96 lines
12 KiB
Markdown
96 lines
12 KiB
Markdown
# Level editor – UX review (2026-11-07)
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Usability pass by "edux": the editor used like a new user on Xvfb (1920×1080 screen; windows of
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1500×920, 1920×1050 and 1280×720), mouse and keyboard only, following the manual's tutorials
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(*Your first level*, *Make a parkour*, *Edit an original level*, *Import a Blender model*) plus
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placing objects, the Objects/Environment/Textures panels, Shift+F5, dark theme, F1 help and
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Preferences. Play-tests ran from the editor's own **F5 / Shift+F5** flow, with the game on its own
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display and the editor started with the private PulseAudio server of an apptest session
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(`PULSE_SERVER` and `-Dllamamod.gameDisplay` are inherited by `GameLauncher`; the game's audio went
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into the private null sink). Both play-tests (new flat-floor level, Village from the camera
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position) started straight in the level, and Escape in the game returned to the editor.
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## Before / after
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| Before | After |
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|---|---|
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| A 1920-wide window: the Inspector is 170 px wide and shows no values at all. Side docks have two rows of tabs. | The docks get their intended widths (290 / 340 px). Side-dock tabs are icons with the active one named. The engine fields of the object type are folded away. |
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| The Brush tool's buttons read "Bl…", "Pl…", the texture names "gr…", the numbers show "0,5". | Full labels and a decimal point. |
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| The Coin tool's options are cut off: only the top pixels of the fields are visible. | The options are on one line, or wrap to a second row in narrow windows. |
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| *Help* comes before *Geometry*, and the shortcuts are German ("Strg", "Umschalt"). | The menus are File … Geometry, Tools, Help, and the keys are named "Ctrl", "Shift". |
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| *Open original level*: the description is cut at the right edge, and the selected row's id is grey on orange. | The text wraps and the id is readable. |
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| A 1280×720 window: the right dock is squeezed to 130 px. Also, Esc did not close the dialog, so it was still open and blocked every key. | The docks keep their sizes and the tool options wrap. Esc closes dialogs. |
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*New: Play while the game still runs offers to quit it.*
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## Findings
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Severity: **H** = blocks or seriously misleads; **M** = friction every session; **L** = polish.
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| # | Sev | Where | Finding | Status |
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|---|---|---|---|---|
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| 1 | H | Docks (`DockLayout.applySizes`) | The right dock started at about 170 px instead of 340. The inner split's width was read before the outer divider moved. Effect: Inspector values and Brush buttons are invisible or truncated in every session that has no saved layout. | **Fixed**: lay out the outer split first |
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| 2 | H | Window resize | When the window shrinks (1280×720, a laptop), the GL canvas's large minimum size squeezes the side docks to about 130 px. | **Fixed**: the viewport card has a small minimum size |
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| 3 | H | Inspector sections | A section kept the height it had when created. Wrapped text and later rows (the Llama's waypoint buttons, the parameter descriptions) were clipped. | **Fixed**: the maximum height follows the preferred height |
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| 4 | H | Inspector rows | Labels had a minimum height of 10 px. When the GridBag fell back to minimum sizes, every descender was cut ("Obiect tvpe"). | **Fixed** |
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| 5 | H | Tool options bar | Options wider than the space left of Snap/View/Layers (the Coin, Place and Zones tools at 1500 px, the Brush tool at 1280 px) went to a second FlowLayout row that the bar did not grow for, so they were invisible. | **Fixed**: `WrapLayout`, the bar grows to two rows; all tools have the same bar height, so the viewport no longer jumps when you switch tools |
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| 6 | H | Dialogs | Esc did not close the editor's own dialogs (*Open original level*, *New level*, *Level settings*, *Import mesh* …). A dialog half off-screen then silently swallowed all keys. | **Fixed**: Esc acts as the close button on every JDialog that has no Esc binding of its own |
