Can't change player name

[ronopolis]

I just installed 0.8.5 on a win7 machine. Everything is fine, everything works except I cannot change the player name. I can change all the other settings. I can play, play on-line. What am I missing??

[Gig]

Can you say more details?
Are you getting an error message or simply it doesn't change? Are you using the "player settings" menu or the \name command? Are you using some color codes (like ^1)? I've heard that in 0.8.5 you cannot use black color in your name.

[ronopolis]

Mystery solved. I blame bad UI. When I mouse over the field, there is a little "plink" sound, but nothing else that really tells me "you can being typing now". There is a tiny horizontal cursor, which is mostly obscured by the existing letters. In most text entry widgets it is much more obvious you are in "entry" mode. Changing the background color, removing the exiting "Unnamed player" (which is what I'd do), better cursor.

Anyway, all better now,

[Gig]

I don't understand why you want to remove "unnamed player" from the default value for the name field. A default value is needed, otherwise we would find players with no name at all only because they did not change it...

[ronopolis]

What I meant was: Keep "unnamed player" as the default. But when the user goes to edit the player name field you would clear the field so they can start typing their new player name. Note you'd only do this for string "unnamed player".  Most likely the user is not going to "edit" the string "unnamed player", they are going to change it to their new name. So just zap the string.  If the string is not "unnamed player" then you don't zap the text entry field, you just go into edit mode on the existing string.

Again, when the player name text entry field received focus, it wasn't obvious to me at all that I could start typing.

[Gig]

Maybe it's because I know the Q3 interface since about 10 years, but I don't find it so strange to mouseover a text that, like the name, is probably customizable, then start typing and see what happens. I suppose if I click there (quite probable one may instinctively do), it works anyway.

Maybe the programmers may put in a more visible cursor, but I don't feel necessary to automatically delete the unnamed player.

[ronopolis]

Maybe it's because I know the Q3 interface since about 10 years, but I don't find it so strange

That's exactly the issue. No one who's highly familiar with a UI can find or see all kinds of UI issues. I'm not some newbie. I'm a computer scientist. I play games, I understand UIs. Heck, I work at Nvidia. It isn't like I've never seen a text box. If there was a big blinking cursor, that would at least be a start. A tiny horizontal cursor obscured by the text doesn't count.

[fromhell]

Unfortunately the idTech3 UI system has been this weird and glitchy for years, even the 'missionpack' UI revamp is weird (like right click = exit, and the ever-so-buggy child menu system that's a real pain to make menus with).  OA is mainly a content project (with a few cool new gametypes) so the early Carmackian UI i'll have to live with. All the idTech 3 coding geniuses have moved on (to Treyarch/Infinity Ward/Splash Damage/id Software) so a new good UI is a slimmer chance than ever.