New GUI Design Proposals

i wrote this all in September of last year, and posted it in the #suggestions channel on Discord, but now I'm finally getting around to posting it here Though many parts of this are just being amended or added now, so... still a reason to look through it even if you have already seen the Discord post. And it'll refresh your memory in order to engage in discourse surrounding this, which should hopefully be greater by posting this to the forums instead of #suggestions.

This post comes in two parts. The title screen, and the level select. Obvious "an A press has three parts to it" joke is obvious.

Part 1: The Title Screen
For many updates now, the title screen has been in a very confusing state. The main issue with the current layout is how hidden the Online button is, when this should really be the sort of “default” option if anything.
The title screen having two separate pages at all is dumb. Let’s get it back to how it used to be! But without sacrificing any of the new buttons… sort of?

What we currently have on the title screen:
Page 1

• Play (goes to offline level select)
• Community (goes to page 2)
• Options (goes to options screen)
• Replays (goes to replay browser)
• Quit (closes the game)

Page 2

• Online (goes to the login screen) (obviously just logs you in with Auto Login enabled but that’s a whole separate deal that we’re just going to assume will remain true)
• Custom Levels (goes to a dedicated in-game Marbleland level browser)
• Forums (opens the marbleblast.com forums in your internet browser)
• Discord (opens an invite link to the Marble Blast Discord server in your internet browser)
• Back (goes to page 1)

Many of these don’t need whole ass big buttons among everything else on the title screen. Many of these don’t even need to be on the title screen to begin with. So how do I propose we reorganize this?
This design will also incorporate a common suggestion I’ve seen around, where “Play” should instead go to the Webchat login screen, and the current “Play” button should instead be renamed to something like “Offline”

So, let’s get the actual meat of my proposal out of the way first, and then I’ll give explanations behind everything:
First, the buttons that currently exist on the title screen:

• Play (goes to the login screen)
• Options (goes to the options screen)
• Help (the grand return! More on this later)
• Achievements (goes to the achievements screen)
• Offline Mode (goes to the offline level select)
• Quit (closes the game)

In addition, some brand new, smaller buttons down in the bottom right corner, careful not to obscure the version number. All of these little corner buttons will bring you to various important Marble Blast webpages in your browser. All icons will be only white and transparent, to match with the PQ UI’s art style. From left to right:

• The Marble Blast Platinum logo (opens marbleblast.com in your internet browser)
• The Marbleland logo (opens Marbleland in your internet browser) (less sure about this one? But we don’t actually have any direct links to Marbleland in the game atm, which might be good)
• The GitHub logo (opens the PlatinumQuest-Dev repository in your internet browser) (could maybe see some merit in keeping this one more hidden too, keeping its most accessible location as the pins of #coding-and-modding)
• The Discord logo (opens an invite link to the Marble Blast Discord server in your internet browser)
• In addition, clicking on the version number now opens the change log. Quite simple, really. A dedicated GUI even already exists for showing this in-game

Here are some mockups of what this might look like. First in 1024x768 (minimum supported resolution) and then in 1920x1080. And, some comments I added after posting these to Discord; I think the corner buttons could maybe be a little smaller. And the actual icons inside the buttons will definitely be bigger, this marble icon was just used as a placeholder. Also, to answer one easy question right away: Yes. As you can see, even at the lowest resolution the game claims to support (1024x768), there appears to be enough space for the title screen to feature a sixth main button. Quite cleanly, actually.

So, immediately, some more questions arise. Where did the Replays button go? Where did the Custom Levels button go that opens the in-game Marbleland browser? Can we change Susie’s name yet?

No!! As for those first two questions, we’ll get to those answers when I talk about… the level select… OooOoOooOOh!!! But actually I lied I’ll just answer them now.
When it comes to the Replays button, I think it would make sense for this button and the Achievements button to change places. This would put the Achievements button on the title screen (as previously mentioned), and the Replays button inside the mini menu in the level select. This same procedure would then need to be done online, too, where the Replays button is currently on the global chat screen.

