[Usability]gnome-games high score usability

[Andrew Sobala <andrew sobala net>]

Hi usability dudes, 

I've been looking at the "View High Scores" option in many gnome games.
At the moment it works like this: 

-> Look at preferences etc. to find out what "Level" we are playing the
game at, and which table to use 
-> Use the "View high scores" menu item to view _this_ level's high
scores 

(Note that if there are no high scores, it behaves slightly weirdly -
this is fixed for GNOME2.0.2 in bug #84235.) 

This means that in games such as gnotski, if you are playing a certain
level there is no way of seeing scores at other levels. Since there are
~20 levels, this is awkward. 

I think there are 3 long-term (ie. when the freezes allow it) solutions:

1. Add a drop-down list widget on the high-score table to allow the
different levels to be switched between. This sucks for games like
gnotski or gnobots2 with _lots_ of categorised levels. gnobots2 actually
has different tables for "If the option 'Safe moves' is checked" and "If
the option 'Super-safe moves' is checked", so enumerating these in a
list box would be silly. 

2. Add application-defined widgets to the high-score table (where? top,
bottom, left, right?) to change the level shown in the table. ie.
gnotski could have a "Difficulty" and "Level" setting for the 2
components that make up the level; gnobots2 could have "With safe
moves", "With super-safe moves" check boxes (and other widgets). (I vote
for this one) 

3. "This isn't important, don't bother changing anything." 

What do you guys think? 

PS. Please keep me Cc:'ed. 

-- 
Andrew

If you drink, don't park.  Accidents make people.