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Pakset they should have a directory of "Themes GUI".

Started by Yona-TYT, January 19, 2016, 08:05:23 PM

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Yona-TYT


I do not know if this is possible but worth mentioning.


As "pak92.comic" and "pak192.comic" they have their own themes. It would be nice to have a directory of own themes for each pakset.

An_dz


Yona-TYT


There is a confusion here, I meant to the "Themes GUI", not to topics in the forum. :o :o :o :o
I am very sorry that mistake, :-[  you can delete the topic if desired.

Isaac Eiland-Hall

I wasn't quite sure what you meant, but I figured it had to do with Simutrans (itself, as opposed to the forum) since you posted in extension requests, and I know there are Simutrans themes.

When I first proposed the "stop moving" tool, I had a very hard time getting the idea across (I phrased things very poorly). Don't give up - could you expand on what you're thinking? I'll move this back to extension requests in the meanwhile. :)

Leartin

I absolutely agree, they ought to be pak-dependant since they should fit the menu and overall style.
The explaination given for why they are not (appearently because of tablets) does not make any sense since that does not work anyway.

Best approach would be to have theme families (distributed with paksets) and each family has to have some styles (standard, tablet, high contrast,...) - the style type could be set across all paksets (preferably automatically on game start), while the family is pak dependent. If a paks family does not have the set style, it falls back to the default.

Isaac Eiland-Hall

Oh, to specify a different theme depending on the pak? That makes sense. That sounds like a good idea. :)

Yona-TYT

At first glance it does not seem that difficult to implement in my humble opinion.  ;)

Ters

Normally, pak set's files override the game's files. In this case, it might be more useful for the game to override the pak set, so that a user can use a favorite high contrast or high-dpi theme with multiple pak sets that may lack or have poorly made themes.

Leartin

Every aspect of a pakset could be poorly made, yet no other aspect is forced by the game. Until themes were introduced, skins existed - where are the complains about poorly made skins if that was truly a problem?

If a player wants a high contrast theme, does it really matter to them what they switch from? There is no difference between switching from pak64theme to high-contrast or pak192ctheme to high-contrast. If the player wants to ruin the carefully crafted visual style of the pakset, thats his choice. But the game should not do it on it's own.

Ters

Quote from: Leartin on January 21, 2016, 08:25:07 AM
If the player wants to ruin the carefully crafted visual style of the pakset, thats his choice. But the game should not do it on it's own.

For me, the visual style of a pak set is the look of the world within Simutrans, not of Simutrans itself. Besides, the player's ability to upgrade (or ruin) the visual style is exactly what I asked for. If they have a theme they like, they should be able to dump it into the main theme directory, and use if for all pak sets.

An_dz

But the current default theme does not fit the comic style. Nor the comic themes fit the other paks.

Most games are only one game, Simutrans is only an executable that requires a pakset. The theme of a game matches the world style.

Skyrim has only a medieval theme because the game is only medieval. But every pakset is different.

We are not asking for the pakset theme always being over all, but more like the simuconf.tab where:
- The first values are loaded from /simutrans/config/ which is the default Simutrans configurations
- Then they are replaced by pakset specific configs from /simutrans/pak/config/
- And finally the user can have a simuconf.tab in /users/simutrans/ that will replace all the above

What we wish is that people use our theme when they play our paksets, but if the user wishes to replace it, he can just set a line in his simuconf.tab for loading a different default.

So my request would be to have a theme parameter in simuconf.tab, where the value would be the file name of the theme in the themes directory.
This way Simutrans would load the default theme, the pakset would replace it and the user could replace all.

Leartin

Quote from: Ters on January 21, 2016, 04:11:04 PM
Besides, the player's ability to upgrade (or ruin) the visual style is exactly what I asked for. If they have a theme they like, they should be able to dump it into the main theme directory, and use if for all pak sets.

Thing is, this thread raises the issue that paksets should be able to provide their own themes and use them if not otherwise specified. Your post does not contradict that, but the way it's written suggests you are fine with the current behavior. It might help to state how you feel about pakset-dependent themes, because it could be we all agree on how it should be done, but by talking about different aspects we can't come to an agreement.

For me, as I said, two things would make sense:
1) CSS-like behaviour. Every browser has it's own CSS, which is usually overwritten by a websites CSS, but can again be altered by a user-specified CSS. But since the latter is rare, usually you see websites as they are intended. Same could apply to Simutrans with a basic theme delivered with the game, themes delivered with paksets, and the option for the user to beat that with a theme he downloaded somewhere.
Even in that case, I'd prefer if the users more obvious option is to change the theme of the pakset currently in use rather than being forced to change the theme for every pakset, especially since some will come with several pakset-themes of their own to switch between.
2) Using styles. Define several styles, like standard, big, high contrast and big high contrast, and what they should include. Then, each pakset could not only provide one theme, but a whole family which fits the description. If a player uses a 4k-screen, it's obvious he will need a big theme. But not nessecarily the big theme the game provides, but rather any big theme. I'm not sure how much information about a players screen and style Simutrans can read, but it would be great if Simutrans already starts with big themes if the screen is at least 3000px high, or with high-contrast if the OS-Theme is high contrast.

Either way, I'm mostly against the current situation were the player has to download a pakset theme himself and has to set it up, while possibly not even being aware of that option.

Ters

My point is simply that there are many different desires which must be taken into consideration. And I also suspect that there will be pak sets with no, only one or only very rudimentary themes, or even some circumstances that no pak set has ever considered.