My reasoning for this is twofold:

1. It puts more focus on the achievements, which are currently quite hidden away. In fact, some people apparently don’t even know that this game has achievements. It doesn’t help that achievement popups currently don’t come up online.
2. This puts the Record button and the Replays menu together, which feels like it just makes sense. I’d even argue that the Record button could maybe be put inside the Replays menu, but that seems like a few too many clicks. Depends on what people say, though. If people disagree that it’s a bad idea, then it would totally work.

For a (not-so-)little side tangent that I'm just adding to this post now, I would like to improve the achievement popups as well. Aside from just making them, you know, actually work online, it'd be cool to have them occasionally come up to show your progress on them for those applicable, kind of like some Steam achievements do. For instance, if there's an achievement to get every Ultimate Time in PlatinumQuest, then, every time you achieved a new Ultimate Time (or Score) in PQ, a little box would pop up in the bottom right (just as achievements already do offline) showing the achievement you've just made progress on, and what your current progress is on it. Obviously this doesn't apply to achievements that just present you with a single challenge, like We've Gone to Plaid or Double Diamond, and any secret achievements would still be kept under wraps as well.

Additionally, announcing achievements in Webchat (kinda like what Minecraft or Team Fortress 2 do per server) would be cool. If not all, then maybe at least less common ones. But I don't think there are many that are gotten too quickly or too easily that new players would wind up spamming. Though... not like Webchat is too active these days anyway. Little status updates like that wouldn't be interrupting much anyhow. I guess the "x has logged in" and "x has logged out" messages could also be brought up in the context of this argument, but... if someone really was concerned about achievements cluttering Webchat, the whole point is that achievements create more clutter, while login and logout messages make more sense, and are more useful for other people who are logged in to actually know about.

Finally, PQ online features many different things you can "unlock" that have little to no way of being shown in-game. Namely, flairs, prefixes, suffixes, and the coveted colored name. Adding achievements for these feats in-game would be cool to see, and the achievement menu would then simply list that those profile additions are what you get for completing those achievements, similar to the ratings rewards that several achievements already have. And... for the cherry on top, being able to change your name color, prefix, suffix, and flair in-game just makes sense too. But that's something Randomity or thearst would need to be asked about first, since they're the only ones who can deal with much of anything that connects to the website.

Anyway, finally coming back to the title screen now... When it comes the in-game Marbleland level browser… Long story short, this should just be accessible inside the level select without needing to be its own whole separate menu. I’ll go more into detail on this later, though, as I have some other ideas for ways to reorganize the level select as well.

So, why switch Play and Online? Well, at this point, playing online is kinda meant to be the default option for playing the game, since it allows you to save the times you achieve online for levels. Even when just playing levels in singleplayer, you should be logged in to the leaderboards. However, this isn’t communicated very well to new players. First of all, with how the Online button is hidden behind trying out the Community button, some might not even know that the option to log in exists to begin with. But, even once they do, the common idea then is that going online is only for playing multiplayer. I certainly have plenty of anecdotal evidence of this myself. So, by changing the Online button to simply read “Play”, and by placing it at the top of the title screen, as the first option, this pretty clearly cements it as the “default” option that you should press for playing the game. And, for even the most experienced players... having to click another button just to get to the button you're trying to click nearly every time you're launching the game is just annoying.
The changes to the previous Play button then have a few of the same reasons for them, but in reverse. First, it was changed to “Offline Mode” specifically instead of just “Offline”, as this further implies the idea that this is a separate mode for playing the game for if you want to play offline, rather than playing offline just being a separate but equal option. It should still be there, and should still be prominent enough to place on the title screen. But it should still be clearly labelled as a last resort option for if you need to play offline. And, of course, it needs to be accessible for making custom levels and playing levels with custom code and all that.

