Not Tropeworthy: Main Window

I could possibly see including this into a Useful Notes about videogame interface design, but its not a trope.

The only time the Main Window is really notable is when much of the screen is involved in other things or just decorative, which is covered much better by Vanity Window.
I would recommend folding this in to Vanity Window and substantially expanding the latter. Is there a reason why neither of these have examples?

No consensus yet, so crowner?

So what are the options? Fold into Vanity Window, make it a Useful Note about video game interface (history, perhaps?), and cut entirely?

I think making it an Omnipresent Trope with no examples was also proposed.

I'm looking at the related-to page and wondering if there's a glitch or something, because you guys are mostly talking as though there's a lot to deal with here. The page currently says that there are only 20 inbounds and nine wicks from a decade's old page. I really don't see a point in keeping this, even as a definition page. Maybe there's worth in having a trope about aversions to this, but why not just have it be its own trope, I wonder. And I don't see a point in such a trope (that is, the aversion to this) being specific to video games. Like, a trope about works in a particular medium that don't show the action using the normal method(s) for that medium.

I'm not even sure how'd you avert Main Window. Like, have all the play happen in the Start Screen?

But then it's more a play on Main Window, instead of anything else, if Main Window is described as "Where the action of the game happens."

... Does Interactive Fiction have a Main Window? Or is it just a thing for graphical games? *shrug*

Edited by Malady on Jun 30th 2018 at 6:06:11 AM

I imagined that one way to avert Main Window is to have a text-based game, but idk.

The text displays in a window, even if that window is the full screen.

From the very first sentence: "The place where the action of the game takes place." Nowhere does it say the game can't be text-based. I think an aversion would involve a game that contains audio without any visual elements.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jul 3rd 2018 at 5:02:20 AM

Well, there ARE games for the blind that are audio only.

I suppose it depends on the game if this really matters or not. Old Windows 3.1 games or inspired games like Kingsway or MM Os like Star Trek Online have tons of movable windows and the main window is where the game actually happens but subwindows are literally all over the place.

Well, sub-windows might be a trope if we can establish any pattern or meaning in their use, but I think it would fall more under things like interface clutter.

I went through the posts and counted the opinions. Here's what I saw:

Cut - 7 votes Keep (as definition page) - 1 vote Turn into an index - 1 vote, which was retracted(?) after Video Game Interface Elements was pointed out Cut, but expand Vanity Window with the content from here - 1 vote (also counted this as a cut vote)

Not sure what the threshold is for action on TRS, but I think we're pretty good to cut this.

And we need the cutlist fixed.

It's broken?

If nothing else, am I good to de-wick this for now?

Yes, go ahead and de-wick it.

Removed all the wicks. Added it to the cutlist as well.

If anyone wants to salvage anything for another page, now would be a good time to do so.

This is still waiting for a cut, FYI.

Huh... Seemed an obvious enough trope to me. From my understanding of the description, it is describing the transition period of computer games between text-based games (like Zork) to full-graphics games (like Doom). One of those transition games is Kayleth (review here), where there's a text box on the bottom and a graphics box on the top, called a "window", because it's a "window" into the game world.

Page is cut, locking.