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| 7 | M | Side docks | Four tabs in 290 px wrapped into two rows that swap places when clicked (Swing's wrap layout). Clicks hit the wrong row, and typing into the filter field fired tool shortcuts. | **Fixed**: one scrolling row; in the side docks inactive tabs show only their icon (title as tooltip) and only the active tab has a ×. The asset, environment and texture sub-tabs also use one scrolling row |
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| 8 | M | Locale (`Main`) | On a German system: menu keys read "Strg+Umschalt+D" and "Strg+Öffnende Klammer", spinners showed "0,75" next to "0.25", and Swing dialogs said "Ja"/"Nein" while the manual says Yes. Cause: `ImageIO` loads AWT before anything else. | **Fixed**: `Locale.setDefault(ENGLISH)` as the first line of `Main.main` (framework change, see below) |
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| 9 | M | Menu bar | *Geometry* (a plugin menu) came after *Help*. | **Fixed**: plugin menus go before Tools, and Help is last |
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| 10 | M | View menu | There were two **Panels** submenus (the Textures plugin's *View/Panels* entry and the shell's own), and a separator between every submenu. | **Fixed**: plugin entries are merged into the one Panels menu, and the submenus form one block |
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| 11 | M | Toolbar | Tools were sorted by order number only, so the groups interleaved (Place objects, Brush, Coins, Tiles, Waypoints, Collision …) with separators in between. Two tools had the same icon (Zones and Zones & triggers). | **Fixed**: grouped in workflow order Select · Geometry · Texture paint · Objects · Environment. *Zones & triggers* uses the trigger icon |
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| 12 | M | Start-up | The last tool was restored (for example Brush or Scale), so the first click in a freshly opened level drew a brush. | **Fixed**: the editor always starts with Select |
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| 13 | M | Play / F5 | "The game is still running. Quit it first" was a dead end, because the game window is often hidden (another display, or full screen behind the editor). | **Fixed**: **Quit game and play** kills our own game (`GameLauncher.kill`), waits for the previous play-test to restore the mod selection, then starts. Tested: the old game was closed and the new one started in the village |
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| 14 | M | Inspector, objects | Every object showed the engine fields of its type (code offset, variables, slots, type flags, extra memory) above Transform. | **Fixed**: they moved to a **Type details** section that is folded at first. *Object type* stays in **Type** |
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| 15 | M | Inspector number fields | Long values showed their end ("6238" for 40.6238, "396, 4096, 8192"). | **Fixed**: the caret goes to the start and the full value is in the tooltip. Truncated labels ("Flags (2 = not s…") also get a tooltip |
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| 16 | M | Outliner filter | Typing "Coin" showed a collapsed *Coin* group (depth 3), so the matches needed another click. | **Fixed**: groups are expanded down to depth 4 while filtering |
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| 17 | M | Move / rotate / scale | No feedback during a drag: how far, which snap step. | **Fixed**: the status bar shows "Move 1 item Δ x 0.50 y 0.00 z 0.00 cells (snap 0.25, Ctrl = free)", the rotation angle and the scale factors |
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| 18 | M | Assets panel | *Tile models* is empty in a new level ("0 of 0" and a white area). The *Imported* tab gave no hint either. | **Fixed**: grey hints ("no tile models yet … the Library tab has ready-made pieces", "File → Import mesh…", "Nothing matches the filter", "Open a level …") |
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| 19 | M | Window size | The first-start size of 1500×920 is larger than a 1366×768 laptop screen, so the window hung over the edges. | **Fixed**: the size is clamped to the screen, and the window is maximized when it doesn't fit |
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| 20 | L | Open original level | The description was clipped (the dialog was packed before the text was set), and the selected row's id was grey on orange. | **Fixed** |
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| 21 | L | Status bar | The last-build label was cut ("Built 03:37:16 · 6158 KB · 2 w…"). | **Fixed**: "Built 03:37 · 6.0 MB · 2 warnings" |
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| 22 | M | New level | A new level keeps the base level's 13 zones and 30 lights. Their outlines float far from the 16×14 floor (pink boxes in the sky), which is confusing in an empty level. | **Fixed (0.2.0)**: new projects keep only the start zone and the directional lights; teleport zones, point lights, waypoints and region masks of the base are removed (stored as edits, old projects unchanged). Directional light markers are drawn above the player start |
