Secondary Menus Suggestions

[OpenRift412]

Good job with the secondary menus implementation. I have some ideas and suggestions that could further make use of this feature. Note, these suggestions would essentially be the final nail in the coffin for the old Boom-style Options menu.

My suggestions are as follows:

• With the removal of the gyro tab, a new tab can be added in its place called "Gameplay", adding the following as secondary menus:
  • Doom Compatibility
  • Weapons
  • Enemies
• "Status Bar/HUD" and "Automap" would be moved to be secondary menus under the "Display" tab.
• Lastly, the "Mouse" tab could be renamed to "Controls", with the "Key Bindings" menu made into a secondary menu under that.
• With all these changes, the options button on the main menu would go directly to the "General" options menu, with the header now using the M_OPTTTL lump instead of M_GENERL

So with all that said, would this be a design worth pursuing?

[rfomin]

That's an interesting idea! It would require another reorganization of the menu, for example we have too many items in “Display” right now. Also “Status Bar/HUD” is quite big with its own tabs, but maybe we can shrink it a bit if we switch to the ID24 SBARDEF standard.

[OpenRift412]

That's an interesting idea! It would require another reorganization of the menu, for example we have too many items in “Display” right now. Also “Status Bar/HUD” is quite big with its own tabs, but maybe we can shrink it a bit if we switch to the ID24 SBARDEF standard.

The "Display" tab seems to have the least about of items in it from what I can tell. Is there something I'm missing here?

[rfomin]

The "Display" tab seems to have the least about of items in it from what I can tell. Is there something I'm missing here?

Haha, sorry, I didn't visit "Display" for while 😄

[ceski-1]

So with all that said, would this be a design worth pursuing?

I don't think any major changes are going to happen in the short-term since the menu system is challenging to work with. However, if you want to explore some menu layouts, make a copy of this diagram and play around with it (you'll have to create a Figma account). It should help give you an idea of how challenging it is to juggle all the different menu items in a halfway sane and logical manner.

[fabiangreffrath]

I don't think the general menu layout is going to change anytime soon.

[rfomin]

I don't think the general menu layout is going to change anytime soon.

If we switch to SDL3, we can greatly simplify the video menu (SDL3 has better functions for selecting video modes).

[fabiangreffrath]

If we switch to SDL3, we can greatly simplify the video menu (SDL3 has better functions for selecting video modes).

That would be tracked in #1854, I guess.