Front end question

[Clawt]

I was wondering if there was a front end like 'Unleashed' that has an interface for keeping track of p-wads. I think it would be pretty nifty to have a front end that had an I-Tunes style rating system so you could keep track of the p-wads you played.

[Nomad]

That's actually kind of a neat idea. Maybe someone should build an extension off of ZDL to do something like this. ;P

[Clawt]

I would sent them virtual cookies and beer if they did.

[DaniJ]

I've always wondered as to the usefulness of this sort of thing. Do people really rate their own media for their own reference purposes? If so, why? Surely you can remember whether you liked it or not?

Anyways, it would be pretty straight forward to implement something like this in the Doomsday frontend so if there is enough demand it might get in.

[Blzut3]

DaniJ said:

I've always wondered as to the usefulness of this sort of thing. Do people really rate their own media for their own reference purposes? If so, why? Surely you can remember whether you liked it or not?

I've always wondered the same thing. Though what if said rating system was hooked into the id games archive ratings?

[DaniJ]

That would actually be pretty neat. I have previously considered writing a Doomsday frontend plugin that would allow directly browsing the archive with "click to play", metadata preview and background download features.

[Clawt]

DaniJ said:

That would actually be pretty neat. I have previously considered writing a Doomsday frontend plugin that would allow directly browsing the archive with "click to play", metadata preview and background download features.

That would be awesome, just think if it could be done in game so you could download a new map while you were playing another? That would certainly save a lot of time.

[Clawt]

DaniJ said:

I've always wondered as to the usefulness of this sort of thing. Do people really rate their own media for their own reference purposes? If so, why? Surely you can remember whether you liked it or not?

Anyways, it would be pretty straight forward to implement something like this in the Doomsday frontend so if there is enough demand it might get in.

I just thought it would come in handy if you downloaded 3 or 4 maps, at a time it would be easy to keep them in order if you went a few weeks\months without playing and wanted to play some of your favorites again. But the more I think about it, I end up deleting the maps I don't like after the fact anyway. But to have it a community rating so you don't have to head back to the page you downloaded it to rate would be nice. Maybe even post a comment from the frontend.

[Julian]

DaniJ said:

I've always wondered as to the usefulness of this sort of thing. Do people really rate their own media for their own reference purposes? If so, why? Surely you can remember whether you liked it or not?

Anyways, it would be pretty straight forward to implement something like this in the Doomsday frontend so if there is enough demand it might get in.

I guess some people have too many pwads on their hard-drive(s) to keep track.

[Catoptromancy]

DaniJ said:

That would actually be pretty neat. I have previously considered writing a Doomsday frontend plugin that would allow directly browsing the archive with "click to play", metadata preview and background download features.

I was just about to post something like that. Better filtering than the archives and automatic download and unzip that even directly launches the game. A separate option to keep the wads or whole zips.

Would never need to browse/download/unzip/setup a cmd line or frontend. Its all automatic.

Someone has managed to make a small shell script to play defrag maps exactly like this, sort of.

[Jodwin]

Blzut3 said:

Though what if said rating system was hooked into the id games archive ratings?

Hardly useful unless you'd include the text comments as well. Thanks to the anonymity of the voting and how easy it is to vote the same file twice (or more) you can rarely be sure the star ratings are actually fair.

[Nomad]

DaniJ said:

That would actually be pretty neat. I have previously considered writing a Doomsday frontend plugin that would allow directly browsing the archive with "click to play", metadata preview and background download features.

I really like this idea, but I would definitely like to see a frontend that covers various ports, not just Doomsday. Maybe IDE could benefit from this. It already has the wad search function, which is pretty nice. A direct link to the idgames archive with ratings and comments would be even better!

[DaniJ]

Nomad said:

I really like this idea, but I would definitely like to see a frontend that covers various ports, not just Doomsday.

As the frontend is written in Python + wxWidgets and the fact that nearly everything is already geared around the flexibility Doomsday requires; it should be relatively simple to use the Doomsday frontend with virtually any DOOM source port.

[Enjay]

DaniJ said:

I've always wondered as to the usefulness of this sort of thing. Do people really rate their own media for their own reference purposes? If so, why? Surely you can remember whether you liked it or not?

