![[de]](/mwf/flags/de.png "Germany")
Welcome to another issue of reinventing Clonk - and killing it in the process. It's actually an idea I discussed with newton at the OCM, thought out a bit further.
To clear up the title: I'm not talking about removing buildings per se, but making them work the same as vehicles. To be even more specific: I think buildings should be operated by grabbing or mounting them - not entering them. Entering should be removed completely by this line of thought.
Why? Here's a list:
* It's unnecessary interface overlap. Both buildings and vehicles can be activated (grabbed/entered) and may then get pushed/steered/operated by the grabbing Clonk. Even so, entering and pushing are still subtly different concepts.
* Buildings as means of Clonk shelter are overrated and highly unintuitive. Who actually builds the castle building for protection? If you really have something to protect, you will use watchtowers or the castles from the Knights pack. The only real worth is the strange behavior of the front door that allows locking enemy Clonks in - giving rise to some silly gameplay mechanics (CoFuT players should know what I mean).
* The whole entering thing makes a good count of things more complicated. I guess every CR player has got the keystrokes to sell a lorry full of gold in his or her muscle memory - and there are actually some shortcuts specifically for speeding this up - but the whole "push lorry in, enter, empty lorry, sell contents, exit lorry, exit clonk, continue pushing" is way too complicated. And I don't consider Newtons interface idea a big help here, either, as the main difference seems to be to replace "empty lorry" by "open lorry menu" (which actually makes things more complicated as "empty lorry" is done automatically in CR).
* A lot of CR buildings are already designed so you never need to enter them - both the foundry and the sawmill, for example, have entrances for no real reason, because they only take objects as input (okay, and vehicles, but I imagine we can work around that). A lot of other buildings could be reworked in a similar fashion.
Here's how I would envision the game design following these principles: All buildings have to be handled from outside, so each of the vehicles/buildings can have an associated menu.
* Inventory for lorries and other dedicated containers
* Buying/selling for bases - I think we could do without making bases containers. This way moving something into the base automatically means selling (like with gold in CR) and moving it out means buying.
* Production for chemical plants
* Research for research plants
* ...
Imo, the best way to do this would be to have menus appearing over the vehicles/buildings once you grab them. That makes for minimal eye and mouse movement and should be reasonably clear for simple cases. More complicated cases, where there are multiple vehicles to handle, would need to "stack" the menus appropriately.
Let's quickly return to the above example to show what I mean: Say you're pushing your lorry full of gold back to your home base. While you do this, the menu over the lorry displays the lorry menu with your gold. Once you are in front of your base, another menu opens up above, displaying the buy/sell menu. Now you shift-drag your stack of gold (to select them all) and drop it into the sell menu. Ka-ching, you can continue mining. Way faster than even a seasoned CR player could have done it. Handling, say, chemical plants would be just as easy (click what you want to produce, then drag lorry contents).
Another example: Getting something out of the lobby would just have you click on it. Assigning it to an inventory slot would need to drag-and-drop it into the lower bar. At least if we get something like that, I'm still very much in favor of having the Clonk always only carry one object somehow.
Now for some potential problems I could think of:
* Having menus open whenever you grab something could be irritating. It's important that the menu isn't too big or distracting, while remaining accessible for mouse control. Like always, I suggest using some sort of circle menu (I think it's fair to say that I have been a driving force behind the circle menus in both Fantasy and CX). In this case, some sort of half-moon layout over the object would be best. Also being a Mac user, I also think we could some nice tricks with icons getting bigger as you approach it with the mouse. At least if Apple doesn't have a patent on it.
Another approach could be to move the menus to the icons in the lower bar. Needs more mouse movement, but we won't have stacking or overlapping problems. But personally, I don't like interfaces that need the mouse close the screen borders for anything but scrolling (and if we get any kind of scrolling, there are bound to be some very awkward scenarios when gameplay gets hectic).