So, finally… What’s up with the new Help option? Are we bringing back the old MBG/MBP style help menu with the cool shapes that rotate, and descriptions of what every PowerUp and hazard does?
No. Uhhh basically I just thought it’d be good to have a place to look at all the loading tips Especially after 2.10, where loading times are so good that you can’t even read them most of the time. I could see this being hidden in the level select too, though, if people think it doesn’t deserve a spot on the title screen. "Tips" could be a good name, too, though.
Certain loading tips will only show up here after you see them once, though

Part 1.5: The Pause Screen(s)
And now, to end this section off, I'd like to go on another little aside that's related to a similar problem as what we already have with the title screen... Both pause screens we have in the game are also pretty fucked up. I don't have any mockups for anything I'm about to suggest like I do with the title screen and level select, since I'm just kind of tacking this part on as I post it to the forums, and I don't feel like coding anything together right now (also because my D key is broken and I'm currently having to Ctrl + V to type Ds anywhere atm instead lmao), but all these suggestions are pretty similar to my fixes for the title screen anyway, so hopefully you can envision those proposed changes using that.

When it comes to the singleplayer pause screen, the big issue is that Extras button, similar to the Community button on the current title screen. Currently, this is just used to hide the jukebox, marble select, and the recording toggle. Uh... simply enough, just put these buttons in the bottom corners. MBP already had it like this anyway. Hell, even better, maybe it could reuse the bottom buttons idea from the level select. In place of Play, Hints, Menu, and Back, we'd have Jukebox, Hints, Marbles, and Record. Yep, another big problem that'd be nice to have solved is that you can't actually look at the hints section while in a level. Another issue I've seen multiple new players have grievances with. Oh, and "Record" should change to say "End Recording" when a recording is currently active. That one... I definitely would've just added to a previous update already if I saw the current behavior of, but I only just saw this now lol. I've always used the recording toggle on the level select... And, I guess, to make it more clear, maybe change "Record" to "Record Replay" as well.
Also, another thing I also just saw... the current singleplayer pause screen definitely was not made with minimum resolution in mind, lol

Uh, as for the multiplayer pause screen... Well, it's still the one from MBP, just with a PQ coat of paint slapped over it. Actually, this is what PQ's pause screen used to look like too before someone overhauled it after the open source. Daniel, I think it was, but it might've been main_gi as well. Anyway, just turn it into the same one as the offline pause screen pretty much. Buuuut, it'd make sense to show the current gamemode in a little header over the level name as well, and maybe it could show your current ping to the server too? Numerically, I mean. And let non-hosts view the server settings! There are more buttons to worry about with this pause screen, so "just make it the same as the other one lol" doesn't work so much, but... I'm gonna choose not to get into that here or now. That can be ironed out if and when the time comes.

Part 2: The Level Select
Now. Coming to my ideas for changing the level select... The new level select would feature the original 2 dropdown menus, alongside 2 new buttons at the top. The level select will now also only differ between Offline, Online, and Server Host.
The left button will usually (if not always) be active, and will be used to switch between different areas of a given level select, to sort of act as a third, less prominent drop-down menu pretty much.
The right button will serve a similar purpose, but is even more context-dependent, and may not always be available, as it may not be needed.
On controller, pressing LT or RT will bring down the respective drop-down menu, and pressing LB or RB will press the respective button. If the respective button is not available, it brings down the drop-down menu instead.

Here's another shitty quick mockup. I purposefully picked the longest text for both of the dropdowns to highlight the exact issue you see here. The left side of the level select would need to be expanded to make way for this change. Unless we, like, stacked the two extra buttons and two dropdown menus on top of each other or something, but that's dumb. I originally kind of planned to include more images throughout this which might explain things a bit better. But ultimately I guess it's just this one for now. I also could've included specific ideas for what icons I wanted to represent each of the things the buttons would show, but... meh.
Finally, I didn't bother to take a screenshot of this before, but, if I'm remembering correctly, there is enough space at minimum resolution for the sidebar to expand over a bit already. The big restriction is with the 4 buttons on the bottom, but there's a perfect amount of space to fit a fifth one down there. This is already used to toggle ghosts online in Frightfest, and toggle gems online in Winterfest, but... both of those things should really be in Server Settings anyway.

Also, while I'm talking about the 4 buttons on the bottom...