I quite often "rate" the WADs that I download by putting comments in the zip. Why? Because I have thousands of WADs and I can't remember which ones I liked or maybe just which one it was if I am looking for a particular WAD to play. The names are often not that informative and the comments help.

As for the original request/suggestion, personally, I really dislike overly involved Doom front ends. Running a WAD on Doom is one of the simplest operations possible yet so many launchers make a right meal of it by adding options all over the place and creating a control interface for that simple operation that looks more like a recording studio mixing desk or the cockpit of a 747 than a replacement for "doom -file mywad.wad".

IMO, ZDL gets it very close to right - which exe do you want, which IWAD do you want, which PWAD do you want, type any additional options here, remember settings between plays. Why does anyone need anything more?

[DaniJ]

ZDL sounds more like a skinned command line than a launcher to me.

With the Doomsday frontend I can browse the addon tree, inspect how many maps are in each PWAD, what game they are for, whether they contain custom graphics (etc, etc...) and then those that I wish to play I can simply enable and click Play. In general, no typing involved.

[Enjay]

DaniJ said:

ZDL sounds more like a skinned command line than a launcher to me.

Well, it's a little more than that because it does allow browsing for WADs, drag and drop and setting up of custom IWADs. But, yeah, skinned command line isn't too far from the truth. That's why I like it. ;)

For me, the Doomsday launcher is probably the most impenetrable of the lot. For starters, I don't even see the need for an add-on tree. It seems an unnecessary complication for a game that has always had the simple principle of adding a file to its command line at its core. The add-on tree Makes it almost impossible to run a file unless you add it to the add-on system (at least that's how it seems to me). It seems to be complication for the sake of complication, far too prescriptive in a way that isn't universally intuitive and massively restricts the choice of how the end user can set up their Doom files.

But, like I said, I like the simplictiy of the command-line-like loading. :)

[DaniJ]

Enjay said:

For me, the Doomsday launcher is probably the most impenetrable of the lot. For starters, I don't even see the need for an add-on tree. It seems an unnecessary complication for a game that has always had the simple principle of adding a file to its command line at its core. The add-on tree Makes it almost impossible to run a file unless you add it to the add-on system (at least that's how it seems to me). It seems to be complication for the sake of complication, far too prescriptive in a way that isn't universally intuitive and massively restricts the choice of how the end user can set up their Doom files.

There is no requirement to use the launcher's addon folder(s). If for example you already have a big folder of addons elsewhere on your system then all you need to do is tell the launcher the location of that folder. Once the launcher knows where you've chosen to store your addons it will index those directories and add them all to the addon browser for you.

The purpose of the addon tree is to make managing and using addons easier. Addons are automatically indexed into a dynamic structure which affords the user easier access to them. The addon tree allows for fine grained management, sorting and filtering of addons by name, game, content, etc, etc. The addon tree also allows you to preview the contents of addons without any further action (it will automatically inspect the contents of WAD files for example so that you know which and how many maps a given addon contains).

It is interesting that iTunes be mentioned in this thread as that is precisely the same kind of thing.

[Enjay]

I guess that's just not the kind of thing that I like then. Horses for courses and all that.

DaniJ said:

It is interesting that iTunes be mentioned in this thread as that is precisely the same kind of thing.

And coincidentally, that is a piece of software that I really dislike and which was the main reason for me not getting an ipod after setting up itunes so that my kids could manage their ones.

[Nomad]

Protip: Winamp has ipod support! I got mine as a gift and I had nothing but troubles with itunes, but after I started using winamps I've had zero problems. Only thing it really lacks is audiobook support. I hate to admit because I loathe Apple, but I love this stupid thing and rarely go anywhere without it.

Also, I really like ZDL too. It has the simplicity of command-line/drag-n-drop, with the usefulness of a quick and dirty GUI. One of the reasons I don't like Doomsday is the launcher(s). Don't like Snowberry, and Kickstart was crap IMO.

Not to knock your work, of course, Dani.

[DaniJ]

Snowberry is not my work Nomad (true, I have contributed the odd patch but nothing major). However if you really don't like Snowberry (for whatever reason) you are of course free to use another means of launching Doomsday. From the sounds of ZDL you might even be able to use that.

I have to agree about Kickstart though. It didn't really make things any easier other than removing the need to type in command lines.

