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Author Topic: Quick, unambiguous and effective interface aid  (Read 1001 times)

Silverionmox

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Quick, unambiguous and effective interface aid
« on: February 11, 2010, 12:36:11 pm »

Suggest your small, probably not definitive but effective interface solutions for very annoying problems here. It's absolutely essential that they are very specific, and could potentially be coded in five minutes, otherwise they'll end up at the end of the queue anyway.

Eg.
* Problem: Selecting trade goods  (to bring to the depot, as well as selecting them in the trade screen) takes ages and becomes physically painful after more than 500 basalt mugs.
=>Solution: a key that selects everything on the screen would improve selection efficiency by a factor of 17.
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Footkerchief

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Re: Quick, unambiguous and effective interface aid
« Reply #1 on: February 11, 2010, 12:46:40 pm »

* Problem: Selecting trade goods  (to bring to the depot, as well as selecting them in the trade screen) takes ages and becomes physically painful after more than 500 basalt mugs.
=>Solution: a key that selects everything on the screen would improve selection efficiency by a factor of 17.

I'm not trying to imply that this thread is redundant, but for anyone who wants to discuss this particular idea, it already has its own thread, plus an entry in Eternal Suggestion Voting ("Trade Depot - Mass Selection").
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Silverionmox

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Re: Quick, unambiguous and effective interface aid
« Reply #2 on: February 12, 2010, 05:08:01 pm »

Well, I was trying to fish for some interface bandaids that could be implemented quickly between releases, but apparently there's no real need.

For the particular example, it even has several entries apparently. The difference is that those are more complicated implementations (filtering, tagging) that could quite well last until version 1.0.
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mickel

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Re: Quick, unambiguous and effective interface aid
« Reply #3 on: February 12, 2010, 05:29:58 pm »

I wouldn't mind seeing a clear way of seeing which z-slice I am viewing at the moment. I keep going up when I should go down, and vice versa, and I can't tell at a glance which level I'm at and which levels I've built on, etc. This makes building at several levels a bit of a pain...

I'm not sure how to solve it though.
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mickel

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Re: Quick, unambiguous and effective interface aid
« Reply #4 on: February 12, 2010, 05:52:52 pm »

Something just struck me that I've been suggesting before from time to time.

Naming levers.

It would be extremely useful to be able to know that the lever on the left is the "floodgates" lever and the lever on the right is the "drains" lever instead of having to guess.

Also, naming doors and bridges would be good. That'd make it easier to link up levers and bridges etc. It would also potentially make the difference between "The -Pumice Door- has been knocked down? Big deal!" and "The HFS Door (never ever ever EVER open this) has been knocked down? Oh, carp!"
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