[SUGGESTION] other ideas

- in auto demo recording mode, could be usefull to keep the .dem file only if the game lasts more than x seconds
- the irc pickup mechanism could be directly included in Xonotic
- the .cfg management could be way much more intuitive with load, save and 'defined as default' functions.

yay! good ideas! I especialy like the irc thing!

- in auto demo recording mode, could be usefull to keep the .dem file only if the game lasts more than x seconds

Submitted a ticket sort of like this a while ago.

- the irc pickup mechanism could be directly included in Xonotic

First we need an irc pickup mechanism

- the .cfg management could be way much more intuitive with load, save and 'defined as default' functions.

What?

- in auto demo recording mode, could be usefull to keep the .dem file only if the game lasts more than x seconds

There's a new cvar (cl_autodemo_delete) that allows this. For example, you can set it up to delete all automatically recorded demos and bind a key to keep the current demo.

- the irc pickup mechanism could be directly included in Xonotic

Basic IRC code is already available, so hopefully this can be made to happen.

What?

what what? :p
I mean when you use several .cfg config, it's just a mess to manage them and use.

CFG management is pretty intuitive, I think, but you could also use a framework:
http://github.com/PlasmaSheep/nn_ninja_pack - ninja pack v2
http://github.com/z/nn_ninja_pack - ninja pack v1

CFG management is pretty intuitive, I think, but you could also use a framework:
http://github.com/PlasmaSheep/nn_ninja_pack - ninja pack v2
http://github.com/z/nn_ninja_pack - ninja pack v1

Thanks for the tips.
But, actually, i was not talking about what I know or don't know, but what a newbie at Xonotic could understand about .cfg.
For instance, think about two guys with two different profiles who will play Xonotic on the same computer.

Those two guys should get separate user accounts then. That's how it works for a lot of software

Those two guys should get separate user accounts then. That's how it works for a lot of software

Right... and can we "genetically" do that with nexuiz?

Sure, they can have different data directory locations.

By different user accounts, he means at operating system level. Multi user systems are pretty common these days.

I know, but the OP is asking for a way to do this without multi-user accounts at the OS level (one user, different config directories).

He can make two shortcuts that use different -gamedir values (that will need -modname xonotic along with it)

He can make two shortcuts that use different -gamedir values (that will need -modname xonotic along with it)

dudes, i just don't ge your points...
A naive player (= who just wants to have fun, who barely knows what is the actual nexuiz directory location and who doesn't give a shit to manually edit the .cfg file) might just expect, when launching Xonotic, a kind of simple profile menu, which basically asks "who are you?". Mr X selects his profile and X.cfg is loaded.

As far as I understood, the Xonotic project aim is to offer an accessible game for everyone. If i'm wrong, just forget my suggestion.

A naive player (= who just wants to have fun, who barely knows what is the actual nexuiz directory location and who doesn't give a shit to manually edit the .cfg file)

I might add: who doesn't give a shit to add an user to the system (5,6 clicks of the mouse?).

Do you know Firefox has multiple profiles per user too? But you can't access that menu unless you pass the "-ProfileManager" option to the executable. Most people just browse whithin the same profile though.
If a change is to be made I'd like to have the same concept of the hidden menu, though, the player can search on the wiki or on the readme.

Or better yet, he can search and get the -gamedir -modname tip, that's it.

Do you know Firefox has multiple profiles per user too? But you can't access that menu unless you pass the "-ProfileManager" option to the executable. Most people just browse whithin the same profile though.

100% agree.
But... I'm sure you can figure out that a nexuiz is highly much more personal than Mozilla.

This will need yet another modification of the game engine, config.cfg is hardcoded. The problem here is that the solution is relatively complicated to implement and you already have two solutions to it... That means it's not too high in the priority list.

dudes, i just don't ge your points...
A naive player (= who just wants to have fun, who barely knows what is the actual nexuiz directory location and who doesn't give a shit to manually edit the .cfg file) might just expect, when launching Xonotic, a kind of simple profile menu, which basically asks "who are you?". Mr X selects his profile and X.cfg is loaded.

As far as I understood, the Xonotic project aim is to offer an accessible game for everyone. If i'm wrong, just forget my suggestion.

The game will only ever save its configuration in config.cfg, that's a restriction of DarkPlaces.
Besides, when that simple profile menu opens, the engine is already loaded, and charging a configuration will need an engine reload. You could select the profile before loading the engine, but that's exactly what the -gamedir switch does. Feel free to make a wrapper to the engine that allows to select the value for that switch and run the engine using it.

Mr Bougo: i can fully understand the priority argument.

I don't have any details on the flexibility of Darkplaces...
but, about the hard-coded .cfg name, it generally does not take more than few mn to change an hard-coded file name and put it as an input of a main().

Making a wrapper is a pure dirty and short-term solution.

But again, I get your point: you don't have time to do this. No problemo.

A wrapper would not be pure-dirty, making the config.cfg string a commandline argument will need a wrapper as selector as well.

Can you explain why a wrapper would be dirty and short-term? We are already using launcher scripts in linux to run the game (see the current version
It is also not short-term at all: the binary name is unlikely to change and there's no reason for DP to drop support of -gamedir and -modname.

Correct me if I misunderstand: what you propose is to have two seperate nexuiz directories (containing then two config.cfg), and then, prior to launch DP, select which one of the nexuiz.exe you want to launch. Am I correct?

If so, it seems to me totaly not naive user-friendly oriented.

What I propose is having two xonotic configuration directories in your documents. Only one install, only one copy of the game.

All the user would need to do is copy a file (the wrapper) to his xonotic install directory and run the game from that instead of xonotic.exe
The wrapper would let the user add/delete a new profile name, and choose between existing profiles, very much like firefox does.

Ok, so your solution is indeed external to xonotic.exe.

Two solutions: either this wrapper is released with Xonotic 1.0, either not.

If so: this is a dirty solution from a SW dev point of view, because the mechanism is purely ad-hoc.

If not, the point is: how would this naive user know that "all he would need to do is copy a file (the wrapper) to his xonotic install directory and run the game from that instead of xonotic.exe"?
By a wiki? google requests? In any case, not naive user-oriented.

I still don't understand why this would be a dirty solution, we already use wrappers for linux to run the correct binary on 32 bit and 64 bit.

It will have to be selected before the engine runs either way, or you will always need to load it twice (reload after setting the profile's config). What else do you want?

Ok, if I were a new (naive) user, I would like to
- run the Xonotic installer (by clicking N times on 'Next' buttons)
- double click on Xonotic.exe
- be able to define my bindings, resolution screen, etc
- play Xonotic (eventually...)
- now if my grand-mother would like to play Xonotic too on my computer, I don't want her to modify any of my settings. She should be able to set all her setup without knowing anything about what is a .cfg, how is organized the Xonotic directory architecure, etc.

What you're proposing doesn't seem to met these expectations, right?

You can already change the gamedir from the console, so it can also be done in menu QC without modifying the engine. However, this will need to restart the engine (vid_restart) as well as the menu (menu_restart). This is a little slow and annoying, so not very convenient for the user who's not using the default profile (there HAS to be a default profile for the engine to start obviously) EDIT: actually I'm not even sure that's possible :x

The game can be started directly into a non-default profile using command-line switches either by hand, by using a wrapper, or by having the user make a custom shortcut with the good parameters.