* Keyboard control. Now normally I'm all about allowing at least equal access for mouse and keyboard users. But in this case I fear there will always be some substantial disadvantage for keyboard users, just because they can't match well-designed menus in terms of input speed. Here's the best I could come up with for the above sell-lorry-contents scenario:
You push the lorry in front of the base, press the lorry number or "up" to get into the menu (to get to the menu above the lorry, get it?), use left/right to select the gold, press "shift-up" again to select all of it (half-way back to Clonk 4 here, I guess), then press (say) 5 to make the base the target. Press "down" to exit the menu. If you want to get something out of the lorry, press double-"up" or "up" and the inventory slot number.
* Submarines? This vehicle is equally problematic on all possible fronts. It's a container, a vehicle and a building (in that Clonks may enter it). I'm not sure whether even Newtons' more conservative approach works properly for all cases. Maybe it should get the base treatement and lose the "container" aspect so the sub collects directly into Clonk's inventory. Would make underwater mines a lot more difficult (= interesting?). The whole thing also raises interesting questions about how submerged vehicles should be handled anyway - maybe a Clonk shouldn't be able to push underwater, but what about getting stuff out of, say, a lorry? I think we should debate about this separately.
Some food for thought.
To clear up the title: I'm not talking about removing buildings per se, but making them work the same as vehicles. To be even more specific: I think buildings should be operated by grabbing or mounting them - not entering them. Entering should be removed completely by this line of thought.
Why? Here's a list:
* It's unnecessary interface overlap. Both buildings and vehicles can be activated (grabbed/entered) and may then get pushed/steered/operated by the grabbing Clonk. Even so, entering and pushing are still subtly different concepts.
* Buildings as means of Clonk shelter are overrated and highly unintuitive. Who actually builds the castle building for protection? If you really have something to protect, you will use watchtowers or the castles from the Knights pack. The only real worth is the strange behavior of the front door that allows locking enemy Clonks in - giving rise to some silly gameplay mechanics (CoFuT players should know what I mean).
* The whole entering thing makes a good count of things more complicated. I guess every CR player has got the keystrokes to sell a lorry full of gold in his or her muscle memory - and there are actually some shortcuts specifically for speeding this up - but the whole "push lorry in, enter, empty lorry, sell contents, exit lorry, exit clonk, continue pushing" is way too complicated. And I don't consider Newtons interface idea a big help here, either, as the main difference seems to be to replace "empty lorry" by "open lorry menu" (which actually makes things more complicated as "empty lorry" is done automatically in CR).
* A lot of CR buildings are already designed so you never need to enter them - both the foundry and the sawmill, for example, have entrances for no real reason, because they only take objects as input (okay, and vehicles, but I imagine we can work around that). A lot of other buildings could be reworked in a similar fashion.
Here's how I would envision the game design following these principles: All buildings have to be handled from outside, so each of the vehicles/buildings can have an associated menu.
* Inventory for lorries and other dedicated containers
* Buying/selling for bases - I think we could do without making bases containers. This way moving something into the base automatically means selling (like with gold in CR) and moving it out means buying.
* Production for chemical plants
* Research for research plants
* ...
Imo, the best way to do this would be to have menus appearing over the vehicles/buildings once you grab them. That makes for minimal eye and mouse movement and should be reasonably clear for simple cases. More complicated cases, where there are multiple vehicles to handle, would need to "stack" the menus appropriately.
Let's quickly return to the above example to show what I mean: Say you're pushing your lorry full of gold back to your home base. While you do this, the menu over the lorry displays the lorry menu with your gold. Once you are in front of your base, another menu opens up above, displaying the buy/sell menu. Now you shift-drag your stack of gold (to select them all) and drop it into the sell menu. Ka-ching, you can continue mining. Way faster than even a seasoned CR player could have done it. Handling, say, chemical plants would be just as easy (click what you want to produce, then drag lorry contents).
Another example: Getting something out of the lobby would just have you click on it. Assigning it to an inventory slot would need to drag-and-drop it into the lower bar. At least if we get something like that, I'm still very much in favor of having the Clonk always only carry one object somehow.
Now for some potential problems I could think of:
* Having menus open whenever you grab something could be irritating. It's important that the menu isn't too big or distracting, while remaining accessible for mouse control. Like always, I suggest using some sort of circle menu (I think it's fair to say that I have been a driving force behind the circle menus in both Fantasy and CX). In this case, some sort of half-moon layout over the object would be best. Also being a Mac user, I also think we could some nice tricks with icons getting bigger as you approach it with the mouse. At least if Apple doesn't have a patent on it.
