Wed Mar 28, 2012 6:29 pm
[Suggestion] ISBoxer GUI (edited)
Hi,
Thank you again, Lax, for the opportunity to field suggestions for ISBoxer. I've come up with a couple of (hopefully) easy ones, and a third that would be nice to implement in ISBoxer 1, though I'd understand if it would make sense to think about it for 2.
#1 Target Drop-down - Would it be easy to make it so ATGs are listed, for example, like Healers (All), Healers (Others)? It'd make finding ATGs or using the field to narrow down choices by keying in the 1st letter(s) easier, I believe. Of course, the usual Window, Character, and Slot choices should still come first
#2 Keyboard Navigation - I'm a heavy keyboard navigator on most things I do on the PC, and I'm pretty sure a lot of skilled ISBoxers are too. ISBoxer already has a nice tab flow and control to it, though I still reach for the mouse for things. I think it'd be nice to have shortcut keys to some, if not all, regions and controls; which behave depending on context. Major sections of the window could be jumped to thorugh the function keys, and fields and controls within places like keymaps can be jumped to through numbers/numpad if none currently have focus. Tabbing out would remove focus (if any) so that keyboard navigation can resume. To expand on the drop-down lists mentioned above, perhaps the up and down arrow keys could drop/expand the list when it hasn't dropped yet, instead of iterating to the next/previous item on the list? To be friendly to new users, a graphic beside the control e.g. <--(1) and on the region, would help I think
#3 Panels/Docking/Layout control - I already like ISBoxer as it is. I felt (and still do) it was intuitive when I first used it. If there was one small hiccup I could comment on, it'd be the odd times where I wanted to access a section or two, but still wanting to keep the current section open for reference/editing. If sections could be detached to float while other parts of the GUI are accessed, and layouts remain persistent between sessions, it'd be super But I'm okay with the sequential method employed right now. I need the disciplining anyway 
I thought of a couple of crazy ones while writing this
(sorry) It's looks to be a little complicated so I'm just throwing it up in the air for laughs now and, perhaps, consideration for some parts of it in the far future
#4 Round robin multiples/fraction of group - Something like 2 out of 4, or a group of 2 w/in the ATG. Currently, it's either 1 or all of a group listens in for a command. Having potentially more than one chime in allows for redundancy without sacrificing the whole group on one action. Admittedly, only useful for large (>5) platoons. Um, how about random selection ?
#5 Exclusion list/queue - It's a rough idea that spawned about half a minute ago so I'm not sure what you will think about it The idea is a global opt-in list to track characters that have received steps to do along with information (most likely timer) that helps processes exit from the queue. Characters in this list will not receive broadcasts even if they belong to the ATG or are specified targets for subsequent actions. Broadcasts to the characters can be further filtered through black/white listing, with granularity down to the character level. Opt-in would be akin to what ISBoxer already does to toggle round-robin for an action, something like "Exclude character from broadcasts while performing this step". A timer to set the length within the exclusion list would be needed (I think). Visualization of the actual queue would be a bonus and would be invaluable to revisions. Actually, a visualization queue of each character's last received command would be nice in general (#6? )
Pros:
- Prevents inadvertent interruption of critical actions while mashing like a lunatic (it happens even to the best of us I think)
- Easier to use over current scheme of leaving/joining ATGs, or creating special ATGS to code for special contexts etc. User just has to decide "I want this done over anything else".
- Will be part of the design aspect of a step, like round-robin; and will likely impact designing for the better, even just a little, on the user side
Cons:
- Botting aspect? My brain's too tired to think right now but it doesn't seem to the case to me since, from my perspective, it just helps protect keystrokes/actions/decisions already made. I could be wrong though. I've read a lot of great posts, here and elsewhere, by people in the ISBoxer community regarding automation (all of which I agree with) , so I hope the idea doesn't step on those principles.
- Performance overhead (I wouldn't know really)
Many thanks again for taking the time to read this, and for all the great help afforded to everyone in general. I'm sorry for the lengthy post. More power to you!
