Idle proposal: Object placement grids

Discussion in 'Wiki Discussion' started by M_Sipher, Jul 29, 2017.

  1. M_Sipher

    M_Sipher Oxygen Tank

    Kicking around ideas for conveying where objects can be placed on object pages, their "block silhouettes", stackability, etc, through simple at-a-glance graphics.

    A couple different normal ground-placed objects. Yellow lines indicate a "platform" the player can stand on or stack other items on. The weird one on the left is the block silhouette of the Medieval Desk (which also has a broken-up platform).
    upload_2017-7-28_22-39-21.png

    The ceiling-mounted Metal Ceiling Lamp...
    upload_2017-7-28_22-36-53.png

    For something with multiple placements (and dimensions dependent on placement) like the Small Floodlight...
    upload_2017-7-28_22-35-28.png

    Stuff that can only be placed on a background wall, like every wall locker? Background grid!
    upload_2017-7-28_22-43-54.png

    The Electric Light which can be both foreground and background-mounted?
    upload_2017-7-28_23-5-39.png

    We can put 'em in a frame if need be.

    I left the background blank on foreground-only stuff to indicate that no, you don't need background blocks to place the item, but if that's too confusing, can just the background in for everything.

    One nice thing is that a LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT of items share silhouettes/placement requirements, so it's not like we'd need thousands of these. I mean, most items seem to have pretty simple rectangular shapes 5 blocks or less in either dimension, placed on the floor. If the "generic" graphics are named properly ("PlaceGrid_2x2_Back", "PlaceGrid_2x2_Floor", "PlaceGrid_2x2_Floor_Stack", "PlaceGrid_2x2_Ceiling", etc), easier to manage. Weird stuff like the Medieval Desk would of course need its own unique one, but I'm pretty confident those will be a small minority.

    Exact placement in the article itself, I dunno. I'm loathe to load more into the stack on the right. Often makes the page layouts all lopsided.

    Input?
     
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  2. M_Sipher

    M_Sipher Oxygen Tank

    Okay. So. A sample mockup where yes I know the "data" doesn't match the grid, but this is roughly what I'm thinking...
    upload_2017-8-4_1-31-27.png

    I THINK that's most of the info I think should be attached to any grid. Open to suggestions.

    Every grid would fit within a set window size. Right now I'm working with a 130 x 274px (max) window, which is large enough to put a Shipping Container's grid (6x15 blocks) with a 1-block border on each side, at "x2 zoom" that's nice and readable.

    Anything smaller would still be 130px tall, but not as wide, meaning a less-wide "chart" overall, for example...
    2x3 floor.png Metal Ceiling Lamp grid.png 2x3 backgrnd.png

    Anything larger, I have two ways of handling it. Anything not a lot larger vertically than the shipping container (which isn't a lot), like the Studies in Female Hylotlogy painting (10x8), or multi-placement items with a lot of real estate to cover, will be shrunk down to 130px tall, still very readable:
    Studies Hylotlgy grid.png Small Floodlight grid.png

    The handful of REALLY tall things, like the couple of Hylotl bookcases that aren't fake items, chop out a bit in the middle:
    Grand Ornate Bookcase grid.png
    Course I can mix the two if that specific instance isn't large enough. (A 24-block-tall grid is gonna be way too small to shrink down into the window.)

    I figure put it under the normal text so it's still on the first "screen" without needing to scroll.

    Input welcome.
     
  3. M_Sipher

    M_Sipher Oxygen Tank

    Hell I'll throw together a mockup for a whole damn object page with some of the other stuff I'd proposed for those later on tonight so we have a better idea how the whole thing came come together and work towards getting it there.

    Like easily marking Printable objects (and what tab they're under on crafting tables, since, for example, not every storage object is actually under the storage tab on the printer. Dumb, yes, but that's the game we're playing).
     
  4. M_Sipher

    M_Sipher Oxygen Tank

  5. Katzeus

    Katzeus Chucklefisherman Chucklefish

    This is looking good but it'd be good to see what it'd look like actually inside a page. If you want to mock something up that'd make it much easier to work it over. I like how this is coming along though.

    And sorry for dragging this out - I just want to make sure we really have a solid plan because of the number of pages we'll touch with it.
     
  6. M_Sipher

    M_Sipher Oxygen Tank

    upload_2017-8-14_23-16-22.png

    Ignore the values/entries that don't line up, I was mostly looking at placement and max-spacing-needings for mockup purposes.

    There was a thing or two I saw... there didn't seem to be the actual item Sell Value on the page. The Shipping Container page has 625p as the "value", but that's how much it costs to print, not sell. For anything non-Printable, the value listed there is worthless since that's not what you'll spend to make it, and it's NOT what you'll ever get for selling it.

    And speaking of, the Pixel values listed there are off on a lot of pages anyway, like the Replicator. That's currently at 350, which is the first-level Anvil's "full" cost, not the Replicator's "full" cost (1500p as memory serves, but again that's not what you get for selling it).
     
  7. Katzeus

    Katzeus Chucklefisherman Chucklefish

    Definitely looking better. I think maybe left aligning it may be the way to go, or maybe stretch to fit the space there - I think the margins really break up the flow of the page. I'll go ahead and build this into a template if you don't mind, then we can make a sandbox page to fine tune that stuff.
    I see your point - but it's intentionally meant to display the value which the infobox shows in game. Aside from the potential confusion of having the infobox display a different value then the game tooltip, the problem with adding 'sell price' to the non-printable objects/items is that it'll become very confusing - many sell-able items won't have a sell price because sometimes it would be a printing price there.

    Oh yeah, I think that's a special case because it's an up-gradable item. Let me look into a parameter override for that - thanks.
     
  8. M_Sipher

    M_Sipher Oxygen Tank

    Well, the idea is that the Printing price would go under the Pixel Printer marker, just as any Ingredients for crafted items would. But one way or the other, I really think the sale price should be somewhere on the page for, well, anything sellable.

    And sure, template away. Full-width or whatever works, I just have a question as to how it would handle the nominal not-wide grid images, like the thinner samples above. I mean I can make the graphics for those all max-width, or maybe that slice of width would be uniform width regardless of content width. (An eccentricity of the templates I've noticed from time to time where column width fluctuates based on contents. Is there any way to tell a template to force-set a column width?)
     
  9. Katzeus

    Katzeus Chucklefisherman Chucklefish

    I mean everything is sellable right? Just some things have a price of zero. I also believe everything is sold for 20% of the tooltip price, so if we wanted to do it we could probably manage it with a query.

    I'm still not completely convinced the infobox is the place for it though...
     
  10. M_Sipher

    M_Sipher Oxygen Tank

    I'm just not a fan of making people do percentage math when we could just tell 'em a number. So sure, if that's something that can be done automatically, sweet. The specific "Where on the page" I don't have super-strong opinions on, just that it SHOULD be on the page somewhere.
     
  11. M_Sipher

    M_Sipher Oxygen Tank

    So um

    Any word?
     
  12. Katzeus

    Katzeus Chucklefisherman Chucklefish

    Sorry I haven't got to this yet, I'll make sure to put some time aside tomorrow to put something together.
     
  13. M_Sipher

    M_Sipher Oxygen Tank

    Okay so I've been gone a bit FINALLY getting myself literally cross-country and setting up and settling in and while I'm not DONE yet (ha ha hhhhnnnngh) I have a bit more time...

    I saw the start of some of this before I left, but wasn't sure it was fully implemented; the testing I didn't seem to work. Is this in an implementable state now?
     

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