[Enjay]

My biggest problem with the ipod is the fact that it needs some kind of interface program to set up play lists and so on (be it itunes or winamp).

I like devices that I can simply copy mp3s on to and then play them. All the mp3 devices that I own work like that but if I try to do that with an ipod, it refuses to see the files even though they are there. I have to transfer them on to the machine using an interface program of some sort that puts them into a play list. That simply doesn't suit me. I just want to drag, drop and play. I find making up play lists fiddly and annoying. nothing on my mp3 player is something that I don't want to hear and if I need to group things, I put them in separate directories and the player treats them as separate CDs within the machine. No interface, other than Windows explorer, is required.

I guess that my philosophy is similar with Doom WADs hence my dislike of launchers that "try to do too much".

[DaniJ]

I used to think the same way. Over the years though I began to realize just how much time I was wasting in organizing stuff and that my efforts to "fight the system" by not using My Documents (for example) was a pointless exercise. Originally yes, apps and operating systems which tried to impose their own organisational methods onto my data/media weren't particularly good (especially in the wild-west home Windows user environment) but today, the situation is very different. What does it matter which folder said data files are in (so long as they are on the correct device of course)?

Once I learned to let go and allow the computer to do the things that computers are good at without my interference I found that ended up enjoying the whole experience more.

Naturally, I don't expect everyone to subscribe to my viewpoint (especially hardcore Windows users who had trained themselves to make up for the OS's shortcomings).

[Nomad]

DaniJ said:

Snowberry is not my work Nomad (true, I have contributed the odd patch but nothing major). However if you really don't like Snowberry (for whatever reason) you are of course free to use another means of launching Doomsday. From the sounds of ZDL you might even be able to use that.

I have to agree about Kickstart though. It didn't really make things any easier other than removing the need to type in command lines.

Oh, I didn't mean to imply any of that specifically was your work. Didn't Yagisan do Snowberry, or something? Er, I wouldn't know anyway as I haven't really ever followed work on Doomsday. Either way, it seems a little too bloated to me.

You could be right that ZDL would work with Doomsday. I may have to try it. But honestly, I don't have much reason to use Doomsday anyway. Aside from possibly Rebelcrow's Urban Prison if he ever gets it finished, or Melfice/Xenfire/General Grevious's Exiled if he ever gets it finished either. *shrug*

Enjay said:

I like devices that I can simply copy mp3s on to and then play them. All the mp3 devices that I own work like that but if I try to do that with an ipod, it refuses to see the files even though they are there. I have to transfer them on to the machine using an interface program of some sort that puts them into a play list. That simply doesn't suit me. I just want to drag, drop and play. I find making up play lists fiddly and annoying. nothing on my mp3 player is something that I don't want to hear and if I need to group things, I put them in separate directories and the player treats them as separate CDs within the machine. No interface, other than Windows explorer, is required.

Heh, well with 80gb of space and only 18gb or so worth of music, I don't really have much problem worrying about what files to put on my ipod. I figure Fuck It, I Have The Space Anyway. I usually don't bother with playlists aside from specific genres that I might want to listen to, as I prefer to listen to music in full albums rather than single tracks. That's the way most the music I listen to is meant to be listened to.

[alien8]

DaniJ said:

I used to think the same way. Over the years though I began to realize just how much time I was wasting in organizing stuff and that my efforts to "fight the system" by not using My Documents (for example) was a pointless exercise. Originally yes, apps and operating systems which tried to impose their own organisational methods onto my data/media weren't particularly good (especially in the wild-west home Windows user environment) but today, the situation is very different. What does it matter which folder said data files are in (so long as they are on the correct device of course)?

Once I learned to let go and allow the computer to do the things that computers are good at without my interference I found that ended up enjoying the whole experience more.

Naturally, I don't expect everyone to subscribe to my viewpoint (especially hardcore Windows users who had trained themselves to make up for the OS's shortcomings).

It will be interesting to see how those people who "fight the system" wrap their minds around Windows 7's Libraries. Or, moreso the programmers who refuse to integrate their programs into it, and rather force their own views on the users.

I personally would love too see a front end for source ports that would let me just dump all my wads into a directory on my PC and do the sorting/rating/play counts, etc. from inside the program. Something similar to the D-Fend interface for DosBox would be amazing.