[Edit]
I didn't know if I should have made another post for more suggestions, so I ended up appending them to this one XD Anyway, I thought of 3 more suggestions that I hope you'll find interesting:
#1 Hotkey reset - What do you think about an option in a keymap's context menu to remove all mapped hotkeys found within? Partly because of my lack of organization initially and my evolving ISBoxer setup, I find that I have clear old keymaps of their hotkeys in favor of newer, more convenient ones; keeping the old ones for Do Mapped Key actions instead. Also, on the hotkey setup window, a button/control to clear out a mapped key to <NO KEY> would be nice.
#2 Hotkey and Key Combination Consolidated Quick View - I've been away from ISBoxer for weeks at a time and tend to forget where I mapped what Having this helps with recollection as well as reorganization (for messy users like me). A toggle to show and hide keymaps w/o hotkeys, along with the ability to set hotkeys for each w/in this window, plus combination conflicts highlighting, would make it awesome
#3 Expanding Step execution control - I came across this post and it reminded me of something I thought about while using ISBoxer. I'd like to suggest adding a field for the number of times the keymap is called before proceeding to the next step, and a hotkey to hit to skip to the next step as well. Both can work in conjunction, or exclusively, and with the other existing options found in ISBoxer.
It'll work great for stuff like WoW's /castsequence, and perhaps, will help consolidate user code that's spread out of necessity. I can imagine that this will also help provide a castsequence functionality of sorts for games that do not have it.
As an exampled of the former, I have a 3 tank setup of disparate classes and since their castsequence schemes in controlling aggro/threat differ in length, it'd be super to exhaust what a character can do/handle before passing the baton to the next guy. The skip hotkey is there for when things get hairy, or when there isn't a need to do an entire sequence (e.g. ooc buffing), and if the field for # of times called is not enabled, it allows the character focused on the step to keep doing this/her thing until someone else needs to take over. While, confusing a mob by going round-robin looks good on paper, I find that this makes my DPS classes receive aggro due to "weak" tanking
I hope I'm not bugging you with all this. I also hope this is the right forum section for it Thanks again.
Thank you again, Lax, for the opportunity to field suggestions for ISBoxer. I've come up with a couple of (hopefully) easy ones, and a third that would be nice to implement in ISBoxer 1, though I'd understand if it would make sense to think about it for 2.
#1 Target Drop-down - Would it be easy to make it so ATGs are listed, for example, like Healers (All), Healers (Others)? It'd make finding ATGs or using the field to narrow down choices by keying in the 1st letter(s) easier, I believe. Of course, the usual Window, Character, and Slot choices should still come first
#2 Keyboard Navigation - I'm a heavy keyboard navigator on most things I do on the PC, and I'm pretty sure a lot of skilled ISBoxers are too. ISBoxer already has a nice tab flow and control to it, though I still reach for the mouse for things. I think it'd be nice to have shortcut keys to some, if not all, regions and controls; which behave depending on context. Major sections of the window could be jumped to thorugh the function keys, and fields and controls within places like keymaps can be jumped to through numbers/numpad if none currently have focus. Tabbing out would remove focus (if any) so that keyboard navigation can resume. To expand on the drop-down lists mentioned above, perhaps the up and down arrow keys could drop/expand the list when it hasn't dropped yet, instead of iterating to the next/previous item on the list? To be friendly to new users, a graphic beside the control e.g. <--(1) and on the region, would help I think
#3 Panels/Docking/Layout control - I already like ISBoxer as it is. I felt (and still do) it was intuitive when I first used it. If there was one small hiccup I could comment on, it'd be the odd times where I wanted to access a section or two, but still wanting to keep the current section open for reference/editing. If sections could be detached to float while other parts of the GUI are accessed, and layouts remain persistent between sessions, it'd be super
But I'm okay with the sequential method employed right now. I need the disciplining anyway I thought of a couple of crazy ones while writing this
