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some items require double click to ‘apply’ ‘plant’ or ‘build’
some items require right click.
What’s the rationale?
Double click is always the action to “use it”. Right clicking is always the action which involves dropping it/affixing it to the world in some way.
However, this complicates things when “Build” uses double click to affix it, because we still need to be able to drop it normally with right click.
If you have a suggestion on how to do this differently, please let me know.
I don’t have a view of the rules, so it’s difficult to know.
Mostly my experience is of surprise when it isn’t consistent, for example:
boxes affix on drop
walls affix on double-click and have separate drop behaviorCan affix not simply always be double click? Do any items have a separate build and affix?
For items which currently affix on drop, then they could have affix on both drop and action.
I take your point that water has 3 possible actions – drink, pour, drop; but that’s a separate problem.
Unfortunately, for things like Mushrooms or most plants, double click will eat them, right click will attempt to plant them (if not, drop them). The double click/right click can be thought of as Primary Use/Secondary Use, but i’ll work on making it the most consistent I can while keeping controls relatively simple.
This should be fixed before too many people get stubbornly attached to the current setup.
My solution divides actions as follows:
- Double-click performs “special” actions.
- Right-click performs item transfer between interfaces, including item drops to the ground, unless there is a cell-specific prohibition or alternative effect.
- If an item’s actions cannot be aligned to these conventions, add a new craftable item that refactors the capabilities in a way that does.
Affixables:
- Affixing is the special action of affixable objects.
- Right-click NEVER affixes.
Exceptions are the reason correct habits can’t form, causing misclicks with possibly bad consequences.
Right-click to drop, allowing them to be dropped normally.
Foods:
- Eating/drinking is the special action of foods.
- Right-click engages the environment in some way when applicable.
Water:
Right-click to fill when empty or pour when full if facing water, fire, or specific utilities.
Allowing water to be poured back is more reasonable than having to start a fire or drink it if you make a mistake.
It also prohibits accidentally throwing your container into the depths when intending to fill it.Botany/Mycology:
Right-click to plant if facing suitable ground. To fertilize if facing plants.
It is worth recognising that planting has a very different in-game role from affixing utilities, especially in combat, even if it uses the same code.
Think of it instead as an environmental effect: Planting is to soil what pouring is to fire, and fertilising is to plants.
Being conceptually distinct allows correct intuitions to form.I forgot to add under Water:
Transfering water between a source and purifier, which generally occur together, would be less likely to result in poisoning if double-clicking weren’t mixed in to the routine.Also, an example of the 3rd ‘rule’ on creating a new item:
Let’s say we want to be able to put seeds in the quick pad for planting. Currently, we would only be able to equip them for eating, since that is their special action.
What we would need is a new “sower” item that consumes a lot of seeds and has planting as its special action, with durability acting as seeds remaining. Likewise, fertiliser could have a “sprayer.” To make it more useful, it could perhaps combine both with some efficiency bonus, both in saving turns and consuming less fertiliser.
Unfortunately, the actual variety of plantables and fertilisers make this less straightforward in reality, but I hope it’s illustrative.Thanks for the thoughts and ideas here. I’m currently thinking about an idea which adds context boxes (or just uses the current tool-tips) to add a listing of actions you can do which then completely fixes human errors in input, but also provides support for tablet/mobile. This also provides a way for me to expand the set of actions on items, which is sorely needed for water. For example on Desalinated Water in Glass Bottle:
- Drink
- Pour or Drop
- Empty Glass Bottle
- Quickslot
- Examine
- Repair
I would probably still have double click and right click bound the the first two actions (how it is now), but a context menu could definitely help. Here’s an example for a Iron Spear:
- Throw
- Drop
- Equip (Left Hand)
- Equip (Right Hand)
- Quickslot
- Examine
- Repair
- Dismantle
As you can see, I can even start adding in new forms of interactions and shortcuts to the player.
Ah, tablets. I just hope you won’t abandon keyboard support.