Another approach could be to move the menus to the icons in the lower bar. Needs more mouse movement, but we won't have stacking or overlapping problems. But personally, I don't like interfaces that need the mouse close the screen borders for anything but scrolling (and if we get any kind of scrolling, there are bound to be some very awkward scenarios when gameplay gets hectic).
* Keyboard control. Now normally I'm all about allowing at least equal access for mouse and keyboard users. But in this case I fear there will always be some substantial disadvantage for keyboard users, just because they can't match well-designed menus in terms of input speed. Here's the best I could come up with for the above sell-lorry-contents scenario:
You push the lorry in front of the base, press the lorry number or "up" to get into the menu (to get to the menu above the lorry, get it?), use left/right to select the gold, press "shift-up" again to select all of it (half-way back to Clonk 4 here, I guess), then press (say) 5 to make the base the target. Press "down" to exit the menu. If you want to get something out of the lorry, press double-"up" or "up" and the inventory slot number.
* Submarines? This vehicle is equally problematic on all possible fronts. It's a container, a vehicle and a building (in that Clonks may enter it). I'm not sure whether even Newtons' more conservative approach works properly for all cases. Maybe it should get the base treatement and lose the "container" aspect so the sub collects directly into Clonk's inventory. Would make underwater mines a lot more difficult (= interesting?). The whole thing also raises interesting questions about how submerged vehicles should be handled anyway - maybe a Clonk shouldn't be able to push underwater, but what about getting stuff out of, say, a lorry? I think we should debate about this separately.
Some food for thought.
You're showing alot of interesting aspects of this, which (dis-)advantages it may have. If I could vote, then I'm against removing "buildings" in this way. Already as you've tought about the submarine, I got a bit... scared.
"The submarine is the only thing, where your Clonk 'disappears'?" Either that, or we remove the sub totaly (I like none of those solutions). A base with a flag, which you have to grab and put/pull objects in/out seems to me as a clonk 'veteran' really odd, but I don't know how new players would react to it.
"The submarine is the only thing, where your Clonk 'disappears'?" Either that, or we remove the sub totaly (I like none of those solutions). A base with a flag, which you have to grab and put/pull objects in/out seems to me as a clonk 'veteran' really odd, but I don't know how new players would react to it.
I like the idea of removing the entrance wherever possible (foundries, workshops, whatever) but I would still like to keep some kind of base. Be it as a shelter for your Clonks (lightning, meteors, random fires) or just as a place to store your items (you really wouldn't want to let them lie around, especially in melees)
Well, shelter is something that a watchtower or a similar construct could provide. I'd vote including some sort of simple Knights-style castle building into the OC package. At least we shouldn't make the blunder of having incompatible buildings this time.
Concerning melees - well, I see your point, but I do think we should try to find another solution for this problem. It's strange and unintuitive that the logical first step in castle melees is to transfer all usable "decoration" into your home base (or even sell it). We could try it the CX way (= base locks down all buildings and vehicles in a certain radius), for example.
Concerning melees - well, I see your point, but I do think we should try to find another solution for this problem. It's strange and unintuitive that the logical first step in castle melees is to transfer all usable "decoration" into your home base (or even sell it). We could try it the CX way (= base locks down all buildings and vehicles in a certain radius), for example.
>Well, shelter is something that a watchtower or a similar construct could provide.
Don't forget that we are in Clonk - there will always be ways to exploit that. Be it some kind of heat aura (like in fantasy), shooting through thin walls, lightning going through materials or casting a forcefield right through the tower.
Also that wouldn't solve that you always have a whole bunch of items (and Clonks) standing around in your base doing nothing (and probably even being annoying there)
> Be it some kind of heat aura (like in fantasy) [...] lightning going through materials or casting a forcefield right through the tower.
Those could simply stop harming Clonks in front of bases. A base without a lightning rod is lame, anyway.
> shooting through thin walls,
So the big defensive building would have thick walls, and you'd have to shoot from the roof.
>Those could simply stop harming Clonks in front of bases.
"Haha, I went one pixel to the left and I am now in front of my base and benefit from a bunch of cool stuff while I will now continue to shoot at you!"
