Delve Feature

[Paeng]

I just want to pick up on a thought by
@Maldrick here: http://worldofbanished.com/index.php?topic=1613.msg30839#msg30839

But the standout has always been a delve feature.

Now I don't think that we will see this in Banished any more... however, I feel that a lot more info can be put into the mouse hints - I have always commended creators, specially Discrepancy, for all the info he gets in there, hard info like capacities or needed resources and stuff...

It may not be a perfect way like a true delve feature... but every little bit helps a lot... 

[RedKetchup]

most of that the moddler can do that, add a little text line where he can explain the numbers on a window or in the tooltip (which is much more easier than on the window)...

it is just sometimes you pass 6hrs to build a 3d mesh ... and you want to see it in game so you need to make all the files which take couple of hours... and then you try to compile ... and about 2 dozen of times it refuse to compile because it lacks this or it lack there, or cant find this, cant find that ... and lost another 2-3 hours....  and you are tired, just wanted to see it in game .....

so adding more feature just to explain the numbers.... sometime... we dont think too much LOL



but for the tools and the item... you cannot click any item on the ground and see what it is and see what the info it can have like tools durability... or which flag grp it has... you cannnot click and select items

[Paeng]

it is just sometimes you pass 6hrs to build a 3d mesh... (snip) ... and you are tired

Oh, I fully understand that - been there, got the t-shirt and all... 
It's just a nice finishing touch, not a game-breaker 

but for the tools and the item... you cannot click any item on the ground and see what it is

Yep, understood...

[embx61]

@Paeng

The Storage Capacity of my two Barns show in the tooltip if you hover over the button.

But surely it can be increased with more info just as DS does.

I went over my buildings and some of them show in the tooltip how many workers can be employed but not on all of them.
I even found a little error. The tooltip says up to 3 Saltworkers but it is set at 2 

I agree with RedKetchup too though. Most of the times we just don't think about that stuff after working for example for hours on a mesh.
And some of the tip text box can become pretty big as more info is show in it as I saw on a screenshot from DS.

Luke's buildings don't show all that info either.

And furthermore, will players really read all that stuff? They want to build that building regardless what the build cycles are and how many workers it can employ.
Then next they want also the info for how much it produces, at what working rate?

Then the values are not balanced so you change them but ofcourse (I will in many occasions) forget to update the stringtable to reflect the changes. LOL

My Tannery building have the LeatherCuredRequire set in the stringtable as [1 Leather, 1 Water, 3 Salt] just as CC does. But not all my older buildings so I need to update them to show that info as well.

I am able and willing to update my mods yet again as it is a bit tedious but not hard to do, but rather first want to see what the community thinks about it and more importantly will it be important enough for the players so they will read it? And what about the size of the tips text box. Will it annoy some players?

[Paeng]

Oh my, I did not want to open a can of worms...     

There is no need to write a lot of explanations or such, just short pointers - like for the barns,"Cap: 6000" is perfectly fine... or "Uses Salt, Water & Leather = Cured Leather" to give me a hint if I need further facilities... stuff like that.

For me it's not that easy anymore to memorize all these requirements for dozens and dozens of mods and buildings - nothing so bad as saving up precious materials for a special building only to find out that you need two other buildings with three more resources before you can use it... yeah, I'm exaggerating 


And don't get me wrong - I'm not complaining... there is not even a need to update everything again immediately - just something to keep in mind   

[Maldrick]

I certainly hope no one took my suggestion as a criticism of any modders or their mods, of course.  I was really just talking about a general lack of info in the game about things essential to playing the game, even in vanilla.  From my brief experience with mods in the past few weeks, I totally agree, most modders put excellent info in the toolbar hovers and often detailed info on their pages for the mods themselves.

It's just always something I was surprised Banished didn't have, I guess partially because I play a lot of RPGs and delves are just par for the course in those games.  Was always surprised Banished didn't have that.  It can be argued that Banished is more a resource management game that involves building a city as opposed to a straight up city builder, but if you only played the game and never went to a website at all, how much detailed info would you really have about what's actually in the game?  The tutorials and help info are fantastic and it's one of the better games of this type, I think, at getting a new player started, but once you get deep into it and are trying to micromanage and optimize, things get fuzzy.  If I recall, all of this first occurred to me in one of my first early villages of reasonable size...Why is nothing working anymore? And what's with all these mushrooms? lol

I've just always thought it would be great to have a quick standardized way of going in and looking at the details of everything in the game, is all.

@embx61 Obviously, you guys are the best judges as to what you should put into your mods.  I can't imagine the time and effort that goes into just the art and modelling alone, much less making it all work.  Just having what you do available to play with is much appreciated and more than enough, of course.  But I will say that as a player, myself, the more info the better.  Generally when playing the game I'm ultimately going for some type of optimal synergy with everything that will eventually run itself unattended.  So I micromanage and overthink everything to the Nth degree.  That's changed a bit as lately I've leaned a bit more towards aesthetics, though.

@RedKetchup Right, not being able to click items is why I've always assumed it was a core game issue.  But with your mentioning that, it occurred to me...Would it be possible to add a tab to the town hall, like the inventory, that lists everything that's existed in that town with a column for weight, trader value, resource limit category, and attribute?  All food is in a food group or groups, all tools have one durability number, all clothing have a single rating, etc.  I guess food is special in that it can be edible or inedible.  Or a similar list for housing either in the town hall or a tab on the individual building window itself?  All of that info exists in the game so it's feasible it can be displayed in some way, no?

