Camera Control

Linux is hopelessly stuck in the 80's.

There isn't anything you can do in a config file that you can't do better in a GUI.

I assume you are talking about Graphical user interfaces right? those things people build to manipulate the XML in an eye friendly way?

Spoken like somebody who has never truly used Linux. GUIs are nice to expose simple configuration options, which is pretty much all you're allowed to do on Windows, but if you want to have full control of your system, like in Linux, a GUI will only take you so far. (Especially since a well-designed GUI only provides pertinent information.)

I'd love to elaborate on the topic, but it's probably a bit too far off topic for this thread, and should probably be done via PMs.

Bringing it back to games though, the configuration GUIs only expose so much, because there comes a point where the benefits gained from tweaking are dwarfed by the difficulties caused by the option-laden GUI. But since there are always advanced users that will want to tool around, plain text config files are the most open and transparent way to give them that access. (And a nice game console definitely helps.)

Not to mention the big bonus of config files - you can SHARE them with others.

Like others said, GUIs only get you so far.

I had a friend who described Linux very well. "Linux is free, if your time is worthless."

Linux is an industrial OS built for servers, efficiency, and admins scouring online forums at 2 in the morning. It is not for real people. They would only get hurt.

So, controls will be similar to mini PA

viewtopic.php?f=61&t=43445

Linux is ahead of most OSs today, arguably. It can play games designed for windows through WINE, it's open source, it's free, it's getting constantly updated, it's fast, it has a low memory imprint...

Everyone gives Linux a bad name because you get these Linux "pros" who insist that everyone gets a bare-bone command line only build, and now it seems that the mass of the population fail to understand that there are multiple different distros of Linux, and the ones used by most gaming Linux users have proper GUIs, web browsers, gaming capability and it all.

Except it's not true at all. My mom has been using Ubuntu Linux on her laptop exclusively for over 5 years now, and she does just fine. The whole attraction behind distros like Ubuntu, Mint, Suse, etc is that they are fairly simple for ordinary people to jump in and use.

Doing more advanced stuff is a challenge, but more often than not, the same can be said about Windows. The difference is that most people are accustomed to Windows' flaws, so they have an easier time dealing with the issues that crop up.

And also all the advanced stuff in Windows is accessible through the GUI because Microsoft realized that there's a difference between a graphical OS and a graphical shell for a CLI OS.

at the end of the day a GUI will only let you do things that its designer thought of and had the time to impliment, XML codign will allow you to do anything it is possible to do within the hard coding of the system

I'd like to know what the difference between the "hard coding of the system" (????) is from "what the designer thought to do".

hard coding are the physical limitation of the system. I'm not a full programmer so i might not give the best example but:

code you can access from the GUI might be a drop down box of screen resolutions

in the XML you could specifically set those screen resolutions to any number you wanted (or create a new gui that allows you to set the screen resolution with text instead of options0

It is however hard coded into the game run in, what are we up to, 36 bit colour depth?

We still run at 24 bit, and colour depth is a display mode just like resolution and refresh rate. I'm not sure what you are getting at, but if you can put in an option in an xml (an exceedingly shitty format anyway, plain text config files are far easier to deal with) then you can put it in a GUI. You might put it in a config file for ease of testing because the UI does not exist or hasn't been finalized yet, but once it has there is no excuse.

How do you release all resources used by all network connections in Windows GUI easily? To the best of my knowledge, Microsoft didn't include a GUI page for that. It's a waste of developer time making pages and checkboxes for every single option.

Give me access to cmd in Windows, and I'll do it in 19 characters.

So where does OSX stand? Part of its kernel is based on BSD, and it's made to be posix-compliant, which by your standards, would be a CLI OS.

The fact is that Linux is built to be very modular, and as such, it can scale to whatever it needs to be. Android phones use the Linux kernel, but I sure don't hear people complaining about how that's a CLI OS. But because it's modular, that same kernel codebase will work in your router, giving you a web-based interface (see the ddwrt and tomato firmwares, for example). And in all these examples, the salient parts of configuration are exposed via their respective GUIs. But to top it off, you can still use the CLI interface if you so choose. (I use my phone's shell quite frequently.)

Anyway, if you want to further debate the topic, start a new thread or PM me about it. I'm pretty sure the mods are getting antsy with how off topic this thread is getting . . .

Given we are in this forum, discussing if camera control features (which still have to be determined) of a game still in development should be controlled by GUI and/or config file, does anyone believe to meet real people here?

aside from that, config files >= Gui
(files are better for copying, backup, variants )
At best a GUI can get you all the settings a config file can.
GUI for standard options, direct config file editing for the rest

I approve of red posts on this matter :geek: