about 50% the size of the screen, which will resize itself with the window, find the picture FISH1.jpg, and put it in the upper left corner". That would take me a couple of days in C++, even if I knew how to decompress JPEGs.

But C++ runs hundreds of times faster, so it's the only viable language for me to use for real-time 3D and animation. (Assembly language runs even faster, but I'd like to get the Aquarium done within the 21st century.)

Don't forget - I'm not a real programmer. Real programmers have studied this stuff in school. If you ask them to implement a text box with some pictures of fish in it, they already know how, and can probably give you an estimate of how long it will take.

If you ask me for a new feature, I initially have not a clue how it would be done, or if it's even possible. So I spend a very large amount of time scouring the Internet for examples which are close to what the new feature might need. A lot of these examples use "clever" coding - which means can't understand them. Most often, I won't be able to find anything, and will have to invent something from scratch, which can easily cause another part of the program to break. Another problem is that I have almost no math skills, so I must break everything down to simple addition, subtraction, and multiplication. (Tried division once, but crashed with a lot of "Division by zero" errors.)

I didn't mean for this message to develop into a rant, I just wanted to say that all these designs look like very intimidating programming tasks to me.

[feldon34]

Jim,

I never produced these Settings panel with the idea that you would be doing the programming for them. No offense, but your value as a 3D digital artist is wasted on trying to get things like Settings and registry changes going.

What about Will and Matt at Prolific who are helping you with the programming bits? Reichart had already mentioned that some kind of new settings panel might be created with dragging fish icons into an empty tank. It was always my impression that Will was taking over the Settings/Registry things as well as software/hardware compatibility, etc.

I'd be very unhappy to hear that you'd spent a month or more toiling away trying to implement these (or similar) settings panels. I deliberately designed them with the fanciness and complexity that someone with a lot of programming experience would feel comfortable tackling.

[Spyder]

I couldn't agree with you more Feldon! If Jim doesn't know how to do it, stick to what he's good at, and get someone else to fill in the gaps. Luckily it looks like theres people at his disposal for this.

I really don't want to sound rude when I say this, but perhaps more people working on the aquarium will need to be in order if it is going to try to go for a big consumer base? Consumers are used to faster turn arounds for bug fixes and updates, and the more people who buy this wonderful screensaver, the larger the demand will be. This definately shouldn't sacrifice the quality of the aquarium, but more people might be needed than just 1 at this point forward...

just my 2 cents