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View Full Version : Feature and Psuedo-Feature requests



Teflon Billy
Jun 12th, '04, 09:52 PM
Ok, these are mainly user interface wants I've picked up while using HD2

1. An option to only see the Names of items in a prefab in the prefab tab. Instead of seeing the write up listed out. By this I mean, just show either the user defined name or, for un-named items, the main name (i.e. EB, HKA, Seduction, etc...) without listing # of dice, modifiers, total points, etc...

2. Change the color of the prefab tab if a loaded prefab has constructs in that section (i.e. change the prefab tab to green if there is a talent, skill, or a martial art availabe from a loaded prefab)

3. (Since it hasn't been addressed yet) A scroll arrow for when the loaded prefabs list extends beyond the bounds of the screen.

4. (Resubmission of a previous request, with elaboration) An "Unload All Prefabs" menu option. Currently there are two ways of achieving this functionality in the program now. One is to individually unload each and every prefab one by one. The second is going into the preferences menu and unselecting the option to load prefabs at start up, close the app, restart the app, go into the preferences and reselecting load prefabs at start up. Both of these work, but they are not ideal. Having one menu item requiring one click (possibly two, if there is a confirm dialogue) would greatly streamline this. As it stand now, it takes however number of clicks there are loaded prefabs or a minimum of 9 clicks with the second option.

5. (I know this is a major undertaking, I'm just throwing it out there for thought) A language familiarity chart editor. First dialogue would request that the user enter in the names of all of the languages (with a check mark for languages that aren't written), the second dialogue would have a drop down menu with all of the user defined languages for the user to select the current language of focus. Below that in there should be two windows, one the right side should be all the user defined languages (minus the current one focused) and on the left should be the window, but at the top be a drop down menu listing the level of language familiarity (1, 2, 3 point) and between the two windows should be left and right arrows. The user would choose the language to be adjusted, then choose the level of familarity to be edited and then select the languages that are related at that level and shift them over to the left window using the arrows. If the user changes the level of familarity then the left window changes to show the appropriate languages.

6. (This is another big one. This is just for consideration, just hear me out) Allowing Power Frameworks to be added into lists and allow lists to be put inside Skill Enhancers. I know your reason for not allowing nested lists is do to performance issues among other things. I'm only requesting something I'll call Label Lists. There only purpose is for the logical grouping of items, there would be no other purpose for these lists. These labels would take no Adders or Modifiers, they would only take a name for the list and serve as a container for the items in the list. The main reason I'm looking for this feature is organizing my prefabs (i.e. Spells_Prefab:Utilitie-Spells_List:Lock-Picking_Multipower-Spell). And for Label Lists inside Skill Enhancers, this is again just to allow logical grouping of items (i.e. Linguist:Ancient-Languages_List:Sumerian). As it stands now, I can have nice neat categorized lists of languages that the character knows but as soon as the character gains Linguist everything gets thrown into one big list.

By defining a construct such as a label list you would still be able to (through type-checking) prevent users from adding multipowers to VPPs, Lists into Multipowers, etc... And you could even make it so that people could not nest Label-Lists and Regular-Lists, this would be the chosen trade off, you can nest Power Frameworks in a Label-List and not have Adders and Modifiers on the list or you can have list wide modifiers but not allow Frameworks to be added to the list.

I know some of these requests are ambitious or have been requested before. I wanted to put them out there since I've noticed that HD2 has reached a certain level of code maturity (no show stopping bugs being found lately) and I wanted to see if you'd be open to ideas for more ambitious changes/enhancements.

TB

Simon
Jun 13th, '04, 04:26 AM
1. No. The full display of abilities on the prefab tab is a feature of v2 and will not be toggled off.

2. Available in the current interim build -- the prefab tab will be disabled if there are no prefabs available for that ability type.

3. No. As near as I can tell, this will require a recoding of a built-in Java class -- something that I am not willing to do for this "problem." I would (once again) strongly recommend that you NOT have that many prefabs open, regardless of what you have increased the available memory for the app to. It's just not a good idea.

4. Available in the current interim build.

5. This will not happen in v2. I may do it as part of a full template editor one day, but not until then. The template editor will be a major undertaking. I will likely do it as a plugin and offer the plugin for sale when the time comes.....or I may do it as part of the as-yet-unplanned v3.

6. No. Since you seem to have searched out the old requests on this, you know the reasons. It will not happen.