• I think it'd make sense for Menu to be renamed to Extras, like the current pause menu already has. There could maybe be some changes to the layout of the menu that comes up, too, but... not gonna dig into that now.
• I also think it'd make sense for Back to be renamed as well. Rename it to Main Menu in singleplayer, and Exit Server or Leave Server or something in multiplayer. I imagine the generic name "Back" was done so that this wouldn't need to be developed, and there could just be one button that fits all contexts for the level select, but... it'd be nice And all the buttons for leaving the server in this game are notoriously easy to press on autopilot lmao. The level end screen is even worse than the level select is on this one.
• aaaand, finally... show Hints online! There's no reason not to! Just shove the marble select back into the Extras menu like it is in singleplayer, and let people look at tips for all the levels. Mostly applicable to Co-op and custom levels, but there is absolutely a great wealth of tips (and trivia!) to be written about this game's multiplayer levels. Especially for Gem Hunt. Not sure why this was even made this way in the first place. I was about to theorize that it's only there as a non-host, to replace Server Settings in the bottom bar for hosts, but... I just checked, and it's still the marble select for server hosts! lmao. But Server Settings is fine to keep in Extras too, I just thought it made more sense to be there than the marble select, and subsequently mandella'd myself into believing that's where it actually was.

Offline Level Select
In this level select, we need to be able to access:

• All levels from MBG, MBU, MBP, and PQ, of course
• Custom levels, both local and Marbleland
• Leaderboards custom packs
• and multiplayer levels for recon

This level select is really the most comprehensive, as Online and Server Host are just kind of this but split in two pieces.

In this level select, the left button will cycle between Games, Multiplayer Recon, and Custom Levels.
Games

• Marble Blast Gold
  • Beginner
  • Intermediate
  • Advanced
  • XBOX
• Marble Blast Ultra
  • Beginner
  • Intermediate
  • Advanced
  • Mobile
• Marble Blast Platinum
  • Beginner
  • Intermediate
  • Advanced
  • Expert
  • Director’s Cut
• PlatinumQuest
  • Tutorial
  • Beginner
  • Intermediate
  • Advanced
  • Expert
  • Bonus
• Any other games the player installs into PlatinumQuest will appear here as well, with their respective difficulties listed as needed. Such as the MBStop or Fubar level packs

Multiplayer Recon

• Each multiplayer mode will be listed as a “game” here in the left drop-down menu…
  • and each difficulty within those gamemodes will be listed as a difficulty in the right drop-down menu

During the right times of year (or when the right cheats are active), and when the right mode(s) are selected, the right button will switch between Frightfest, Winterfest, and Normal
For more information, check the Server Host Level Select section

Custom Levels

• Local Files
  • This will be structured similar to how it is now. Maybe try and make it some nested drop-down menus somehow? (Adding this on now, the new file tree mission select Randomity added in the editor in 2.12 is awesome, and would also maybe be nice for this purpose somehow. Might as well reuse code where we can if possible, instead of near-duplicating stuff)
• Leaderboards Customs
  • Packs 1-9 (and beyond) will be listed here
• Marbleland
  • The difficulty dropdown lets the player select how elements are sorted here
  • When Marbleland is selected, the right button switches between showing individual levels, and showing level packs

Online Level Select
In this level select, the left button is... Honestly, entirely unnecessary. This would just serve to bloat the experience, not organize it.
Someone suggested a “hot levels” section at one point. Maybe the left button could show these?
If we even keep it around, “Challenge” should be renamed to “Weekly Challenge”, or maybe just “Weekly” in the level select. It can stay as is on the global chat screen
Maybe voting for new custom packs can be facilitated here somehow as well? That’s a topic for another day…

• uh this is just the Games section from Offline
• Custom Packs
  • also the same as the Offline “Leaderboards Customs” section
• Weekly Challenge
  • Maybe the difficulty dropdown can just display the name instead? There’s no reason to divide the 15 levels into 3 separate parts. And where’s PQ in all this?

Server Host Level Select
In this level select, the left button switches between “VS” and “Co-op”

VS
If you’re checking this section for more info on Offline’s “Multiplayer Recon” section, this is the place.
Similar to that, any gamemodes where holiday versions exist will have the right button dedicated to switching between them. This only happens at the right times of year, or with the right cheats activated.
This might get repetitive, but I’m listing everything out for the purpose of completeness.

