Tuesday, February 25, 2014

FMod - Increasingly Important Config

At the request of one of Abiathar's private beta testers, I have added more things to the general config file (persist.aconf). Namely, those new sections control the visibility of advanced menu options - variable width, highlight current tile, and locked plane downgrader - and the default tool in each category.

The tester thought that having rarely-used options in the menus would confuse new users and contribute to option bloat. That's probably right, but I didn't want to fully remove the options, so I made the ability to re-show those menu items into a config option.

Next, he found the detached tileset incredibly inconvenient as a separate window. I agreed with that as well, and to be honest the only benefit of having it as a separate window is being able to put it on a different monitor. I've started work on putting it into the main window, but I'm running into issues with resizability and focus (as in which part the user's keystrokes should go to).

Finally, there is some disagreement about which tool should be default: the tweaker or the pencil. I prefer the more precise tweaker, as does another important tester, but quite a few people like to be able to put tiles everywhere with one mouse stroke. Therefore, I added a config option, which sets the ID of the default tool. It's now very easy to choose your default, even if it's something crazy like the replace tool.

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