Hi!
Backgammon Studio can be used on a wide variety of devices with a wide range of different screen sizes. This puts an extra challenge on getting the content to look nice on all these devices.
To make the best use of these different screen sizes Backgammon Studio allows you to configure how Backgammon Studio looks. I guess I could make a decision on what looks good for each of the 3 main types, phone, tablet and desktop but where is the fun in that? :-)
You can choose between 4 different menu types: Classic, Dialog, Horizontal and Hidden. Each one has its benefits and drawbacks (primarily requiring more screen space to display).
You can choose between 5 different home screen options: Classic, Light, Chat, Compact and Fancy.
And if that isn't enough combinations you can also select to use the quick action menu or not (a bottom row of icons).
I make that 40 different combinations but I think a couple of these won't work (Fancy+classic menus at least).
I'm not going to show all combinations but highlight some of the most common ones:
Classic - Classic
This one is perhaps the one most are familiar with. Pretty standard and looks similar to how it looked in the early days. And speaking of which how did it look in the past?
This is the earliest I could find (but I suspect it should be possible to find an even older example):
Pretty ugly if you ask me! And if this is how it looked the last time you visited Backgammon Studio it is time for a revisit! :-)
When moving focus to mobile devices it quickly became apparent that the Classic menus took just too much space so the next alternave was born:
Dialog - Classic
This one hides away the menus and they only become visible when you click on the 3 stripes in the top left corner. I guess I could have stopped at this as these two options should take care of most cases but I wanted to come up with a couple of more options:
Hidden - Classic
Pretty much the same as Dialog but you can keep the menu open for a while when you navigate the menus until you manage to locate what you are looking for...
Horizontal - Classic
On more square displays this one may be useful as is affects how big the backgammon board can be.
I have to admit that I seldom test the Hidden and Horizontal option so if you have any problems with it you know who to complain to! :-)
In addition to the menus you can also change how the rest of the home screen content looks like:
Classic - Compact
I think this was the first alternative option I came up with which should look better on tablets as it doesn't depend on any scrolling to display everything.
Having moved focus over to tablets I had to come up with something that looked a bit better and I came up with the (somewhat) Fancy look:
Dialog - Fancy
This one splits the home screen into 4 pieces and you can swipe left/right to navigate between each page. Fancy! :-)
This is also one combination that currently doesn't work well:
But I'm not convinced it makes any sense to use this combination anyway as the menus will take up too much space on a tablet.
A few weeks ago Michy tried out Backgammon Studio and he was overwhelmed by all the information he had to relate to so I came up with the next option:
Light
This one hides away as much information as possible and you can quickly jump into trying out challenges or playing matches.
I have also added an option to visit other sections in the bottom right quadrant where you can switch between additional sections and also get a bit of information on each section through the about button.
You can still get access to everything on the server but then you may have to go through the menu system if it isn't available on the light home screen.
Classic - Chat
This is the last option I have added where you now also get a chat vindow and a users list in addition to the normal homescreen content.
This one has several uses. You can challenge other users to a match or a duel (10 random positions) by clicking on the username in the user list and then select your choice in the duel dialog that shows up. You can also open up a private chat with other users if you have them on your friends list (If not you can send a friend request).
This option will also provide you with status updates when something interesting happens on the server. Someone achieving a great highscore or matches being started/ended. And also some of the info entries (like the latest result) are updated dynamically.
At some point someone mentioned that it took a long time to navigate through the menus so I came up with the Quick Action bar which is a bottom row of icons:
Classic - Classic - Quick
Here I have added a few sections and clicking on any of these will instantly bring me to that section. Actually it starts out with just the home button and the + button. You can add as many or few entries as you want.
And as you'd expect you can combine the other options with this one:
Classic - Chat - Quick
I am a big fan of this one! :-)
Speaking of selecting menus/homescreen the other day I checked how this looked on a phone and it turned out that it didn't work very well. I have fixed this and now you should see:
These are now displayed one on each row and you can scroll down to view them all.
Also if Backgammon Studio looks something like this on your phone:
You can use the Add to homescreen option (Similarly named on Android):
To get rid of the browser ui when you launch Backgammon Studio from the device home screen.
If it looks much worse than this then you may be trying it on a too old phone (I tried with an old HTC Desire HD (Android 2.3.5) and it didn't work as the browser is just too old and doesn't support the web features I use).
In closing
When looking for old screenshots I also came across this one which I found quite amusing:
This looks pretty horrible! :-) If you want to know how it looks now there is one way find out!
While Backgammon Studio might not look as fancy as some of the latest sites out there I'd like to think it isn't too bad and I have learned a lot while developing it.
Backgammon Studio The swiss army knife of backgammon! :-)
Best regards,
TP