Not showing the console on startup

[Baker]

[Sajt]

No, you don't want to do that! If you're concerned about people accidentally hitting tilde, just do the Doom3 thing and use ctrl+shift+tilde or something...

[Dr. Shadowborg]

[frag.machine]

[Baker]

[Dr. Shadowborg]

[mh]

Baker has a point - hiding the console during startup is to my mind the right thing to do (getting rid of it entirely would be a step too far; too much legacy baggage, too much rearchitecting needed, too much risk of breaking things).

It needs to be remembered that tech-heads and command-line-freaks are actually very much in the minority here, even for a game as old as Quake. You only need to look at QuakeOne.com or elsewhere any day of the week to see the horrendous difficulties that something as simple as installing and loading a mod can cause. The people who it causes trouble for aren't stupid, they're just fish out of water. Anyone who perseveres and eventually gets there deserves credit.

Regarding menus, I'd say that the critical things to include are map loading, game changing and resolution changing. These are needed, and will on their own go a long way towards resolving 90% of the troubles that people have. It's OK for someone to prefer to use command-line options for them, and command-line options and the console can be retained unmodified for those people, but the majority of folks do not want them.

The default menu options in Q1 also badly need changing. They're a hangover from the old days when users were switching from 2.5d (Doom) to 3d, and things like lookspring and lookstrafe made sense then. It's 2010 now, so kill them, add in freelook instead (and for crying out loud have it enabled by default), and even if there's someone who will always hate your guts for removing lookstrafe from the menu, you can be certain that such a person would have no difficulties setting it from the console.

The trouble here is that Quake as-is forces you to use the console and the command-line. There's a bit of a mentality to this, don't you think? The console and command-line should become what they're meant to be - power tools for experienced users. The average player who couldn't care less should never have to even be aware that they exist.

[Dr. Shadowborg]

[Spike]

[Sajt]

[Dr. Shadowborg]

[gnounc]

[Spike]

in gnounc's case, they should be able to use a binds menu.
Also don't kill it completely as its awesome for chat.
what sajt said.

[Baker]

The need for the console in Quake existed largely originally due to the need to type +mlook and all the other odd deficiencies in the original Quake.

And then GLQuake with emerging 3D graphics cards that couldn't handle a lot of settings and needed tweaking.

And THEN modified engines with features that add effects that are desireable in some circumstances and then sometimes not and maybe you need to turn them off and then on either because you get 5 FPS or it looks wrong in a certain mod or you hate one or more of the author's defaults.

In case 1, you have bad game design. But that's fine, Quake was born in a transitory period. And a bit rushed.

In case 2, you have variable hardware capability. But that's fine, Quake was born in period where 3D acceleration was in its infancy.

In case 3, you have modified engines with experimental concepts of adding layers of complexity to the engine for users to play with. That's fine, that what you are supposed to do when you have the source code and mentally explore ideas.

But, let's say you have a total conversion using a modified Quake engine.

Case 1: that's no excuse. Needing to type +mlook in the console (or other such lack of foresight) would be absurd.
Case 2: that's no excuse. Hardware is stable.
Case 3: well, that's no excuse either. Pick the engine settings, effects and features for the representation you want [or will settle for].

If you design the total conversion correctly, in that event the console is really a developer tool. You can't eliminate the need for the console for multiplayer including LAN (without extraordinary effort) but for a solely single player modification and if you control both the engine and the QuakeC the need for a console in single player is rather trivial. I never used the console in single player for Half-Life except to use cheat-codes, for example.

@Spike: In my head I think the key is con_forcedup or whatever it is called in the engine code. If the console is forced up (no map running or a host error or what not) I guess that makes sense to show the console. I must be too old school to appreciate "chat in the console" and still like the idea of T to talk [and for modern knobsters accustomed to chatting in the console, I'd say "tough".]

(Speaking of T to talk ...

Nexuiz's "Magic Ear" entity is of extreme interest to me. The uses in single player are rather interesting .... i.e. what if you had a door guarded by an invulnerable NPC who would not open the door unless you gave him the password ...)

@Sajt/Shadowborg: Expert users do come from somewhere of course, but the lack of a default console in Half-Life didn't seem to stop them from developing expert users. I'm not saying unreasonable existence of a console is good, but just that it is not necessarily desirable.

[Downsider]

A button to enable/disable console in the options menu is ideal.