One day, I'm going to have to get motivated and see about learning about the modkit as I find this stuff terribly interesting.  Coding scares me, though.  Last time I modded a game was in the 90's when you could just go in and change text files.  Custom Civilization in college for the win! lol

[embx61]

Oh no, it is not a can of worms and if I seemed annoyed I am not.
I did not see it as a complaint either

I said I will be able and willing to do it but wanted the community to chime in too if it was really needed.
I maybe took it too far regarding what info should be shown in the tooltip.

Like I said, it is not hard, a bit tedious, and we have to be careful to also update the stringtables if we change the values.
But without the values given that won't be an issue either unless we change a complete material but that will hardly, if ever, happen

I understand now that work time and such are not needed.

So just how many workers it can deploy and what stuff it produces and what materials are needed to produce those besides the regular info of the building we already have in the tooltip.

[RedKetchup]

@RedKetchup Right, not being able to click items is why I've always assumed it was a core game issue.  But with your mentioning that, it occurred to me...Would it be possible to add a tab to the town hall, like the inventory, that lists everything that's existed in that town with a column for weight, trader value, resource limit category, and attribute?  All food is in a food group or groups, all tools have one durability number, all clothing have a single rating, etc.  I guess food is special in that it can be edible or inedible.  Or a similar list for housing either in the town hall or a tab on the individual building window itself?  All of that info exists in the game so it's feasible it can be displayed in some way, no?

most the infos are out of sight, and the game is so rigid... it doesnt necessairly easy to open a new tab and mostly, try to write something in this new tab. everything work with pre-written UI already defined. we cant define our own UI. it needs to be already setup and functions determined, and memory reserved.
no where in the code we can define new functions.

also, if you take the town hall UI, no where is written how to call the strings and numbers stocked in a variable.... not sure if you have some knowledge of coding (basic, cc, c+ delphi....) we dont have access of any of printf functions.....

tons of things are hard coded and not shown

[QueryEverything]

Oh my, I did not want to open a can of worms...     

There is no need to write a lot of explanations or such, just short pointers - like for the barns,"Cap: 6000" is perfectly fine... or "Uses Salt, Water & Leather = Cured Leather" to give me a hint if I need further facilities... stuff like that.

This is for me the winner   The other week I had to build all the windmills in game just to find the one that uses the grain that I had found at the trader because I couldn't remember which windmill used which grain, and the stables ...  same thing to find one that matched the grain to get the CC content (CC issue, but the same reason )

And there was one other building (it escapes me), but I had to build the different variations of it until I found the one that used the items that I had.  Unlocking a chain is hard enough, but no tips ...  hahaha.

I kept my builders very busy that day.

And you're right modders, after countless and often thankless hours, you just want to get your baby out to the world that these minor things don't make it in, and that's completely ok, it's not a deal breaker, but it should be something in the game from the beginning, it just wasn't. 

[embx61]

@QueryEverything

When I started modding is was beside some 3d modelling copying Luke's files which came closest and changed those where needed.

His string tables are short and don't give any info about how many workers and such at all.
So we change the lines so it matches our buildings and are ready to go, never thinking about putting more info in the hint window.

@Discrepancy, and maybe others, came up with the good idea to put more info in the hint window.
I think a lot has to do with the huge amount of mods being released and I understand that it is hard to figure out what each building does and what it needs to produce products
I am in the process of going over all my mods (My saltworks barrels and pilemesh need some work anyway as I am not really happy with them, they look a bit strange with light and darker blocks on the mesh) and then change the stringtable and the package file so players can also read the same info in the modlist

After my Saltworks and tannery (Need the saltpile too) are done I take some time to adjust the stringtables were needed with more info.

[Discrepancy]

Nice conversation...

I try to put as much info into the tooltip as I think I would like if I was a player. Sure, most players probably don't read them, but that doesn't bother me, some will, and those players will probably benefit from it.
I make mods the way I would have liked them when I was playing (I seldom get to play banished nowadays out of mod testing).
From the beginning it always peeved me that the amount of work required for construction of buildings was not shown along with the required materials, so that is the main reason I started expanding my tooltips.

I agree with @Maldrick , banished does severely lack info for the player.

The townhall tab is a good idea... I have tried to do something similar to this one before with banishedUI, but like RedKetchup said the game is rigid and does not allow the calling up of info like that.
but,
I was able to make another tab, but the only way I could get it to show anything was by manually adding all the text through sting texts - so nothing automatic. All info would have to be universal and would take a long, long, long time to put together.

Unfortunately I don't have the days available to even undertake that task now for all of my own resources/buildings... so info interested players will just have to settle with a spreadsheet document I am putting together about all of my own mods.


Practical (3d modelling/texturing/some code work) is the fun stuff.
Theory (documenting/logging change info/other 'tedious' code work) is not so fun.

[Necora]

I'm with @Discrepancy and have started to put more effort into the tool tip part of the code. Build costs are already there, but also F-variants info, housing stats, storage capacity and flags of barns (I just copy the whole code for flags) etc.

I don't put too much in terms of precise recipes though, more of a 'the baker produces a range of breads from flour and fruits, vegetables, and nuts' kinda thing. These are listed in the consume produce drop down, which I added even if the building only produces 1 thing (for the most part) and also added an inventory to everything that has an input. The reason for not having it in the tool tip is how much is too much information? I don't think I can list all recipes, certainly when you need to scroll through them in the production drop down. Is there a limit to how much info you can put into the tool tip? And is there a limit to how large players, even those who want the info, would like the tip?

It is a pain to constantly update string tables, especially as they can get quite long, but it is worth it from a play-ability point of view so I don't mind putting in the effort, I just often forget.

[embx61]

I agree Necora.

I just uploaded all my mods with altered string tables to put more info in the tool tips.

I also made a collection of all my mods including the string tables for those who want them all in one swoop