>So the big defensive building would have thick walls, and you'd have to shoot from the roof.
You would probably have those only at the border of your base not in the middle of it. And that would mean that once a enemy is in your base he can easily kill your five other Clonks standing around somewhere because you just cannot control more than one at a time
The base is "cool stuff" no matter how you look at it. Look at strategy games - it's a pretty common theme that the "owner" of a base (and I'm talking the whole complex here, including surrounding buildings) has some advantages in the area. We could have Clonks regain health slowly in the whole area, for example (without cost). If it's slow enough, it won't be too bad for balancing when fighting inside the base while still allowing for some protection for contained Clonks. It's sure to be more interesting than the "Clonks are invulnarable" design.
Concerning the problem of Clonks standing around - well, I hope we get some damage notification into the Clonk pictures so it should be possible to detect something happening. But melee-oriented maps should not force you to have more than one Clonk anyway, imo. Just replace the spare Clonk waiting in the base with a good respawn routine and the problem disappears.
Concerning the problem of Clonks standing around - well, I hope we get some damage notification into the Clonk pictures so it should be possible to detect something happening. But melee-oriented maps should not force you to have more than one Clonk anyway, imo. Just replace the spare Clonk waiting in the base with a good respawn routine and the problem disappears.
>Concerning the problem of Clonks standing around - well, I hope we get some damage notification into the Clonk pictures so it should be possible to detect something happening
Sure, but you still could not control this extra Clonk
>But melee-oriented maps should not force you to have more than one Clonk anyway, imo
Look at CoFuT for example. Sure, simple melees (Minor Melee f.e.) don't need more than one Clonk at a time but there is more complicated stuff (like CoFuT) where Clonk management is a very important aspect (would you rather have a spare Clonk or risk a relaunch?) and limiting _every_ melee scenario to only having one Clonk just because the game lacks the possibility to protect those Clonks would not be very beneficial to the gameplay I think
>Protection in base
Sure, you could heal the Clonks slowly (which would be annoying in situations where you don't have an enemy and just want to go back into your mine without waiting three minutes for your Clonk to be recovered). But there will always be things where this doesn't help. Look at the CR rockfall-rule: One of those rocks can easily kill two of your Clonks if they happen to be hit by it - no slow recovery would every prevent this. And of course: You could say "hey, lets just make no rockfall rule for OC then!" and that surely is a point. But it would not enhance the variations of gameplay but limit them since everything that could inflict a lot of damage to not-controlled Clonks would be instantly imbalanced and not very much fun to play with
PS: I would rather weaken the strength of the base buildings so that an enemy can destroy them more easily if you find them to be a too ultimate protection at the moment
PPS: Or even give the Clonks the possibility to slowly deconstruct a building (if you have a weapon or a tool with you) which would deal damage over time and help against the situation of "haha, you are in my base but have no flints, I'm hiding in my base now"
![[pl]](/mwf/flags/pl.png "Poland")
http://forum.openclonk.org/topic_show.pl?pid=2255#pid2255
That could solve, or at least help with problem of clonks being in danger while uncontrolled, at least when there is not too much of them.
That could solve, or at least help with problem of clonks being in danger while uncontrolled, at least when there is not too much of them.
I'll just quote my post as an answer: Sure, but you still could not control this extra Clonk
With this approach - there is no solution.
Maybe except good AI, but then it would be a bit pointless...
Maybe except good AI, but then it would be a bit pointless...
However - its still better to know what is happening to your clonks...
>Sure, but you still could not control this extra Clonk
Someone else could. Let me explain. In most cases, where you have multiple Clonks around, you have a team-melee with at least two players per team and shared tasks. If no one protects your base, your clonks have no shelter. But if someone is around and defensing, the offending ones could concentrate on their task, and the defensing person could use the full clonk-power to protect the base. For example, one player placed a bow defense on the highest point, but he is busy, so he can't shoot at the incoming air vehicle. What I suggest is sharing of clonks among team members. I really have no idea how far this will effect the game-play, but it sounds like you need a good team spirit for that.