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| 23 | M | Play-test | While the game runs, nothing in the editor says so: the status line falls back to "Ready" after 6 s. | Fixed (edui): `EditorContext.setGameRunning(what, stop)`; while the play-test game runs the status bar shows a green "Game running: <level>" badge and the toolbar Play button becomes **Stop game**; both reset when the watcher sees the game exit (`img/editor/ui_playtest_running.jpg`) |
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| 24 | L | Shift+F5 | There is no mark in the viewport showing which point "the middle of the view" is. | Fixed (edui): crosshair in the middle of the viewport while Shift is held (300 ms delay, hidden while a mouse button is down) or while *Play from camera position* is hovered; green = valid start, red = not (status bar says why) – `tools.playtest.PlayHereMarker`, `Viewport.setHudOverlay` |
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| 25 | L | Outliner | Rows show technical ids (`brush:n19`, `strat:6`). Several brushes are all called "Floor". | Fixed (edui): rows read "Coin 3", "Floor 2", "Waypoint 4", "Chain 1 – Llama", "Light 2", "Model 12 (…)", position/height in the grey column; the id is the row tooltip (filter still matches ids) |
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| 26 | L | Inspector hints | Help texts in tool sections use fixed 215–230 px HTML widths, so they don't use a wider dock. | Fixed (edui): `Widgets.wrappingLabel(html)` wraps at the container/viewport width (Inspector hints, `GeoWidgets.hint`, environment `Ui.Form.note`, `ParamsSection.note`) |
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| 27 | L | Problems panel | It shows "No problems." before any check has run. | Not fixed |
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| 28 | L | Duplicates | Objects can be placed from both the Objects panel (left) and Assets → Objects (bottom). | Kept: both are documented, and drag & drop needs the grid |
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| 29 | L | Menus | Key names come from AWT ("Ctrl+Open Bracket"), while the manual writes "Ctrl+[". | Not fixed (would need a custom accelerator renderer) |
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| 30 | L | Toolbar | The tool buttons stay enabled while no level is open. | Not fixed (harmless) |
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These worked well: the start page with recent projects, the *New level* dialog, crash recovery (a
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killed editor offered **Recover** and restored the level), coin lines, Quick setups with
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options-bar exit targets, *Death plane height…*, *Array duplicate*, the *Import mesh* dialog
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(preview, size, warnings, click-to-place), context help (F1 opened the chapter of the panel
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under the mouse), the Shift+F5 hint when aiming at the sky, and the dark theme (readable;
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the selected **Snap** toggle has rather low contrast).
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## Changes (files)
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* `editor/ui`: `DockLayout` (sizes, scroll tabs, compact side tabs, minimum viewport size),
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`ToolOptionsBar` + new `WrapLayout`, `EditorWindow` (menu order, merged Panels menu,
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start tool, window size), `EditorExtensions.tools()` (grouped order), `EditorApp` (Esc closes
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dialogs), `OpenOriginalDialog`, `PlayTest` (status text), `panels/InspectorPanel`,
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`panels/OutlinerPanel`, `panels/AssetBrowserPanel`, `tools/TransformSupport`.
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* Plugins (one-liners): `tools/objects/ZoneTool` (icon), `tools/environment/EnvironmentPanel` and
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`tools/textures/TextureManagerPanel` (scroll tabs), `tools/playtest/PlaytestRunner`
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(Quit game and play).
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* **Framework**: `Main.java`: `Locale.setDefault(Locale.ENGLISH)` as the first line of `main`
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(it affects the launcher UI too: English key names and Swing dialog buttons, decimal points).
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* Manual: 03 (docks, toolbar groups, start tool), 05 (drag feedback, Type details), 09
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(Objects tab icon), 15 and 20 (Quit game and play).
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Verified: `./gradlew spotlessApply build` green (239 tests, ManualTest/ShortcutConflictTest/
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EditorShellTest included), every fix checked in the running editor (screenshots above), two
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play-tests in the game.
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