Core UI improvements: map waypoint color, sign text saving, "Take all" loot hotkey, modes selection wheel, ...

[heptagonrus]

I have returned to the game after 2+ years break. Despite the game became slightly too hardcore for me, with the food decay, temporal instability and winter, the game is even more amazing, enjoying it a lot. I would even say that this "too hardcore" is not true, just feels this way for a newbie. After practicing all the mechanics, it might be quite comfortable.

But it was unpleasant to see few core UI features to be still unfinished and unpolished. Unfortunately they slightly annoy me every time I use them, but I would like to use them a lot, because I love their functionality. The game is currently in a great state, basically it is finished, just needs the new content to keep coming with time, so imho the core features should be polished.

Map waypoint color UI.

I love to finally see waypoints implemented in GUI, I still remember the initial pilot implementation with commands, current UI is a great progress.
I love waypoints, I love marking every single point of interest with different colors and beautiful icons. Resins, mushrooms, ores, animals, .....

But it takes too long to add one, because I have to type the color each time and save the waypoint with a mouse click.

I suggest:

• Put some color palette in form of colored rectangles line or grid, in addition to the text field.
  Since there are too many colors, make this color palette a "recent colors" one, but quite big, around 20 colors.
  Populate it by default with some basic colors, but each time player adds a waypoint of a custom color, typing it in text,
  add the new color to the palette. Maybe also rearrange colors in the palette with the frequency of usage.
• Same thing might be done for waypoint icons, a flat row or two of icons, not a drop down list.
• A standard hotkey should exist for "pressing" the Save button, to quickly close the window without using mouse. E.g. Ctrl-Enter.
• More complicated idea: a "template" waypoint functionality.
  When you look at some object, e.g. surface copper stones, or trader structure block, or clay, or ruins cobblestone, ... -
  you can press a hotkey and an "add waypoint" interface appears.
  If you are creating the waypoint this way the first time, the waypoint addition process is the same - you type the name, select color, icon, save.
  But if you have already created a waypoint for this type of block, it is already pre-filled with name, color, icon.
  E.g. when you look at the surface copper rocks, your waypoint will be named "copper", have orange color and dot icon. All you need is to press Ctrl-Enter.
  So you spend less than a second on creating the waypoint.

Sign text saving.

Love signs and the coloring mechanics! I still remember the sad ancient times we had no signs

But it is uncomfortable to have to move my mouse to press Save when I create the text of a sign.
It feels natural to use only keyboard in this process, and finish the sign creation or editing with an intuitive hotkey like Ctrl-Enter.

I.e. since the moment you aimed at the sign and pressed Sneak-RightClick, you should use only the keyboard to type the text in a text editor. Without the need to aim the mouse at the small Save button, which is located somewhere at the edge of the screen, and clicking it.

Take the modern messengers for example, desktop versions - they all allow you to type text without much mouse activity.

"Take all" loot hotkey

When looting corpses or even chests, it would be comfortable to have a "Take all" button and a hotkey, which Shift-clicks on every filled grid cell of the container.

E.g. Ctrl-Enter could be such hotkey.

Modes selection wheel

Currently modes of many tools are selected by mouse and in a line. This feels uncomfortable and not intuitive.

Take e,g, hammer: the modes which shift voxels to a specific side would be more intuitive if located in a 2D cross pattern, not in 1D line.

And it would be faster to select modes with less actions, e.g. by a standard action wheel.

I.e.:

• you hold F
• a wheel of choices appears around the center of the screen, instead of a line of choices.
• you select the mode by moving your mouse towards the specific section of the wheel and releasing F when the mode is highlighted.

Map "center on me" hotkey

Often when I look at the map and move it, it is a bit hard to return it to the location where my character stands. Some hotkey for centering the woldmap on the player would be nice. E.g. Space or double-click.

 

Edited May 7, 2021 by heptagonrus

[heptagonrus]

Added "Map 'center on me' hotkey".

[Jon Engen]

On 5/6/2021 at 8:45 AM, heptagonrus said:

"Take all" loot hotkey

When looting corpses or even chests, it would be comfortable to have a "Take all" button and a hotkey, which Shift-clicks on every filled grid cell of the container.

E.g. Ctrl-Enter could be such hotkey.

UI improvements are very important for a game like this to streamline tedious tasks.
One note to add here is that it can be very frustrating to find out that I'm close enough to skin/open a corpse, but not close enough to actually loot it.

In addition, a means of dropping off all of one type of item would be great and in the realm of UI improvements. Shift clicking each stack out of 16+ stacks can get tedious every time I come back with an inventory full of granite stones. (naturally I'll point to MC which has a feature described as holding something in the cursor and shift+double clicking the item to be transferring and it will attempt to shift all of that type of item into or out of the container you click from.