For every one of these gamemodes, and for Co-op as well, each category ends with Custom, and then Marbleland. It’d be cool to combine these somehow, which is what the right button would be for... but Marbleland already has its own right button functionality, so getting back is an issue. Maybe Custom only appears on player-hosted servers, though, and not dedicated ones? ofc dedicated servers can have their own customs now... idk

• Gem Hunt
  • Beginner
  • Intermediate
  • Advanced
  • Expert
  • Bonus
  • Director’s Cut (honestly thinking of removing this for a future update. It was my idea to begin with, but now I'm starting to agree that it's super pointless and could really just be merged with Bonus. Mostly just because all of the "Director's Cut" levels aren't even that bad. This was really just a result of the old Hunt sheet, and low-voted levels got kept here, replacing the "nuked" folder hidden in the files, so that these levels could be accessed in-game)
  • Custom
  • Marbleland (filtered to Hunt levels)
• Gem Collection (I’ve lightly and briefly mentioned a few times that we should rename this to “Color Collection” or “Color Collectors” or something, to avoid conflation with the singleplayer mode)
  • Beginner
  • Intermediate
  • Advanced
  • Custom
  • Marbleland (filtered to Collection levels)
• Mega Marble War
  • Beginner
  • Intermediate
  • Advanced
  • Custom
  • Marbleland (filtered to MMW levels)
• King of the Hill
  • Beginner
  • Intermediate
  • Advanced
  • Custom
  • Marbleland (filtered to KotH levels)
• Future gamemodes will go here as well, of course. That means you, A-Game. Racing and Hide & Seek ftw

Co-op

• The 4 main games again, same as always
• Leaderboards Customs
  • Co-op Exclusive (for now, this is just Similarity and Super Platform Race, and then maybe we can add Helix Paths as well. Make more Co-op customs!!!)
  • and then all the numbered packs as usual as well
• Custom Levels
  • Local Files (not enough directory depth to require its own whole game here. you get a difficulty, bud, same as the vs modes)
  • Marbleland

ok that's the end please give me your full unfiltered and detailed thoughts about everything thank you

Yoshicraft224 wrote:

For many updates now, the title screen has been in a very confusing state. The main issue with the current layout is how hidden the Online button is, when this should really be the sort of “default” option if anything.
The title screen having two separate pages at all is dumb. Let’s get it back to how it used to be! But without sacrificing any of the new buttons… sort of?

See that change I never understood. It was pretty disorienting when the online button chucked me to a new page instead of logging me in. With Marbleland's integration later down the line, I kinda saw some merit to the second page, doesn't mean I like it. Im glad we're reverting this.
 

Yoshicraft224 wrote:

In addition, clicking on the version number now opens the change log. Quite simple, really. A dedicated GUI even already exists for showing this in-game

How will you bring attention to it though? Unless you change the version graphic and make it look as prominent as MBP's old title screen, there should be a way to direct the user's attention to its existence.

Here's what Im thinking if you want to do this, instead of showing the changelog on start-up, have the version number flash kinda like the Message of the Day button. This could be attention-grabbing and demonstrates that it's a clickable entity.

This could make the corner buttons seem a bit stuffed, especially at the smallest resolution, but maybe changelogs could work better as a button? It'd make it more visible. Though that entirely depends on what you have in mind.

Or...Instead of doing that, maybe make it where the launcher show the changelogs first? It didn't dawn on me until now that the PQ Launcher defaults to the "news" section (which is really a wikipedia entry trying to sell you on the game that you've already downloaded) instead of the changelogs, even then, you'd have to scroll down a bit to see the latest version. This will kill the need to show the changelogs in-game entirely.
 

Yoshicraft224 wrote:

Finally, PQ online features many different things you can "unlock" that have little to no way of being shown in-game. Namely, flairs, prefixes, suffixes, and the coveted colored name. Adding achievements for these feats in-game would be cool to see, and the achievement menu would then simply list that those profile additions are what you get for completing those achievements, similar to the ratings rewards that several achievements already have.

