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[Jonathan S. Fox]

I'm working on the oft-requested ability to display more skills, and the current solution is to have a page displaying ALL skills -- potentially allowing paging through it in the future, if it becomes necessary. However, I've run into a snag. At the moment there's only two columns worth of skills to consider, but we're only three skills from needing a third column, so I need to make room for that. Unfortunately, due to the length of the skill names, it won't fit with the current system.

I can:

a) Not display the maximum skill level for each skill, or
b) Shorten the maximum skill name length by three letters

There's always removing the third column idea and just implementing paging already, but it will look worse that way. We're 90% of the way to the third column, we just need at least three more letters of space.

So this is a call for suggestions on shorter skill names. Specifically, if the skill names get shortened, then:

3 letters too long:
Sleight of Hand

2 letters too long:
Improv Weapons
Submachine Gun
Garment Making

1 letter too long:
Interrogation

~~~

Reducing skill name size isn't the only solution here, so here's more details on the problem, if you want to make an alternate suggestion:

The LCS game uses the standard DOS window size of 80x25 characters. That means that working across, I need to fit three columns in 80 characters of space. That means:

  X characters for the skill name
+ 1 character for the colon
+ 1 character spacing
+ 5 characters for the current skill amount
+ 1 character spacing
+ 5 characters for the max skill amount
= X+13 characters for the column

There's at least one space required between columns, absolute minimum (more is better), but that means that to fit three columns, we need 78/3 = 26 character columns, at most, which means only 13 characters for the skill name (3 less than now), OR we hack off the information about how much your maximum skill is, and give 16 characters (the current max) and increased space between columns.



There will be headers at the top of the columns so you can see what the numbers mean.

[Rezan]

Sleight of hand could be "Theft" or "Dexterity"

Improv Weapons could be "Misc Melee"

Submachine Gun can be shortened to "SMG", obviously

Garment Making could be "Tailoring"

Interrogation could be "Psychology"

Some suggestions, though I'm sure there are much better ones.

[Squeegy]

3 letters too long:
Sleight of Hand (Theft)

2 letters too long:
Improv Weapons (Improv Weps or Misc Melee or Meleeing or Melee)
Submachine Gun (Submachine or SMG)
Garment Making (Tailoring or Clothworking)

1 letter too long:
Interrogation (Brainwashing)

[Jonathan S. Fox]

Awesome. That will work. Thanks guys/girls.

[Rezan]

Oh my various gods! Squeegy stole THREE of my suggestions! You... you... you CONSERVATIVE!

[Earthquake Damage]

I like the skill names as they are.  I'd rather you stick with two columns and add a scroll key whenever you have the time (or whenever you add more skills, whichever comes first).

[Squeegy]

Oh my various gods! Squeegy stole THREE of my suggestions! You... you... you liberal suggestion liberator!

Fixed.

[penguinofhonor]

I like the new screen. Having visible skill maximums will be incredibly useful.

I vote for:
Improv Weapons to Misc Melee
Submachine Gun to SMG
Garment Making to Tailoring
Sleight of Hand to Theft
Interrogation to Brainwashing

Garment Making should be turned into Clothworking if you ever plan on letting liberals make other things out of cloth.
Interrogation to Psychology isn't specific enough. Same with Sleight of hand to Dexterity.

Misc Melee, Theft, and Brainwashing are not only shorter, but more specific. Also Brainwashing is funnier.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

I actually rather like psychology, though it's certainly broader. I see two problems with the skill "brainwashing" -- first, that term is being retired in favor of "enlightenment". "Enlightening" fits, barely, but it's very... vague? And it doesn't make sense for Conservatives to have it. It might be funny if Conservatives got brainwashing and Liberals got enlightening, for the same skill, though. The second problem is that interrogation is also used to resist interrogation. It's not clear that either brainwashing or enlightening skill would intuitively make sense as a defense skill.

[Rezan]

Yeah I thought of brainwashing as well, but I figured what you did. Psychology does cover a broad area of topics; but I also figured if the new sites are introduced, and my wish of having psychologists around was granted, then it makes more sense to have psychology over brainwashing. Then again, we could call it "Conditioning" (as that would apply to both conditioning others, and being trained in conditioning would most certainly give you resistance to being conditioned), but I'm more a fan of calling it psychology.

As for "sleight of hand"; how about "Illusionism"? Magicians use it; and it's specifically about doing things unnoticed and sneakily.

[Neonivek]

2 letters too long:
Improv Weapons - Soup canning
Garment Making - Sewing

1 letter too long:
Interrogation -  Conversation / Rhetoric / Politics / Lying / Social-Fu

[Jonathan S. Fox]

Improv Weapons - Soup canning

That makes no sense to me but still seems subtly hilarious. Explanation?

[Cosmonot]

I think it would still be better to implement page scrolling. Based on the number of problems it already has, restricting the number of characters in each skill name is going to cause problems every time you want to implement a new skill that can't be summarized neatly. I'd rather chop the current skill list up into two pages, and give each skill it's own line, with the extra space on each line devoted to a brief description of the skill's uses. The list could also be sorted from highest to lowest, so that you typically wouldn't need to page through unless you want to look at skills the person doesn't actually have.

[penguinofhonor]

I see what you mean with the psychology thing.us I'm in favor of that now.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

Keeping skill names short is good practice in general, as it allows them to be used in other places that can't support long names. Naming things in a constrained space is just something that LCS has an issue with in general -- think of the old "C.E.O. of a Corporation" people, who used to bleed all over the encounter list because it was way too long. It's been shortened several times, and finally fits as "Corporate CEO".

Prior to this, I wasn't sure how big skill names could get -- and the largest names were already stretching the seams of the current display areas, requiring that I move stuff around to accommodate them. The working prototype caps them at 12 characters, which is plenty for most skills. Based on the new skill screen in front of me, I think you'll find it to be a good solution. By allowing you to tab through your Liberals while this screen is up, it ensures that you can compare everyone's skills in any given skill or set of skills very easily, because that skill won't "jump around" on your screen, and will always be present. Page scrolling will be easier to add in the future if it turns out to be needed.