I had originally intended to publish an article on writing injectable DLL's today, however there is a rant that must be written down. It cannot wait. What is this important rant that must be published you ask? Well, let me answer that question with another question: If you were filling in property fields, where would you want the data to go? Most of you are probably thinking to yourself "WTF - go? Why would I want it to go anywhere? The entire point of typing it in the property field was so that it would define that particular property!" You would be right, too.
Well, the clever [read: moronic] folks at Obsidian Entertainment decided that the conventional wisdom we've all come to expect simply is unacceptable. Today I tried out the Neverwinter Nights 2 toolset for the first time. I've owned the game for quite some time, but due to bad developement (what a surprise) it had to be patched extensively before it would function, and I didn't get around to it until today. At any rate, our friends over at Obsidian got the bright idea that their toolset would be infinitely easier to use if the data from the field you defined gets moved (not just copied, MOVED) to the same property field of another object once clicked on. This wouldn't be too bad if the only way to save changes to the property fields is to, you guessed it, click on another object. This means that if you are filling in the description of an in-game item that is several paragraphs long, you have to select another property before switching focus to another object to save the changes. Worse yet, there is no mention of this in the help files. Personally I think they did a great job with the game itself, but this is rediculous. If they were writing a GUI using a WYSIWYG drag and drop editor, they would expect any labels that they filled in would be filled in with the appropriate strings. Not that their label's data suddenly get's put in a combobox when they decide to start defining another form control.
In short, Obsidian's developers need a desperate lesson in interface design. Maybe they should focus the vast majority of their open positions on designers for their developement software, instead of the single senior position they're advertising...
Well, the clever [read: moronic] folks at Obsidian Entertainment decided that the conventional wisdom we've all come to expect simply is unacceptable. Today I tried out the Neverwinter Nights 2 toolset for the first time. I've owned the game for quite some time, but due to bad developement (what a surprise) it had to be patched extensively before it would function, and I didn't get around to it until today. At any rate, our friends over at Obsidian got the bright idea that their toolset would be infinitely easier to use if the data from the field you defined gets moved (not just copied, MOVED) to the same property field of another object once clicked on. This wouldn't be too bad if the only way to save changes to the property fields is to, you guessed it, click on another object. This means that if you are filling in the description of an in-game item that is several paragraphs long, you have to select another property before switching focus to another object to save the changes. Worse yet, there is no mention of this in the help files. Personally I think they did a great job with the game itself, but this is rediculous. If they were writing a GUI using a WYSIWYG drag and drop editor, they would expect any labels that they filled in would be filled in with the appropriate strings. Not that their label's data suddenly get's put in a combobox when they decide to start defining another form control.
In short, Obsidian's developers need a desperate lesson in interface design. Maybe they should focus the vast majority of their open positions on designers for their developement software, instead of the single senior position they're advertising...
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