Ok, so we've started reviving the context menus, which were notoriously hard to use in the SlimDX versions. I'm trying to do better this time
Anyway, a few points of information, and a few questions for y'all strewn throughout.
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Mouse-wise it's pretty similar, the main difference now is that we have an actual key-binding system with multiple input contexts. This allows both:
- Providing functions that are not bound by default. So if you really want a key for jumping straight from no-context-menu to the Special-Move context menu, you can do that without our having to carve room out of the default bindings. For that matter, if you really want to bind "Open Context Menu" to the space bar (no mouse click involved), you jolly well can
- "Re-purposing" existing keys when a specific context menu is showing. So I can bind the number keys (along the top of the keyboard) to the buttons in a context menu, allowing navigation/usage without the mouse. Normally those are bound to control group selection, etc. If you don't like those bindings you can change them, of course.
Is the keyboard-navigation useful? I personally find it a lot faster but I'm one of those people who doesn't think the mouse should be necessary except to specify a point in a large coordinate system
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Internally, the GUI system in the Unity versions is
much easier to work with for me than the SlimDX stuff. Probably because I wrote most of the GUI system in the Unity versions
Anyway, one upshot of this is the "hold forward-slash while mousing over a context menu button to get an explanatory tooltip" function. I think that could be pretty helpful when plowing through some of my crazier advanced menus.
Is the context-contextual (heh) help... well, helpful?
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To Radial or not to Radial:
A number of players have asked for the context menus to use a radial layout. As Chris and I have said, this works great for menus that are both never-more-than-X-items and where each item has at least a half-way-intuitive iconic representation. That said, it wouldn't be
that hard for me to have an experimental option where finite-button-count menus lay the buttons (exactly as they look now, text, not icons) out in a roughly circular pattern (with the mouse cursor at the center, if there's room). But it strikes me that that would be significantly inferior to a straight list for the text-labelled buttons. Would there be any point?
Potentially, at some point, I could look at doing a context-menu-based alternate way of selecting buildings to place (turrets and the like), so you could type something like Alt, B, C, C to "load" the colony ship into the mouse cursor just like you had selected a command-station/mobile-builder, clicked on the Const tab, and clicked on the colony ship icon. Could probably even have a context menu item for actually placing the unit at the cursor, but that's another tale. Anyway, for the context menus that are showing the units you can build, it could lay those out radially since they're already icons. Would that be worthwhile?
Anyway, this stuff would have to be post-4.0 at this point.
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Anything else? We don't have time right now for a lot of crazy new stuff, but I do really want to try to make these context menus usable rather than the forum-whipping-boy-of-inaccessible-interface-elements