>PPS:
http://forum.openclonk.org/topic_show.pl?pid=5242#pid5242
I would never every play any public team melee if everybody else could suicide with my Clonks :oAnd those others will probably also have one Clonk busy to defend the base and two Clonks standing around - so it would not really solve the problem
The one defensing would defense Clonks and base.
Okay, feel free to let them die.
>I would never every play any public team melee if everybody else could suicide with my Clonks
Okay, feel free to let them die.
>Okay, feel free to let them die.
They wouldn't if they had something to stay in :P
And, as an addition, I'd like to quote my post: And those others will probably also have one Clonk busy to defend the base and two Clonks standing around - so it would not really solve the problem
I assumed the whole time that you _also_ would defend your base (or try to). But the enemy could always kill the Clonks that are currently not controlled first (which would be a lot easier than to fight the player controlled Clonk)
>I assumed the whole time that you _also_ would defend your base (or try to). But the enemy could always kill the Clonks that are currently not controlled first (which would be a lot easier than to fight the player controlled Clonk)
Not in an offense-defense (melee) system where unselected Clonks are always defensing, and someone attacking had to decide if he likes to be killed by the defender or if he wants to fight him.
No, just like they try to block melee attacks or arrows with a shield.
Well, when they just stand around and do nothing (just being hit by arrows) they are not very much defending imo
Defending themselves. If they are holding a bow and aiming, the are in an offense position, where they can be hit more easily. The idea is, that you must go into an offense position if you want to kill those clonks, and someone else could much more easily kill you there than you can kill one of the deselected Clonks.
> Sure, but you still could not control this extra Clonk
Well, you can switch over. Multitasking problems aren't really what we're discussing here.
> would you rather have a spare Clonk or risk a relaunch
If the same rules apply to the enemy? Relaunch, hands down.
> and limiting _every_ melee scenario to only having one Clonk just because the game lacks the possibility to protect those Clonks would not be very beneficial to the gameplay I think
Don't be silly, scenarios can do whatever they want. They may choose to have buggy spells that damage Clonks through walls - I'm okay with that and I have put forward a suggestion on how to easily fix that. You want buggy spells and multiple Clonks and don't want to do the footwork to make it actually work? Give me a break. </rant>
> hey, lets just make no rockfall rule for OC then!
I'm more like "let's make a roof". Sounds a lot saner. There's a reason I'm citing the Knights' castles so often - I feel it's vastly more interesting in terms of tactical gameplay. If we don't do that, we could still go the Western way of all buildings having a solid ceiling.
>Well, you can switch over. Multitasking problems aren't really what we're discussing here.
Well, then the Clonk you played before would be standing around in your base (since I assume that you are defending at the moment)
>If the same rules apply to the enemy? Relaunch, hands down.
I always tried to have a spare Clonk in CoFuT whenever possible - the 25 gold is just not worth to have the castle undefended for two minutes
>Don't be silly, scenarios can do whatever they want.
Sure, but they could not use the "standard" OC system or even the standard contents of OC. You talk about buggy spells - in my opinion it is everything but buggy that you can shoot through walls with a bow or a musket
>I'm more like "let's make a roof". Sounds a lot saner. There's a reason I'm citing the Knights' castles so often - I feel it's vastly more interesting in terms of tactical gameplay. If we don't do that, we could still go the Western way of all buildings having a solid ceiling.
I really have nothing against only having castle buildings (I even like the idea) and that may solve the specific rockfall issue. But it wouldn't help for example against that if you have four Clonks, three would always stand around idling in your base when your enemy somehow makes it to enter your castle
>But it wouldn't help for example against that if you have four Clonks, three would always stand around idling in your base when your enemy somehow makes it to enter your castle
Automatic defense towers! ;-)
Better watch out what you say, or I'm gonna flame you! (:P)
Fighting AI is sometimes way more fun thatn fighting humans, but usually only when you fight something boss-like, with good AI and interestingly designed. However as for towers... yeah... it would be a bit boring, however - if we would allow player to leave clonks with cannons or other guns and let the AI operate them... if set up good they could serve as some defense, but not be too hard, so it is not impossible to fight them...
Fighting AI is sometimes way more fun thatn fighting humans, but usually only when you fight something boss-like, with good AI and interestingly designed. However as for towers... yeah... it would be a bit boring, however - if we would allow player to leave clonks with cannons or other guns and let the AI operate them... if set up good they could serve as some defense, but not be too hard, so it is not impossible to fight them...
