Making users of "the other app" feel at home

[IBBoard]

I just had a couple of ideas for a future plugin that we could add to make users of "the other app" feel at home when they migrate to WarFoundry. As well as supporting its data files, we'd need to:

• Pop up a splash screen for no good reason
• Assume that a user is always going to want to create a new army, even though looking at an old one is just as likely
• Add additional clicks to the process of creating an army, just for the sake of it, by separating system loading from army selection with a random dialog in the middle
• Only provide a "Quit" option when part way through creating an army, not a "Cancel"
• Replace the icons with less obvious ones
• Put lots of functions on a single complex dialog
• Provide a "demo" mode that leaves lots of menu items enabled but unfunctional
• Make users enter a license number to access all functionality (although we'd probably accept any string rather than an actual license number)

It might need a bit of rework in places, though, as it needs extensive UI hooks rather than the more conventional back-end manipulation (e.g. additional file format or rule handling). What do you think - would it make people feel more at home?

[snowblizz]

Sounds good! Now if you could only add the function of having to pay a yearly subscription fee to download user generated content I think we'd all be set.

[IBBoard]

Ah, yes, I forgot the yearly lock-down Always good when you can get people to make stuff for you for free and charge them to use it!

[IBBoard]

I've been poking "the other app" a bit more and found another one to add to the list:

• Crazy amounts of right-click menu options, including ones that are completely unnecessary and should be handled by other parts of the UI (like collapsing nodes)

Seriously, I'd get horrendously lost if I had to use a UI with that much junk on it for my army! Lets try and keep a streamlined and easy to use app for our releases

In other news, I think we do about cover the basics of what they cover. We've still not got validation or rule sets, but most of the rest of it seems to be there. Discussions on that in another thread, if people want.