More info for the fiddle screen

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PopeInnocent
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More info for the fiddle screen

Post by PopeInnocent »

I really like the market change for mouse-overs. Now I don't have to click items to determine if I have a spare. It's a great way to make known information more accessible.

Similarly, would it be possible to enable a mouse-over on the fiddle screen? It could take known information (combinatorial knowledge) and display it upon mousing-over any combine-able object.

And if you wanted to be really nice, it could also display a message if the object being hovered over had previously been tried in that combination, and failed.
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Mad Merlin
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Post by Mad Merlin »

So, something like...

Stick (3) (Combines with Raw Dough, Mint Leaf, Tiny Shield) [ cook ] [ combine ]

That's tricky in two ways, the first one being that there's both cooking and combining in fiddle, which would have different lists of items, and you probably wouldn't want to list them together because of the second issue...

Namely, those lists can get fairly long, certainly long enough to break onto multiple lines, and that means that either those lines need to change height as you scrub through them, or the lines initially need to be taller, either of which will look weird.

It's also a little different because you'd probably want to only show the combine items when you hover over combine and only the cook items when you hover over cook.
PopeInnocent
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Post by PopeInnocent »

I meant something different. Let's say combination (Stick, Butter) = Greased Pole, and this is a combination I know (and I've never tried cooking them).

Suppose I'm on the inventory screen. I click Stick [fiddle]. This brings me to the screen titled "With your stick..." I then scroll down, and see a number of items I may cook or combine with the stick, along with nifty buttons to do so, like:

Butter................................................................[cook] [combine]

There are a few ways to implement what I'm suggesting.

1) Change the name of the buttons to indicate the combination product:

Butter................................................................[cook] [combine - Greased Pole]

2) Add a mouse-over listing which indicates the combination product, written just before the buttons (like in the market):

Butter........................................(Greased Pole) [cook] [combine]

The former method would actually be favorable, on the off chance that there exists objects X and Y such that combining X and Y gives different results than cooking X and Y. It should be possible to attractively maintain the buttons' spacings, too.

On another note, part of the motivation for this change is that it's tough keeping track of what random combinations have already been tried. Could the [cook] and [combine] buttons change if a combination has been tried? Becoming [cook!] or [cook?] for success or failure would be illustrative, or perhaps changing the button's color.
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Mad Merlin
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Post by Mad Merlin »

Oh, I see the motivation now. That makes more sense.

Game! characters do have some memory of what they've tried cooking and combining. In particular, if you retry something that has failed recently, you'll get a special message and won't destroy the ingredients in the process. As time passes, the chances of getting said special message drop off (you start forgetting). I guess it could just be a matter of visualizing that information with some colour.
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