I think a AI Script would be to hard to code. Know anybody the game King Arthur's World for the Super Nintendo? In this game you can configure how much mans build a group (that not necassary for us, but for better understanding i refer). Now you have a Group of Archers. Normal configuration is 3 mens per troop. You controll only the first men, the others would follow the first man. if you push the button to attack, the complete troop would first form and than fire.King Arthur's World has a troop calls "contructor", this troop can build catapults, bridges and something. Here the same solution, the first man is player controlled, the others would only do what the first man says. For example you need 4 Contructor to siege a door from a castle. The first man moves to the door and you activate the option to bash the door, meanwhile the others come near and formate in a line. If their are in position, then their begins to bash the door.
My Solution:
The first clonk goes to a place. You need a second clonk, so the player controlled clonk have the option "Form a group" or "I'm the leader". If the option is pushed, it comes a little menu with the portraits of the other clonks their are avaibled. Now you click a other clonk, the clonk comes and form a group with the player controlled clonk and imitate exactly what the first clonk does (Maybe with a little delay, that the second clonk follows with a little space between the 2 clonks). If the group is formed, the "form a group" option would change to "dismiss group" and "new groupmember".
hope it helps :)
> Well, then the Clonk you played before would be standing around in your base (since I assume that you are defending at the moment)
Which is exactly how it worked in old Clonk times. Now you even realize you're getting attacked before your whole base is burned to the ground.
> the 25 gold is just not worth to have the castle undefended for two minutes
Yeah, the system forced you to use spare clonks because it penalized relaunches. Which is a decision of the scenario author(s?) which I don't feel we need to copy.
> You talk about buggy spells - in my opinion it is everything but buggy that you can shoot through walls with a bow or a musket
In my opinion it is buggy when you have "inside" in terms of "inside a castle" and "more inside" in terms of "inside a castle, inside a room". That's a completely arbitrary distinction and should be removed. When you go into a castle, you are protected by the castle wall - not the room door. Can we please forget CR-think for a moment and stick to simple logic?
>Which is exactly how it worked in old Clonk times.
Which doesn't mean it is better nor worse than in CR
>you are protected by the castle wall - not the room door. Can we please forget CR-think for a moment and stick to simple logic?
Okay, I am not that stick to my ideas that I am not willing to test that out and see whether my doubts turn out to be pointless :)
(Well, I still think the whole base would be kind of crowded and defending would be a mess - but let's see)
If Clonks need oxygen, there need an entrance :<Or: Full ack@Zapper.
Imo, at least the graphical idea of an "entrance" should stay. It could be handled so the Clonk usually stays outside the building, but enters it as soon as he starts an action in it (and leaves when the action is done/cancelled). Castle buildings could have a special "shelter"-action, which would last until you cancel it and lets the Clonk enter the building.For melees, it would be nice if an enemy Clonk could do some action to pull busy Clonks out of production buildings (sort of like the throne in CR), as it has always been annoying when an enemy Clonk just waited inside a building and all you could do was follow inside and hope you'd have more energy/better fight physicals.
Hm, just realized when I wrote this that I forgot to answer.
Well, as shown in the discussion above I'm not really convinced that it's a good idea to remove Clonks from the landscape. I would rather have the Clonks still remain outside even when performing some action (say, smithing or building a vehicle) so the action automatically becomes interruptable. Compare how the Clonk currently rides horses. I don't like it that you could theoretically sidestep an area-of-effect-spell by smithing for some seconds.
Well, as shown in the discussion above I'm not really convinced that it's a good idea to remove Clonks from the landscape. I would rather have the Clonks still remain outside even when performing some action (say, smithing or building a vehicle) so the action automatically becomes interruptable. Compare how the Clonk currently rides horses. I don't like it that you could theoretically sidestep an area-of-effect-spell by smithing for some seconds.
>While you do this, the menu over the lorry displays the lorry menu with your gold. Once you are in front of your base, another menu opens up above, displaying the buy/sell menu. Now you shift-drag your stack of gold (to select them all) and drop it into the sell menu.