I expect some of your example actions were mainly for example’s sake, and not necessarily planned, but I’ll comment on them all anyway. 😉
Repair:
In-slot repair would be very welcome.
But the worst thing about repairing items is not so much having to drop and recollect them, which could be seen as a normal in-game hardship; it is having to deal with the inventory each way. I assume that work is ongoing to improve the Equipment/Inventory/Crafting interface so I haven’t made any comments about that, but what works best for actions will depend a lot on how this interface works.Equip:
Again, the inventory+etc interface is the real issue. Drag & Drop wouldn’t be so bad if the equipment and inventory slots were not competing for visibility.
Still, an Equip shortcut would be better.Quickslot:
The point of quickslots is that they are already set up for use most of the time, and not often changed.
Making this easier is not a high priority, and may instead make more important actions less convenient through added clutter.Examine:
This is best served by Hover, as now, although I note possible refinements below. The main point being to keep it clear; less info-dump, more context-specific.Dismantle:
Could be a cool addition to gameplay if one is forced to get creative in awkward situations.Empty Water Bottle:
Assuming that you’ve accepted my idea about being able to (Right-Click) pour bottled water into open water (with no contamination), this might be useful if we find a pre-filled still or similar non-open source in the middle of the desert while carrying sea water. Otherwise ???… Now, back to control options.
It is worthwhile to ensure that more common actions are more accessible, rather than listing everything at the same level.
Be aware of the difference between interface actions, which work first time, and in-game actions, which can fail and may have to be repeated.
It’s not unreasonable to re-open the menu for each attempt, which fails less often with progress, or it could be left open until successful or manually closed.Dbl-LeftClick: Main Usage action.
RightClick: Drop, Transfer, and Auxilliary actions.Ctl-LeftClick(?): Stats & Menu.
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________
- Drop here (At the top because universally applicable)
- Repair
- Dismantle. Needs to display what items would be recovered. “X-like” ingredients are presumably lost rather than potentially transformed e.g. stripped bark -> poor spear -> seaweed. Other components might be degraded.
- Snuff out (torch).
- Empty water bottle.
- Advanced (submenu)
- Equip, or Equip [Left] [Right].
- Quickslot [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]
- Reserve/Release [Item] [Type]. Hides/Frees items from consumption by crafting. An alternative to drop-craft-recollect for those who want the control.
- Info. Facts common to all items of the same type. Mainly for players who haven’t memorised them yet. This is where players go to drill into all the details.
________
Interface/Info tasks:
Durability, Weight, and Groups are displayed immediately above the menu, so players can refer to them as they consider their actions.________
In-game frequent tasks:________
In-game infrequent or item-specific tasks: (Place under “Advanced” if toplevel menu gets cluttered.)Hover (non-crafting):
Durabilty and Weight at the top, as the most frequently referenced stats.
Then Groups and Use/Equip* options in a separate section, with an option for advanced players to hide that part.Hover (crafting):
Skill, Level, Usage*, Groups.
Recipe.
Description indicating the point of having it, so the player can quickly see whether it’s relevant to their interest.
Weight. (Sometimes crafting is about losing weight)
Detailed Use/Equip* options and stats, for an informed decision.* “Usage” simply states whether it works as e.g. equipment, furniture, appliance, component, ground etc. without additional stats.
* “Use/Equip”, or “Physics” e.g. tall/short/non-blocking, and flammable for affixables.
(Note: with affixing as Main Usage action of affixables, flammable affixables could be Combustible on Right-Click)Generic messages (“Edible”, “Throw” etc.) could be handled as links to definitions rather than always displayed.
I haven’t gone into the various info categories, but I suspect some tidying up will be appropriate in future.Okay, that’s far enough off-topic and far too much already 😮
Thanks for your comments, suggestions, and ideas. There’s no plan to remove keyboard support, haha; simply just trying to simplify the huge scope of interactions I seemingly want to implement eventually.
Further to what you said about the Equipment/Inventory/Crafting… those are probably going to separate at some point, the UI in general is pretty far off from being polished.
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