Topic: modal message_box

Forums » Widelands Development » Coding & Scripting » modal message_box
kaputtnik
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Joined: 2013-02-18, 20:48
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OS: Archlinux
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Posted at: 2022-02-21, 13:19

The message_box has a switch modal which let the game run further while the message box is open. This is very convenient: Before this got implemented a player always has to close the message box, loosing all information e.g. where the player has to click on. With the modal switch the player can leave the message box open and compare the information shown inside the message box while doing the things proposed in the message box.

There is one issue with this though: If using mixed message boxes (some without modal=false and some with) it is sometimes unclear to the player when a modal window is used and the player can do something while the window is open. I remember some time ago one can shrink the height of the message box to hide the Ok button. This seems not to work anymore.

The question is now how to show that a player can do things while the window is open. Writing everytime something like "You can do this while this window is open" isn't really nice face-grin.png My current suggestion would be to remove the Ok-button when using a modal message_box. Other ideas?

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Nordfriese
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Joined: 2017-01-17, 18:07
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Posted at: 2022-02-21, 14:43

Let's not confuse the terminology face-wink.png – the default state is a modal box which pauses the game and blocks all other user input while open, and a non-modal box allows the game to keep running in the background and does not block user input.

Hiding the button by shrinking the box sounds like a bug, but removing the OK button for non-modal boxes would be easy to do and sounds fine to me.

Another idea to emphasise the difference would be to darken the screen background when a modal box is open, like we do while the Game Ending message is visible, to make it obvious that you can't click anywhere except in the storybox,

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kaputtnik
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Joined: 2013-02-18, 20:48
Posts: 2637
OS: Archlinux
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Posted at: 2022-02-22, 12:27

Thanks for correcting my wrong terminology.

Bug report: https://github.com/widelands/widelands/issues/5277

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