Some Map Suggestions

[Skru]

I really like the ingame map and think it is a very valuable feature. I use it a lot and over time I thought about some improvements to make it easier to use and to extend its functionality.

 

 

Locating the player

• A button/key to re-center the map on the player again.
• A button/key to highlight the player. Like e.g. when pressing control, a bold red circle is displayed around the player. If the player is outside the visible map an arrow at the side of the map appears, pointing towards the player.
• A small set of colors to choose the players display color from, e.g. white, red, blue, yellow, black. Especially in snowy areas I regularly need to search for the player-symbol for half a minute. The color should also change on the mini map.

 

Move waypoints

An option to move waypoints would be great. This could be done by command, by showing editable coordinates in the waypoint menu or by clicking them with a special key + click combination (e.g. shift + left click or control + left click) and moving them around.

 

Recent colors

Below the color input box there could be a row of the 10 most recently used colors. If I want to reuse one, I don’t need to type it again (or to even remember the color name / hex-code).

 

Waypoint templates

When I work with waypoints at the map, I usually use the same symbol and color for the same item. E.g. each shallow copper deposit I find gets a red pickaxe as symbol and “Copper” as name. The same for other ore deposits, ruins, wild seed-growing plants and so on. Thus, I have about ten to twenty regularly used name-color-symbol combinations.

It would be very helpful to have a template system for waypoints. When I enter a waypoint, there is an additional button “save as template”.

To load a template, there could be an additional window with a list of all the saved templates. When I click at one of them, the waypoint window is filled with  the respective name, color and symbol and the “save” button is already selected, so that I can simply hit Enter and the waypoint is saved.

The templates in the list should be orderable, so that I can group them however I want. A nice to have would be the option to create categories for the templates.

 

Keyboard shortcuts for waypoints

There could be an option to assign a number from 0 to 9 to a template. When I open the map and press the number (or something like control + number), a waypoint from the respective template is automatically created at my current position (completely without any waypoint-dialog).

 

Prospection results as waypoints

When prospecting an area for ores I usually try to do this systematically and save the results as waypoint. That means manually typing all the findings into the waypoint-window. It would be great if you could add a link/button “save as waypoint” to the prospection result. The results are then automatically saved as waypoint. This waypoint should have a special format. The name should allow line breaks to keep the results readable. The name is not editable and the waypoint can’t be moved.

The map interface could get a “settings” option where the user can define the default symbol and color of saved prospection waypoints. Maybe you could also add a new waypoint symbol for statistics (e.g. a bar chart with three bars).

 

Pause the game

In some cases, like during long winter nights, it is really useful to scan the map for interesting things while I wait for dawn. In other situations, it would be good to pause the game when the map is open (e.g. when I find a nugget of a rare ore while being hunted by a wolf). Could that be a togglable option to pause the game while the map is opened? This might be part of the game balancing and not being able to pause the game is on purpose. If so, I am fine with it, but at least I wanted to suggest it. Same for the handbook.

 

Waypoint symbol selection

There is a dropdown menu to select the waypoint symbol. Currently I can’t select the symbol using the arrow keys but have to use the mouse to select it. Could you add this function? This is btw an issue of all dropdowns in the game (e.g. with the advanced options at world creation).

 

What do you think? I would already happy with a subset of these suggestions.

Edited September 23, 2020 by Skru

[David Taylor]

I saw a video where the player was using chat history to quickly set waypoints. Once you've set one of each type that seemed like a fairly quick way of doing it. Especially if your chat isn't filled with other stuff, the waypoint commands will be recent.

At least that's what it looked like he was doing.