Hello! I've been really enjoying Vintage Story, and I'm appreciative of the implementation of the map system! But I do think the waypoint manager has a ways to go.
Criticisms: The Issues
As of v1.21, the waypoint manager is adequate. Icons are a powerful system, but it's limited by having to
1. The colours are haphazardly organised and limited in range. While there is some level of hue and value variety, and though these colours do successfully correspond with a decent chunk of the given items in the world (both vanilla and modded), these colours are still messily placed in my opinion.
2. Suggested names are limited. The placeholder names are fine (e.g. Pickaxe = "Ore", House = "Home"), but we're missing more special suggested names! The only special suggested name I've encountered is "Copper" for an Orange Pickaxe, but there's hundreds more things that could be marked, and typing it out each time would be tedious.
3. There is no keybind to set a waypoint at your current location. Most map mods in Minecraft provide you a remappable keybind (e.g. "B" or ";") to do this exact action. It saves time opening the map, navigating to the exact square/pixel where you are, and having to right-click to set a waypoint. When you're exploring, this repetitive action becomes tedious rather than meaningfully "complex" like VS's other mechanics (e.g. the leather process).
4. There is no macro to select all text to delete it. You can't Ctrl-A the textbox, or Ctrl-Backspace to delete words! This might just be a text feature oversight.
5. If you're not in Terrain view for the map, your location marker is gone. This might just be a map bug or map feature oversight.
The waypoint UI as it stands:
Suggestions: The Big Little Overhaul
In order to address these outlined issues, some change is necessary.
1. Enlargen the UI. This is needed to fit the next few items.
2. Overhaul the Colour section with more and organised options. Colours should be organised by Hue (and Sat), then Value. Since this is a survival game, the ranges could place more emphasis on natural tones, while sitll retaining some unnatural/bright colours. I'm an artist, so it does drive me alittle crazy to see black and white right at the end and not next to the greys in the current colour organisation.
3. (Optionally) Add in a Colour Picker. If you really wanna give more player autonomy, have some HSV sliders. Maybe also have a small section of "previously used" colours. If a slider system doesn't feel as Vintage Story-esque, then maybe just stick to some numerical boxes to edit the HSV values.
4. Suggested names pop up based on your previous/commonly used name for a given icon and colour combo. The devs should add more suggested names (e.g. Brown Pickaxe = Peat, or Orange Vegetable = Carrot), but player autonomy and QOL is the main priority. If a player used Purple Vegetable and named it "Turnip", the next time they select that icon-colour combo, the text should change to "Turnip" again if it hasn't already been changed by the player. This reduces a lot of repetitive renaming and streamlines the waypoint process, when all you wanna do is explore for goodies.
5. A keybind for placing a marker at your current location. I'm sure something like "N" or whatever will be nice.
6. Change it so your character's location marker is independent of the Terrain View. Additionally, maybe have a toggle for the location marker (for those who want to take map pics without the character in place)
7. Add the common text macros, as afforementioned.
8. (Optionally) And finally, more icons! We're missing some key icons, like: Animal (for marking wild livestock or bushmeat), Enemy (for locust nests or wolf packs), Grass (for grasses n such), etc. This one isn't as important, but no one's gonna argue with more icons.
An overhauled waypoint UI with some of the listed suggestions:
Final Notes:
I understand many of these features would require a more dedicated update segment and will require a decent chunk of time to implement. I wouldn't be surprised if this necessitates some sort of broader UI change to allow for some of these features. But I love this dev project, and I really do want to see the accessibility of this game improve so that more Vintarians will s̸̢̩̳̫̺̣̞̗̬̩̰͉̦̾̑͗̎͊̉̀̅͊̌̚̕͝p̵͙͈͖͔̭̯̞̬̫̘̙̹͕̾͛̈̑͒͂͆͊͝ą̵̠̒ẇ̷̟̤̞̻̤̣̦ǹ̵̨̢͐͒͑̃̀̾̕͝ and meet our lord and saviour D̴̨͋̈͂̈́å̵͚̱̤̮̀v̵̢̼̮̔e̴̮̼̗̬͚͒̕. I hope at least a few of these features get implemented in the future!
Thank you so much Tyron and the rest for working on this game. You're all amazing
