On 6/20/2011 1:00 AM, Steve Dekorte wrote:
On 2011-06-19 Sun, at 09:33 PM, BGB wrote:
.. which mappings are more natural and under which circumstances seems to be
the important question and one, AFAICS, that may not well answered by simply
replacing words with ideograms and expressions with boxes and arrows.
agreed... I really don't believe graphical solutions are necessarily ideal.
but, at the same time, there is also the matter of finding "the right tool for the
job".
for example, code works great for expression program logic, but falls flat for
many other tasks:
creating a graphical image;
creating a 3D model or scene;
...
in these cases, having more specialized tools tends to be far more effective.
I agree and notice that none of the good solutions we have for those involve
"ideograms and... boxes and arrows." It's as if compsci culture is unable to
let go of flow charts, even if they aren't used for constructing complex circuits anymore
which (AFAIK) was the inspiration for their use.
yeah...
meanwhile, making flowcharts is slow and tedious, but people never let
them go away it seems...
decided to leave out a big chunk of me being solidly unimpressed by the
courses I have seen thus far in my pursuit of a CS degree...
is it more sad that the courses are lame?... or that so many of the
students struggle?...
for 3D stuff, I generally do any 3D modeling/animating related parts in
3D tools;
however, "assembling" the model (putting together the base-model,
skeleton, and animation sequences) is generally done by editing text
files at present.
also, most other tasks, like setting up the models and character
behaviors in-game, ... are all basically done by writing out code (good
old text-editor once again).
most in-program controls are either:
direct-action (click/drag with mouse, use arrow keys, ...);
keyboard-shortcuts (most generic commands: setting active tool,
performing various actions, gets a bit Emacs-like as 3 or 4 key
shortcuts are more common than ideal, like CTRL+SHIFT+whatever, ...);
context menu (mostly for if one forgets the keyboard shortcut...);
some special-purpose forms (load/save, select texture/shader, ...);
console (mostly just for esoteric stuff at present, more used with 3D
engine).
as-is, since my 3D game engine is mostly an outgrowth of my mapper, and
due to technical reasons, its present initial start-up settings are very
un-FPS like, so startup is a ritual like:
load up program;
enter console, type in "map whatever" to load up a map;
wait for it to load (slow... mostly apparently due to texture loading);
exit console;
enter a long string of keyboard shortcuts to basically switch to an
FPS-like control scheme and set up renderer settings and similar (sort
of like a magical incantation of sorts on the keyboard, which itself
partly sets up the mouse and keyboard, puts the camera under the control
of the game physics and disables "noclip", turns on lighting, ...).
after this point, it looks and behaves much more like an FPS...
later, I may add something similar to the "autoexec.cfg" in the Quake
series, or maybe load and execute a BGBScript program
"scripts/engine/e_init.bs" or similar, or some combination thereof...
but, yeah, lots and lots of text...
no high-level / abstract GUI anywhere...
well, unless one considers keyboard-shortcuts to be an abstraction...
well, it is abstract in that I don't clutter the screen with GUI
elements or buttons or toolbars or similar, and reverse-clicking is
needed to summon the menu. rest is shortcuts...
summoning the console is also a keyboard shortcut (CTRL+~).
...
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