That a really good change, Im surprised it wasn't really implemented into the game earlier. It'd save me from having to bring up the flair thread everytime I wanna see what I can unlock. As far as I know, there isn't really a way to check what prefix/suffix you could unlock, though that's probably the old team's decision to keep that shit a secret.
 

Yoshicraft224 wrote:

The changes to the previous Play button then have a few of the same reasons for them, but in reverse. First, it was changed to “Offline Mode” specifically instead of just “Offline”, as this further implies the idea that this is a separate mode for playing the game for if you want to play offline, rather than playing offline just being a separate but equal option. It should still be there, and should still be prominent enough to place on the title screen. But it should still be clearly labelled as a last resort option for if you need to play offline. And, of course, it needs to be accessible for making custom levels and playing levels with custom code and all that.

See I get that, this better cements the online component as the focus...but that's retarded.

Yes, as you've stated, offline offers a different experience compared to online, but it's not really a good reason to make the game's second entry-point as a last resort. I don't think we're at a point where we gotta dark pattern players into becoming members. I don't really think "Offline Mode" is that good of a name either, the better label would be "Play Offline."

So with a slight change, I'll explain my reasoning for swapping some buttons, the title screen would look something like this:

• Play
• Play Offline
• Achievements <-- chuck Tips in there
• Options
• Tips/Help
• Quit

The play options should be at the very top, both of them, so in the event that the option to play online isn't possible, they could just go secondary and play the game that way.
I've been debating on who takes third between Options and Achievements, but I've decided with the latter to act as a divider between play and options. Also to highlight it as a significant option in relation to play.
Help/Tips is something that feels like it'd be better off as a little neat button within the achievements menu, especially since it does nothing but show the loading tips, I don't know why its taking up a whole space in the menu. Although, if you're really insistent on Tips being on the main menu...and you actually pass this by the dev team for a second opinion, then it's better off being down there.
 

Yoshicraft224 wrote:

Now. Coming to my ideas for changing the level select... The new level select would feature the original 2 dropdown menus, alongside 2 new buttons at the top. The level select will now also only differ between Offline, Online, and Server Host.
The left button will usually (if not always) be active, and will be used to switch between different areas of a given level select, to sort of act as a third, less prominent drop-down menu pretty much.
The right button will serve a similar purpose, but is even more context-dependent, and may not always be available, as it may not be needed.

I see the idea you're trying to pull with the two new buttons, it's super convenient and makes things tidier. I was a bit lost on its implementation, moreso what the right button does more than than the left, it only took me a few rereads to figure out what you're trying to put down.

Im just a little concerned about its implementation, whether it does a good job at communication what it does at a glance, but I trust that the average user could figure it out.
 

Yoshicraft224 wrote:

For every one of these gamemodes, and for Co-op as well, each category ends with Custom, and then Marbleland.

There's something hilarious about checking if there's a Marbleland level for anything aside from Gem Hunt and just seeing nothing. Maybe that might incentivise someone to make a Colour Collection level for the first time in like...decades. Does anyone even play Colour Collection? or King of the Hill? Idk.


This is not mentioned anywhere, but I thought I'd be a good place to bring it up, even though it's unrelated to GUI.
I've always had a gripe with Offline Leaderboards. The reason it makes sense in Multiplayer is because Customs don't really exist there, the only feasible way to implement it without it being exploited was via a "best of" pack. The way I see it, Leaderboards being exclusively online was a good incentive to log into webchat.

There's maybe an argument for keeping it solely so you can practice offline, or to perserve it. That's just something that's been in my consciousness for a bit. PQ's bloat is it's own issue that we just chose to live with, I doubt we'll ever have a discussion about it unless we just straight up rebuild the game in 25 years.


Speaking of TF2, let's throw in something interesting, how about a Message of the Day window that appears whenever you log in? This might be a little intrusive, but it'd be a neat way to announce ongoing events such as Summer Tournaments or Level Voting. To kill the intrusiveness though, either it'd only appear once until a new event is present, or there'd be a button that'd flash if there's anything new to announce. There could also be a toggle to just disable it entirely.

