Crafting menus intuitiveness

[CSPAN]

Loftar hinting at Easter Eggs.

[iamahh]

i imagine this would be changing all the time

i wonder if having a dynamic crafting toolbar based on inventory items would be useful

much like Amber's history bar, but instead based on the ingredients at hand

[Sevenless]

2) Icons that are potentially craftable but missing discoveries should exist in grayscale, and give hints/directions about discoveries missing to unlock them. This in a sense acts as a "natural tutorial" in that if people are curious about the buttons they can get hints on how to find out what the item is. At the same time, it keeps a bit of the mystery of discovery if desired by simply not explaining what the item is. Only that it exists and how to unlock the required discoveries.

But half the point about the discovery system is about not having to reveal stuff like Prince Charming in advance. If anything, there are recipes that are unlocked on skills alone, even if discoveries are missing, such as building Hearth Fires, and I've considered if some others shouldn't be among them as well. I've noticed sometimes when getting some skills that I have had no recipes at all unlocked by them, which seems a bit weird.

Don't grayscale your easter eggs then. But the bare basics for playing the game should be intuitive and obvious, even to someone who isn't checking the wiki. If easter egg location would be a giveaway to the existence, perhaps a bit of menu rearranging is in order to keep it that way. Besides, by making a mystery unlock with a vague description of how to get it for the basics, I figured jorb could have some fun leaving riddles. Alternatively, you could sequester all the easter eggs into their own special tab that still functions like the rest of the UI does right now. You'd never know how many there are that way. The rest of the humdrum UI though very much needs this bit of love to help towards polish for new players.

[ricky]

But then again we have the wiki where all that information about unlocking resides.

Or so you think.

Loftar hinting at Easter Eggs.

No shit, there's so many hidden interactions in this game. I accidentally found out you could put batwings on an herbalist table only after playing the game for 6 months. checked the forums, only mentioned twice. checked the wiki. no mention of dried batwings.

there's probably a a couple dozen items that we dont even know about

[Granger]

Regarding crafting I suggest the following:

Unify crafting and building into one action ('create', like plow, harvest) that can be applied onto inventory items (in any inventory, even the equipment and study), buildings and stockpiles.

Crating and Building windows are replaced with a unified Creation window that consists of these sections (in whatever ordering):

Creation
the item that will be made (when clicking on it, holding shift will do 'craft all', <cr> and <ctrl+cr> could still work as hotkeys but should imho better be moved somewhere else as <cr> should be exclusive to enter/leave chat mode)
Possibilities
items/objects that can be created from the item in the middle (use item in the middle as an ingredient) or at the building in the middle (build mode)
Prerequisites
workstation(s)/building(s) that need to be manned / items that need to be equipped to perform the creation,
assorted information about skills needed/caps/whatnot
Ingredients
the items needed to perform the creation that will be consumed in the process

Performing 'create' on an inventory item will open with the selected item as Creation, a stockpile as target probes the topmost item in the stack and then works like it was the click-target in an inventory.

Performing 'create' on a building will open the menu with the building in Creation, with Possibilities showing all possible (and known) items that can be made there (this could include stuff like hints for cheese that needs to be in a cellar when a cellar door is inspected), Ingredients listing the material for the building (possibly as an inspect mode tallying variable materials built into the in-world object that was used to activate creation), Prerequisites could list stuff like 'only buildable inside' (cupboards), flatness requirements, whatnot. Clicking the building in Creation activat a place cursor to add further of these to the world.

Performing 'create' on items (or drilling through the hirarchy toward them) that are put into existance by other means (like stones) could list the actions that can be used to create them (like mining, chipping), objects where they can be fetched (boulders) as workstations, thus this could also work as a kind-of manual.

Existing building signs should link from their ingredient lists into this interface as shortcuts toward creating the needed materials.

Make all stuff in the window clickable so you can drill up, down and (possibly) sideways, record movement clicks in the hirarchy into a stack and provide a 'back' button (and a clickable graphical representation of the stack for quick access to stuff some further back). Mark non-available but known items (like 30% transparent, tint red, whatever) so they're available for selection and having a recipt open makes it clear about what is missing (and only one click away to create it).

Make current 'craft' and 'build' stuff links to the roots of their respective hirarchies (listing the categories in Possibilities and allowing drill-down from there for a start, possibly these could also be removed altogether.

This kind of interface could also do away with some flower menus (like use 'create' on a log and find 'Board' and 'Wood Block' in possibilities), it would work reasonably well on a touch interface (should a mobile client come up at some point), it would remove a lot of clicking when crafting objects that consist of several layers of ingredients (that need to be crafted individually) and it could also feature as a manual into the object/item world by adding lore, hints and stuff (like adding that certain stuff can be cooked inside a cauldron).

[jorb]

Yeah, idk what to think about all this, tbt. I agree that building/crafting could be better.

[Granger]

2) Icons that are potentially craftable but missing discoveries should exist in grayscale, and give hints/directions about discoveries missing to unlock them. This in a sense acts as a "natural tutorial" in that if people are curious about the buttons they can get hints on how to find out what the item is. At the same time, it keeps a bit of the mystery of discovery if desired by simply not explaining what the item is. Only that it exists and how to unlock the required discoveries.

But half the point about the discovery system is about not having to reveal stuff like Prince Charming in advance.

Icon with a '?' and no further information that is replaced when the requirements are met?

Yeah, idk what to think about all this, tbt. I agree that building/crafting could be better.

People had given you good suggestion about what you can do for quite some time. This above was just the updated version (as technology evolved in the nearly 8 years that have passed without any improvement in that area of the UI) of a suggestion Dataslycer made in the early days of World 3.

Please have mercy and give us QoL in the crafting interface.