allow any number of players below max

[sanderr]

It is currently not possible to start a game with 5/7/9-11 players. This was reported at some point in #8, which was closed with the reason "I don't see any [use case] where 5 player selection would [be] necessary". I'm re-opening this now because I believe there is in fact a valid use case: I own 5 microphones and USDX warns about the sixth player not being assigned a microphone every time you start a song. I could probably work around it somehow but this just doesn't come across as very user friendly to me.

As to "5 players would not fit on the screen nicely/evenly", I would propose to just use the 6-player lay-out, just leaving the 6th spot empty.

I might be willing to open a PR to fix this, if consensus is reached on what is desired. I don't have any experience with Pascal though, so I'm not sure how feasible it would be but I can have a look.

[barbeque-squared]

This usecase actually makes a lot of sense. Unfortunately not very pretty to implement anytime soon (the amount of duplication is already unacceptable, this would just make it even worse) but I've also always wondered why I couldn't just play with 5 microphones.

I've also never liked the warning on every single song, to the point where I'm pretty sure I'm just completely removing/disabling it in my own builds these days. There's really no point in warning every single song. It's also not the only usecase where the warning is annoying; for example when I'm replacing the video with a higher quality one, I need to recheck the timings. Yes game, I know I don't have my microphone connected because I don't even need it for this.

I'll see if I can make it less trigger happy by it only showing once, and only show again if you go into the player setup screen or something. And while not an actual fix for your five player version, it's a long-term improvement, plus would short-term at least make your 5-player situation more playable?

[sanderr]

Thanks for your response. I feel like your proposal would be a good compromise. I don't mind so much having to select 6 players and getting the warning once, it's just cumbersome if you get it for every song. So I'm all for it!

[barbeque-squared]

@sanderr assuming you use Windows, can you test with one of these: https://ci.appveyor.com/project/basisbit/usdx/builds/47864869/job/8rf2j878g220x5dp/artifacts ? That contains the 'compromise'.

It doesn't invalidate your original request, so this issue will remain open until we actually have that, but that's going to take way longer to fix.

[sanderr]

I'm on Linux but I can try building from source from the check-player-config-once branch if you want? It'll probably be for next week though.

[barbeque-squared]

Ah no worries then. It was meant more to gather some quick feedback before it gets merged, but if it's already merged by then, it's fine to just make a new ticket for it. Worst case is I've missed some other way of getting into the sing screen that does still pop it up every time, but releases are much more frequent these days.

[sanderr]

releases are much more frequent these days

So I've noticed, thank you for that. It's been nice to see that this project has been getting some fresh attention in the past few months.

[sanderr]

The workaround works like a charm, thanks!

[barbeque-squared]

Thanks for the feedback! The workaround will be part of release 2023.9.0. This issue will remain open until we can actually select less players