So when does the contents menu open? A) Only after a certain keypress, B) when you grab it or C) when you are in front of it?
>It's important that the menu isn't too big or distracting, while remaining accessible for mouse control. Like always, I suggest using some sort of circle menu
For what exactly? The contents menu or the "menu" on which one can click to open up the contents menu in the first place? A montage screenshot would be good.
>I'm not sure whether even Newtons' more conservative approach works properly for all cases.
Yes it does. In the lower bar, there are two icons for the submarine, one for entering, one for grabbing. The contents menu would open either on a right-click on the icon or on entering.
>Some food for thought.
I like the idea of having the UP-key open the contents menu (or any other kind of menu) of the things that are in front of the clonk.
Also, with already a few buildings done (the rendering part), it is obvious that we NEED a system where contents can be exchanged efficently without being able to enter into the building. E.g. the tools workshop is not an enterable building, neither is the foundry.
> So when does the contents menu open?
The letter is B currently - the menu opens whenever you grab something. As I mentioned in my example: The lorry menu is open (and usable using the mouse) all the time you're pushing the lorry. I'm aware that this might be controversial - but I must say I like not having to press anything else to quickly check the lorry contents. Or my production alternatives at the chemical plant or whatever.
> The contents menu or the "menu" on which one can click to open up the contents menu in the first place?
There is only one menu per building in my proposal. We could probably do some multi-level menus (and I think we won't get around them in the long run), but for now it's "the menu".
>The lorry menu is open (and usable using the mouse) all the time you're pushing the lorry.
And how do you open the buy/sell menu of the base in front of the clonk without ungrabbing the lorry?
> I'm aware that this might be controversial
...Especially if you want this menu to float around the clonk, perhaps even in a ring menu.
>but for now it's "the menu".
Which would be..
>>* Inventory for lorries and other dedicated containers
>>* Buying/selling for bases - I think we could do without making bases containers. This way moving something into the base automatically means selling (like with gold in CR) and moving it out means buying.
>>* Production for chemical plants
>>* Research for research plants
>>* ...
...?
---
I would still like to see a screenshot montage. I can't really picture how that system would work.
> And how do you open the buy/sell menu of the base in front of the clonk without ungrabbing the lorry?
Read my example, will you? ;)
The menu isn't opened just for what you grab, but when you grab something, you get the menus for everything currently in "range". So when you push the lorry in front of the home base, the base menu opens automatically.
> Which would be.. [...]
Well, yes? That list gives exactly one menu per object type.
> I would still like to see a screenshot montage. I can't really picture how that system would work.
Hng. I might try, but I really suck at visual arts (and will have to track down some programs first). We'll see.
>The menu isn't opened just for what you grab, but when you grab something, you get the menus for everything currently in "range".
I see, OK
>> Which would be.. [...]
> Well, yes? That list gives exactly one menu per object type.
Why is it important to allow just one type of menu (allow only base or container instead of base & container) for one object?
Well, it's not crucial to the design per se. You could have two menus for the same building on top of each other without much problem. I just would like to take the one-building-one-function approach as far as possible. Also as mentioned, I'm a bit worried that overall menu complexity will get too high - for 3 open menus you need to start thinking very carefully how you make clear what menu serves what purpose and belongs to which building.
Okay, here's a quick mock-up. Rectangular, as that was easier to put together using gimp - also has some obvious advantages when stacking menus. The slight color-coding of the menus is intended to make it faster to recognize, say, contents, buying/selling and production menus.
Imagine an additional contents-menu for the hut if the base remains a container. Maybe grouped together with the buy/sell-menu suitably.
Another side note: The currently selected vehicle should always be and remain the bottom menu, as it's the only one that's not going to change when pushing the vehicle around.
My opionion is, that buildings for that game are necessary. The Settlement Mode is the reason why i play clonk.Your Menu looks good, can you create the menu as a ring? Maybay around of the Clonk or the Building. I think it would looks better and you can better oversee.
I am still afraid of the slowness of the mouse (targeting some small icons) compared to the keyboard :<Guess I'll just have to play with a graphics tablet then
So small? You know, we want to move to normal resolutions like 1280x1024 for OC.How would that look for contents (or buyable stuff) that does not fit in "one line" because there are too many available? For few objects involved, it looks nifty, fast to use with Drag and drop (if the icons were bigger) for people who know what to do there. But this case is more the exeption than the normal case.
