Annoying Feature: Playerlist Auto-Close
 

I like to keep my playerlist open so I can see who I have PMs from, and every time I answer one, the list closes. Normally I wouldn't complain, but having to mash F7 every two seconds to keep my list open is incredibly irritating.

Yeah, I found this annoying too. I only remember it happening on Vista. I often resorted to the scripted playerlist.

Yep, this should have had a quick fix when v5 was first released but obviously never happened.

I don't seem to have this problem.

I dont have it neither.

People who don't have this problem have their playerlists outside the Graal window area. :3

Do people honestly keep their playerlists IN the Graal window area?
It's not like it's small, it blocks out a lot of the screen.

Well, yeah, I have Graal covering my whole screen. Too used to it.

I have my playerlist where Vista's Desktop Gadgets are supposed to be, and i don't use full screen. But yea i don't have that problem.

I agree, I don't have it fullscreen. But I have Graal maximized, and just press F7 whenever I need to open my playerlist.

Why isn't the playerlist window simply considered a window always on top? Isn't this something fairly simple to code? Guess it doesn't matter as the next version will have completely scripted windows anyways.

Honestly, if you simply have Graal maximized I suggest just shrinking the window small enough to put the playerlist on the side. Otherwise you're stuck using the scriptedd playerlist.

Yeah seriously, specially since it was like this before v5.

Mash? Sort of not the right time to add in extreme exaggeration into the deal, when all you do is have to tap it once.


Is it really that time consuming to press F7?

I don't have a problem with it. However, it's not about wanting to view the playerlist, it's about wanting to view it constantly instead of periodically. I posted solutions, but I can see how it's a problem... but I can also see how it's futile to want otherwise -- next Graal version won't have an external playerlist, and the next version is the only version we're going to see first.

Next version will have external gui windows, right?
In which case that is totally awesome. Scripted playerlist adds so many possibilities.
(Assuming servers have access to the script and can make changes to/replace it locally.)

Yes Externals are in the next Graal release. Provided the external windows don't feel like the internal gui windows, it will be awesome.

Also, altering the the scripted player-list is already possible, just that no one really uses it, so those changes go unnoticed or aren't bothered with.

No exaggeration. I'm a button-masher.

Also, yeah, I'm running Vista32. (Since 64 seems to have way too many compatibility issues.)
But tell me, is anyone having this problem on Windows 7? I'm just curious.

Not really. The scripted playerlist is awful compared to the external one.

What do you mean?

Yeah, I don't see how it's hard to understand why our current "Windows" playerlist feels so much better than the scripted one. I'm not sure how the v6 scripted playerlist will feel but I don't think it's going to be any good knowing how Graal windows behave. :/

having the player list separate from the graal window is better. you can keep it separate so it doesn't block anything, it doesn't seem to have any problems, and the in-graal one just looks bad. i tried using it once and it felt terrible; never tried it again

i also like being able to minimize the main graal window while keeping the player list open

Next version focuses on external scripted windows.

Considering people like me and you have been on Graal since last decade, I'd say a big reason is that we're used to it.

It took me MONTHS before I finally decided to go from v2.31 to v4. The only reason I ended up doing it is because it started to interfere with what I could and could not do.

i'm glad: i would hate to be forced into using the in-game player list

Could you list some things that could make windows behave better please? It's helpful to list things that make it bad than to just say it's bad.

As Dusty mentioned, it will indeed be external. It will also have a lot more features and receive updates more than the current playerlist does (because it'll be scripted, which means Skyld and I have access to edit script and update it right away).

The scripted playerlist contains all of the current features of the external playerlist and more, the only problem is that some people have a hard time adjusting to the use of Graal windows. If we can some how get across that hill, then it will easily be 10x better than the current playerlist due to flexibility, features, and usability.

And as for the number of annoying things that the scripted playerlist does have, I have already fixed a lot of these on the login 2 server, so once I am finished updating it then it will be moved over to Login 1. Stefan also fixed a few things in the client (like allowing you to hold ctrl+click and shift+click stuff to select players on the list).

My main problem with GUI's are their slow response time due to Graal running at 20fps. It pales in comparison to their OS counterparts.

As I said, inferior feel. I don't have access to the v6 playerlist but the scripted list of v5 isn't as responsive as the normal one. The shortcuts and whatnot that most of us (as we are mostly Windows users) are used to don't work, such as shift+click to mass select multiple people. Aesthetically it does a horrible job at seperating the different sections, everything just looks clumped together and its nowhere near as clear as the normal one while nicks are harder to read as well. The interface of the default one is superior (with the exception of the mass button I suppose), the scripted one doesn't even have an option button.

Thus far I have been unimpressed with scripted windows on Graal. They look horrible, aren't responsive, and appear to be inferior in everyway to their "OS counterparts" (as Dusty put it) for the majority of the everyday players.

External windows appear to behave at far above 60 FPS, probably native OS speeds, on Mac at least. For example, resizing client-RC is extremely smooth.

However, text boxes are still dreadful.