I've stitched together some shit on paint to show how that'd look like:


It's tacked on, but I feel like this is also a good point to bring us the significance of the "Customs" button on Webchat, given that your new system integrates Marbleland within the level selection. Maybe this could take its place?

Otherwise, the alternative is to just update the news page in the launcher to reflect these announcements, it'd atleast be up to date and...newsworthy.


Other than that, yeah nah, everything else seems to be good. I don't really have anything to say about the rest of the thread, I fuck with most of it.
Sorry I took a bit to response, I've been chipping this draft between my break.

DoxtonPink wrote: How will you bring attention to it though? Unless you change the version graphic and make it look as prominent as MBP's old title screen, there should be a way to direct the user's attention to its existence.

It's more of a neat little addition than anything. Kinda similar to clicking on the "Copyright Mojang AB" text or whatever it says on the Minecraft title screen to be able to open the credits. But I know MBP did used to have a dedicated button on one of its title screens for the changelog. If we really wanted to, we could maybe add that. But, if we wanted to make the clickability of the version number more obvious, I'd say just underline it. I do really like the flashing idea, too, or maybe just have it be solid yellow. Or add an exclamation point or something.

DoxtonPink wrote: This could make the corner buttons seem a bit stuffed, especially at the smallest resolution, but maybe changelogs could work better as a button?

I did say that making the corner buttons smaller would probably be good, and this might remedy that issue.

DoxtonPink wrote: Or...Instead of doing that, maybe make it where the launcher show the changelogs first? It didn't dawn on me until now that the PQ Launcher defaults to the "news" section (which is really a wikipedia entry trying to sell you on the game that you've already downloaded) instead of the changelogs

Oh, ew. I never knew that about the new launcher. Because I've only ever used the old one But yeah, this needs to change.
On another note, I tried opening the old launcher, and it didn't even open a window. I did see some stuff about the old launcher being "officially dead" in the server, but I thought that was just to do with the issues people were having downloading 2.12.

DoxtonPink wrote: As far as I know, there isn't really a way to check what prefix/suffix you could unlock, though that's probably the old team's decision to keep that shit a secret.

I don't know if it was meant to be much of a secret as much as it was just never documented anywhere (like Aayrl's flairs thread) or any documentation that did exist was just shitty (like Aayrl's flairs thread). Either way, we're not the old team. Even if the methods of obtaining certain profile badges aren't going to change, at least listing how they were obtainable at some point would be not only less confusing for everyone, but also just be a good act of recordkeeping.

DoxtonPink wrote: I don't really think "Offline Mode" is that good of a name either, the better label would be "Play Offline."

Fair. And that better shows that it's roughly equivalent to the "Play" button, too.

DoxtonPink wrote: Help/Tips is something that feels like it'd be better off as a little neat button within the achievements menu, especially since it does nothing but show the loading tips, I don't know why its taking up a whole space in the menu.

I disagree with putting it on the Achievements screen, since they're not actually related at all, but I've definitely been second-guessing both buttons' inclusions on the title screen a bit already.
The idea of having an "extras" button that brings up the options to open the achievements and tips menus comes to mind, but... Having two pages to the title screen is still retarded, no matter what's on that second page. They could go in the level select, but I would still like to put more focus on the achievements. Loading tips could easily be slapped into the level select, though. I just worry a tiny bit about it becoming easy to conflate Hints and Tips that way, even if they're in two separate areas of the menu. ...I actually already did when I was originally writing this, and had to go back and change a bunch of instances of "Tips" to "Hints" in my post since what I was actually talking about was the Hints button

DoxtonPink wrote: I see the idea you're trying to pull with the two new buttons, it's super convenient and makes things tidier. I was a bit lost on its implementation, moreso what the right button does more than than the left, it only took me a few rereads to figure out what you're trying to put down.