First, it is not very self-explanatory. Even for experienced clonkers, it does not really suggest itself that the upper menu is for buying/selling rather than contents. A title like "Wooden hut - contents" or "Wooden hut - buy & sell" would help a lot. But the bigger it gets, the less applicable it is to put it right over the clonk, in the middle of the screen - and automatically.
However, if the whole thing just pop ups with one keypress (e.g. C, W/S is not possible since it may be used by grabbed vehicles), we don't have that problem.
I did that thing in 200% zoom-in, which I realized later was probably not a good idea. I agree the real thing should be slightly bigger (even if we have contextual bigger icons). I also planned to have zoom affect the menu.
Well, I obviously optimized for the simple cases. Inventory menus won't be very big most of the time. Other menus should try to - I think we could stretch the flat approach to three rows, tops, before we should really consider doing multi-level menus, as mentioned above (like, say, the construction kit putting buildings into categories). Maybe I'll make another mockup about what this could look like.
Hence color-coding? That's the cue for the experienced Clonk (Open Clonk!) user: Find the red menu if you want to sell/buy something. It's obviously something optimized for speed rather than for being self-explanatory, but to a point that's okay imo (my reference point is the Fantasy menu). We must do a tutorial about it anyway - and I'm optimistic those that don't want to do it will still be able to figure them out after a bit of clicking around. Not that I'm fundamentally against labels, but there's also something to be said about avoiding dead interface space.
Edit - by the way: I think another related point is where to put additional information about items, like, say, price or production cost. Two ideas:
* Put it to the right of the icons or below - always visible when something is selected.
* Put it into a context menu popping up when you hover with the mouse
The first approach obviously takes interface space but is arguably useful - experienced users might memorize the cost of a construction kit, but how about the construction material of a blimp or a castle? Putting the information there might also make the function of a menu more obvious.
Well, I'm torn between "up" and the shortcut number for this very reason. But in my mind, vehicles using "up" (balloons?) should ideally have no menu - at least not one you need in daily use.
Apart from that, I don't think opening the menu on-demand is really going to solve the problem. Clunky menus remain clunky menus (not to confuse with clonky menus!) even if you hide them behind another keystroke.
> How would that look for contents (or buyable stuff) that does not fit in "one line" because there are too many available?
Well, I obviously optimized for the simple cases. Inventory menus won't be very big most of the time. Other menus should try to - I think we could stretch the flat approach to three rows, tops, before we should really consider doing multi-level menus, as mentioned above (like, say, the construction kit putting buildings into categories). Maybe I'll make another mockup about what this could look like.
> it does not really suggest itself that the upper menu is for buying/selling rather than contents
Hence color-coding? That's the cue for the experienced Clonk (Open Clonk!) user: Find the red menu if you want to sell/buy something. It's obviously something optimized for speed rather than for being self-explanatory, but to a point that's okay imo (my reference point is the Fantasy menu). We must do a tutorial about it anyway - and I'm optimistic those that don't want to do it will still be able to figure them out after a bit of clicking around. Not that I'm fundamentally against labels, but there's also something to be said about avoiding dead interface space.
Edit - by the way: I think another related point is where to put additional information about items, like, say, price or production cost. Two ideas:
* Put it to the right of the icons or below - always visible when something is selected.
* Put it into a context menu popping up when you hover with the mouse
The first approach obviously takes interface space but is arguably useful - experienced users might memorize the cost of a construction kit, but how about the construction material of a blimp or a castle? Putting the information there might also make the function of a menu more obvious.
> However, if the whole thing just pop ups with one keypress (e.g. C, W/S is not possible since it may be used by grabbed vehicles), we don't have that problem.
Well, I'm torn between "up" and the shortcut number for this very reason. But in my mind, vehicles using "up" (balloons?) should ideally have no menu - at least not one you need in daily use.
Apart from that, I don't think opening the menu on-demand is really going to solve the problem. Clunky menus remain clunky menus (not to confuse with clonky menus!) even if you hide them behind another keystroke.
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