0.6.6 Preview r553-r576

[Mos]

What we really need is a tree graph that maps the routes from a page to another page. Like in Microsoft Frontpage, where we can view the hyperlinks in whole.

Then we can sort of plan the "routes" (by adding the buttons) and try to make it more easier to navigate. How about that?

I think having more than one route will actually confuse people even more. but i like the idea of having somekind of picture to show you where you are, but just one route. Example: having a one route representation at the right of the screen (need more than 600x800 for this), and highlighting where you are (with some cool effects in the future; not just buttons):

Song Selection
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Track Selection
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Settings
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Play the song

the user can just press on any of them and the screen will show up. this can be used for both navigating and as a quickplay, if a user want to play without changing anything, they will just press play the song, if they want to change the setting, they will press that, and so on.

PS: somewhere else on all screens there should be button to go back to main menu!!

[maccer]

Or, rather than having a gazillion different screens that the user has to navigate back and forth between, everything should be in one single screen. The track list could be compressed quite a lot by making it to a list that scrolls if necessary plus using smaller icons, and the settings would take far less space if they were more like standard html controls. For example, the keyboard display options, the play mode and the sheet music display mode could be changed to a dropdown menu instead of two or three huge buttons, and any future huge options buttons options would use less vertical space by making them to checkboxes and/or radio button groups.

[tommai78101]

Maybe we should just stick to the current one, so as not to confuse all of us...

Windows Explorer is a definite example of spatial file manager...

[TonE]

Windows Explorer is a definite example of spatial file manager...

Or just use WinDirStat together with command-line of Synthesia and have the best spatial file manager overview you can have using TreeMaps. So all the sorting can be done directly on your harddisk as you like and the selection of the songs in WinDirStat. I do not use the new file manager at all as I can not see any benefits for me, I only need to select a song which can be done already elsewhere (using WinDirStat and AutoHotkey and the command-line feature of Synthesia).

[Nicholas]

The original design (literally, the first scrap of paper I made 4 years ago with little scribblings about "Keyboard Hero", before I found out Red Octane owned the trademark, before Activision bought it from them, which made me choose the name "Piano Hero", and before I was requested to change it from that!) had a layout where along the top of all screens except the "play" screen, was a series of tabs for each screen.

It effectively made the settings-selection process a wizard where you could pick a song and jump right to the last step (playing) in one click. Or, go through each screen one-by-one taking your time. Or anything in-between.

That's still mostly what I had in mind. A top-of-the-screen bar like this:
Choose Song > Track Settings > Play Settings > Play!

The original paper had "Section" and "Range" in there too, where "section" had to do with looping and playing only a portion of the song and "Range" had to do with saying what size keyboard you had so the game didn't make you play notes you couldn't. We've since come up with better ways to do both of those, though.

"Just Play" is fine.

Hehe, I was joking about the name. Just trying to emphasize that it was important they could get there in one click.