Changes to item interaction
Remove the flower menu from the carts and boats
There is already an action to pick up objects which works for boats, my proposal is to add a 'mount' (so it can also be used on horses later) action replacing the 'pull cart' and 'avast!' options for carts and boats. With this the flower menu for them can be removed and right-clicking on the vehicle can perform the following actions:
- nothing lifted, currently using the vehicle: leave current vehicle
- nothing lifted, not using the vehicle: open storage interface of vehicle
- something lifted, slot available in vehicle: store inside vehicle, regardless of currently using it or not
- something lifted, no slot available in vehicle: current behaviour of doing nothing can lead to being unable to leave a boat, so better is to drop the lifted object (logs picked up in the water should be able to be placed there again, they float)
Clicks saved: leaving vehicle: 50%, accessing vehicle storage: 50%, dropping stuff into cart while pulling it: 80%
Solved:
- Re-attaching to cart because a frog spawned: 100% (fixed by [X] I was a Highwayman: carts will now squish small animals)
- ctrl-click to leave a boat
Remove the flower menu from items which can only have one option.
The 'wring neck' and 'butcher' options for chicken/rabbits, or the 'empty' option for buckets and planter pots add a click, but at least they serve as an 'are you sure' requester replacement. But it makes no sense at all to have 'pick' on chants and blueberries, or 'remove' on treestumps: a plain right-click should do the trick.
Clicks saved: 50% for picks
Changes to the flower menu
The following changes to the flower menu would up the usability:
- Options of the flower menu should always be at the same place. As it is now the options are drawn clockwise from the top, but having options missing lead to the next options changing location. Examples
- In the wall building flower menu, 'extend north' should always be located at top-right while extend south should always be bottom-left (to match world coordinates), the existance of one option shouldn't modify the position of others.
- Identical actions should always be at the same position, so Trees should always have the 'pick seed' option at the same place in the flower menu (same for fruit, branch, bark, bough).
- Flower menu should operate clickless: instead of clicking an object and then clicking the option the user should be able to hold the RMB over an object, have the flower menu come up, move over an option (which should highlight to show it has the focus) and release RMB to select it
Make barrels fillable in shallow water without a bucket
Clicks saved: >20 per barrel (10x bucket in water + on barrel, plus having to pick the barrel up again to move it)
Enable shift+mousewheel for construction signs
Like with all other containers, but instead of makeing the whole window the hotspot (like it is for containers) the type of resource transfered should be determined by hovering the mouse over the resource buttons in the construction interface.
The technology is quite there (since we have containers accepting only certain resources), what's needed is to enable the resource buttons in the interface to act like specialized container for each resource, so adding a mousewheel hotspot limited to the resource in question to the buttons (shift-control-wheel for adding would be nice, pulling the stuff out again can stay LIFO as-is) could do the trick.
Clicks saved: >50% (single item stuff like roundpole fence segments), >80% (stuff like fires) , >99% (stuff like houses)
Finally Implemented!
Mass building of walls
To create straight walls a modification to the old land management system was suggested (thread).
Another option (without the problem of being able to create invisible, unbreakable, costfree walls) would be to keep the flower menu and when selecting 'extend <direction>' the cursor will present a placeable wall segment of the right orientation (like when building initial cornerpost). Combine this with a slightly modified version of the logic which resticts building of wells the placement is limited to a straight line (of a certain maximum size) in direction where the extension is going.
Once placed a chain of construction sign appears from the extended object to the selected destination.
- They are linked and show the total amount of resources needed for the whole chain. Basically they're identical, each can be used to fill the building site and build it.
- Construction will commence in the direction of the extension starting with the tile next to extended object.
- A maximum chain length is enforced (by modified 'well' placement code) to avoid using them as longrange item transfer pipelines (one avatar shoveling goods into one end while another pulls them out on the other side).
- Destroying a sign in the middle of the chain will cause all signs no longer connected to the extended object to vanish, resources in the surviving construction sign will persist, but excess material (compared to reduced total building cost of shorter chain) will be lost.
- Extension will only be possible once the whole chain is build (so no change to current situation)
- Cornerpost and gate construction logic could stay as-is.
Clicks needed: minimum 2 per additional segment build (and way more without pathfinding for the avatars)
Operation of gates
When aproaching a gate with corresponding key the user should have the option to shift-rightclick it to open it for 10 seconds, after that it'll close again automatically. Gates should only be able to be closed as long as nothing blocks them (so you will no longer be able to trap yourself, others or animals in a door).
Clicks saved: 2 per closed door passed, >5 when pulling a cart (without pathfinding).
Performing actions on areas
I case the leftovers of the old land management interface (which is curently good for measuring distances and areas) could be enhanced so it would be possible to mark an area and then perform an option on it (coming to my mind here is harvest, plant seed/grass, pickup (fiber/straw), pave) the user would be relieved.
Implementation could be to replace the 'claim' button on the interface with a hotspot. Open interface, select area, activate action or pick a seed type from inventory (so mouse cursor changes to it), click hotspot in area window to start. The action will repeat as long it is possible in the area (eg. plating while there are plowed tiles), and the results will fit into inventory (or can be performed from it, when planting/paving).
Clicks saved: Millions over the lifetime of an avatar
Fleshed-out description in [X] this post by Chakravanti.
Woodworking without having to pickup
Let the user decide if he wants the results of 'chop into blocks' and 'make boards' to end up in his inventory (exactly like when now removing a treestump). Could be toggled by holding shift while selecting the option from the flower menu.