(sorry) It's looks to be a little complicated so I'm just throwing it up in the air for laughs now and, perhaps, consideration for some parts of it in the far future #4 Round robin multiples/fraction of group - Something like 2 out of 4, or a group of 2 w/in the ATG. Currently, it's either 1 or all of a group listens in for a command. Having potentially more than one chime in allows for redundancy without sacrificing the whole group on one action. Admittedly, only useful for large (>5) platoons
. Um, how about random selection ? #5 Exclusion list/queue - It's a rough idea that spawned about half a minute ago so I'm not sure what you will think about it
The idea is a global opt-in list to track characters that have received steps to do along with information (most likely timer) that helps processes exit from the queue. Characters in this list will not receive broadcasts even if they belong to the ATG or are specified targets for subsequent actions. Broadcasts to the characters can be further filtered through black/white listing, with granularity down to the character level. Opt-in would be akin to what ISBoxer already does to toggle round-robin for an action, something like "Exclude character from broadcasts while performing this step". A timer to set the length within the exclusion list would be needed (I think). Visualization of the actual queue would be a bonus and would be invaluable to revisions. Actually, a visualization queue of each character's last received command would be nice in general (#6? )Pros:
- Prevents inadvertent interruption of critical actions while mashing like a lunatic (it happens even to the best of us I think)
- Easier to use over current scheme of leaving/joining ATGs, or creating special ATGS to code for special contexts etc. User just has to decide "I want this done over anything else".
- Will be part of the design aspect of a step, like round-robin; and will likely impact designing for the better, even just a little, on the user side
Cons:
- Botting aspect? My brain's too tired to think right now but it doesn't seem to the case to me since, from my perspective, it just helps protect keystrokes/actions/decisions already made. I could be wrong though. I've read a lot of great posts, here and elsewhere, by people in the ISBoxer community regarding automation (all of which I agree with) , so I hope the idea doesn't step on those principles.
- Performance overhead (I wouldn't know really
) Many thanks again for taking the time to read this, and for all the great help afforded to everyone in general. I'm sorry for the lengthy post. More power to you!
[Edit]
I didn't know if I should have made another post for more suggestions, so I ended up appending them to this one XD Anyway, I thought of 3 more suggestions that I hope you'll find interesting:
#1 Hotkey reset - What do you think about an option in a keymap's context menu to remove all mapped hotkeys found within? Partly because of my lack of organization initially and my evolving ISBoxer setup, I find that I have clear old keymaps of their hotkeys in favor of newer, more convenient ones; keeping the old ones for Do Mapped Key actions instead. Also, on the hotkey setup window, a button/control to clear out a mapped key to <NO KEY> would be nice.
#2 Hotkey and Key Combination Consolidated Quick View - I've been away from ISBoxer for weeks at a time and tend to forget where I mapped what
Having this helps with recollection as well as reorganization (for messy users like me). A toggle to show and hide keymaps w/o hotkeys, along with the ability to set hotkeys for each w/in this window, plus combination conflicts highlighting, would make it awesome #3 Expanding Step execution control - I came across this post and it reminded me of something I thought about while using ISBoxer. I'd like to suggest adding a field for the number of times the keymap is called before proceeding to the next step, and a hotkey to hit to skip to the next step as well. Both can work in conjunction, or exclusively, and with the other existing options found in ISBoxer.
It'll work great for stuff like WoW's /castsequence, and perhaps, will help consolidate user code that's spread out of necessity. I can imagine that this will also help provide a castsequence functionality of sorts for games that do not have it.
As an exampled of the former, I have a 3 tank setup of disparate classes and since their castsequence schemes in controlling aggro/threat differ in length, it'd be super to exhaust what a character can do/handle before passing the baton to the next guy. The skip hotkey is there for when things get hairy, or when there isn't a need to do an entire sequence (e.g. ooc buffing), and if the field for # of times called is not enabled, it allows the character focused on the step to keep doing this/her thing until someone else needs to take over. While, confusing a mob by going round-robin looks good on paper, I find that this makes my DPS classes receive aggro due to "weak" tanking
I hope I'm not bugging you with all this. I also hope this is the right forum section for it
Thanks again.