Yeah, I sorta realized I maybe could've explained it a little better later on? But... essentially, the leftmost button is kind of like a third dropdown menu to switch between entirely different level selects in a way, while the right one is just for smaller changes to the contents of what's already in the level select. ...I didn't realize until now that that makes it so the top buttons/dropdowns go from largest to smallest categories from left to right, but that's also cool.
However, it might be possible to get rid of the right button for the most part. Currently, it's only used to switch between holidays when selecting multiplayer modes, and to switch between levels and packs in Marbleland. However, selectable holidays could maybe just be added to the left button instead...? As for Marbleland, it could honestly use a whole selection of extra buttons to help making searching through all of the levels easier. A button to change the sorting, a button to control filters, and maybe even have a functionally identical search button available outside of the Extras menu, too. And then the right "difficulty" dropdown menu would change between searching levels and searching packs. Then, if a pack gets picked in the level select, that right dropdown switches to show the name of the pack, and the level list shows all the levels in that pack. Maybe, in the pack select, "Play" switches to "Open", while "Hints" switches to "Play All", since packs don't really have hints.

DoxtonPink wrote: This is not mentioned anywhere, but I thought I'd be a good place to bring it up, even though it's unrelated to GUI.
I've always had a gripe with Offline Leaderboards. The reason it makes sense in Multiplayer is because Customs don't really exist there, the only feasible way to implement it without it being exploited was via a "best of" pack. The way I see it, Leaderboards being exclusively online was a good incentive to log into webchat.

There's maybe an argument for keeping it solely so you can practice offline, or to perserve it. That's just something that's been in my consciousness for a bit. PQ's bloat is it's own issue that we just chose to live with, I doubt we'll ever have a discussion about it unless we just straight up rebuild the game in 25 years.

Not really sure what you're talking about here. Are you talking about the Custom Packs being available offline now? And maybe the "Multiplayer Recon" section that currently just comprises Hunt?

DoxtonPink wrote: how about a Message of the Day window that appears whenever you log in? This might be a little intrusive, but it'd be a neat way to announce ongoing events such as Summer Tournaments or Level Voting. To kill the intrusiveness though, either it'd only appear once until a new event is present, or there'd be a button that'd flash if there's anything new to announce.

I've actually been thinking of an Events button myself as well. There wouldn't (and shouldn't) be anything that pops up in your face when you log in, but just having an "Events" button on the top of the Webchat screen that goes rainbow when something new and unread is in there would be cool. Could be for events of all sizes, too. Big things like Labor Day Madness, World Record Rampage deadlines and releases, the Summer Tournament, Winter Warm-Up, Custom Pack voting deadlines (if/when pack voting is implemented into PQ itself), and any new Community Group Levels, sure. But even smaller stuff like mini-tourneys, my anniversary events (:teapot:), miscellaneous random level competitions, or... whatever else might be applicable there. I'm sure it'd see plenty of use. Provided it actually gets updated, that is. *Eyes the Community Highlight on the home page*

Oh, this also gives me the idea of maybe bringing back Message of the Day? And having that just be a copy of the news feed currently on marbleblast.com's home page? Something to think about.

DoxtonPink wrote: It's tacked on, but I feel like this is also a good point to bring us the significance of the "Customs" button on Webchat, given that your new system integrates Marbleland within the level selection. Maybe this could take its place?

The Customs button would be gone, yeah. Same as it is on the title screen. I'm also personally in the camp that the Weekly Challenge must pass away as well, but that's a whole other thing.

...Speaking of that top bar, the "Leaderboards" button seems a bit out of place there when everything else up there is about actually playing the game, when Leaderboards would fit better among things like Profile. Maybe have Leaderboards and Profile together in the top right, and Replays and Options on the bottom right? Then put Log Out as a small red button with, like, a door on it or something in the very bottom right, vertically aligned with the "Leaderboards Server v8[...]" text. Having three buttons in each section would be awkward, but it would also make sense to see Achievements tacked onto the top with this layout, and then just have Log Out be a normal button on the bottom like it is now. It could be done by expanding the user list, which... really isn't a terrible idea. Then peoples' statuses ("Playing", "Hosting", etc.) could be a bit more detailed, sorta like the Discord Rich Presence is. And it's not like the chat window is hurting for space in this GUI, even in 1080p, let alone 4k monitors. Though it remains to be seen how viable this would be at minimum resolution.