Clicks saved: up to 100% (12 per 'chop blocks', 4/6 on 'make boards' depending on saw)
Continuous pickup from the ground
When picking up inventory items from the ground holding the RMB should continue to pick up till inventory is full or stack on ground is exhausted. As it is now the user has to click once per item, but mostly more often in case of client freezing because of lag or the avatar blocks the click.
Clicks saved: plenty
Own avatar not a click target while nothing useable in hand
While picking up stuff from the ground or trying to interact with objects near the avatar it often happens that the click is absorbed by the avatar instead of the object the user is trying to access. The only reason the own avatar should be a possible click target is when there is currently an object in the hand (=attached to mouse cursor) that can actually be used on an avatar (so unless it's possible to drink out of a bucket the click should pass through the avatar, and it should be impossible to try to plant a tree in your left nostril)
Item information available on mouseover
Information like 'this barrel is empty' should be available when hovering with the mouse longer as 1-2s over an item. Maybe with a range limit. Would also include [X] Mouseover Runestones.
Could be implemented while at it, but should imho have a longer delay: [X] See Crop + Object Quality
Clicks saved: depend on how curious you are.
Fueling without interface closing
Adding fuel to kilns, cauldrons, ovens, smelters, crucibles (and whatever i just forgot) shouldn't close the interface of the fuled object so you can for watch the fuel meter while adding and click light without having to open the object again.
Clicks saved: minimum of one for checking and refuling and checking again.
User interface
Backport Gilbertus screen size handling to official client
Sorry, 800x600 is so last century. Especially since the default screen you can buy these days is >1600x1200 (or 1600x10xx for the fucked-up 16:9 ones).
Make interface windows remember their last position
When opening a window it pops up at a default location. Should you have moved it to a somewhat reasonable location (so that it won't block your view) and close it you're back to default (=blocking your view again). This is especially annoying in the standard client where screen space is scarce and cupboard inventories inside houses block view to the walkable area most of the time.
So make windows remember their position (could be that the title string of the window is used as a key to store their position when closed).
This would lead to windows popping up where you closed them, so you could move them to an area you like.
Even if that coordinate list would reset on a relog (to fix fuckups like when someone managed to move a window completely out of the screen) it would help.
Make items used as mouse cursor transparent
While operating eg. a bucket or treeplanters pot you are unable to see what you're doing. Making them 50% transparent would solve that.
[X] Fixed in official client.
Access craft ingredient recipe
Enable to click on recipt ingredients to jump to the recipt for it (and backtrack to where you came from), ([X] Thread by Dataslycer).
Clicks saved: depending on recipt, but at least 1 for looking up one single ingredient and not returning (else it's getting more expensive). Won't impact more experienced players while the items tree is as small as it it.
Keyboard to chat
As already stated ([X] Chat Hotkeys) the chat should get focus by pressing the enter key, and should be disabled by pressing escape key once (not twice as is now). The function of enter key for crafting should be moved to an action ('adventure' -> 'craft current recipt') that can be dropped on a hotkey as everything else. Maybe some hotkeys (PageUp/PageDown ?) to flip through the chats, or some to select them directly?
Clicks saved: None, but destroyed keyboards will get more seldom.
Updates to avatar movement
Restore avatar speed after dropping lifted items
Needs no explanation and could be done in the client. Maybe an option to select a default speed, or return to last speed before picking up the liftable item. [X] Discussion.
Clicks saved: 1 per dropped object (or 2x ctrl-R which sucks too)
Continuous movement
Could be implemented by [X] holding LMB. Loftar is a bit afraid of doing that, but his fears could be lessened by putting it in the client in a way that a new 'move over here' is only sent when the user moved the mouse a relevant distance and after enough time has passed. To enforce usability it would be possible to limit the minimum distance the cursor has to the avatar to have this feature work.
Related to this topic is also [discussion]Movement using keyboard , [X] Autorun and [X] Sailing
Add pathfinding to the avatars when moving to interact with objects
When interacting with objects the user has often to reposition the avatar before right-clicking an object or he'll get stuck at other stuff. This could be avoided by enabling the pathfinding algorythm the agressive animals use when moving toward their target for player avatars (in case this would put to much load on the server it could well be placed into the client). This would also drastically cut the clicks needed, it would also lead to more natural and aesthetic looking object placements (compared to the current ones which are mostly optimized for accesibility with as less clicks as possible). [X] Some words of Loftar regarding this topic.
[X] I was a Highwayman eases the situation a bit for long-distance travel (apart from problems with the cart getting stuck at the milestones).
Clicks saved: 1k+ over normal gaming session
Change follow so that it works for boats and carts
Make the follow action stick so it dosn't stop when reaching the followed object ([X] Thread by Jackard).
Clicks saved: depending on how often you bump into the one leading.
Drawback: enables afk packmuletrains.
Miscellaneous
Long shot wishes
Visual representation of object state:
- Carts should have a differend graphic when being fully loaded, boats should show if being partly or fully loaded
- Graphics of trees should visualize available resources, eg. Apple trees should show no apples in case there are none to pick.
- Herbalist tables should show if there's something on them, but with a different graphic as in 'processing' mode. Something like drying racks and hides.
As a last request a ProgressQuest style client mode In case someone dosn't get it, i'm just kidding.
I'm sure that some (might be even all) of these suggestions are somewhere buried in this forum, but i thought i spent the hours i needed to write this on writing it instead of digging through the forum and missing the old posts anyway (eg. because i use the wrong keywords for the search).
So please stop from posting 'already...' posts, instead feel free to additional ideas (or pointers to old threads which makes stuff clearer) of flesh out the ones i posted.
