Posted October 26, 2018
Loving the new version of these games, but the journal in its current state feels quite... unfinished. Let's face it, right now it's just a map with some notes. I have some ideas on how to improve it.
First of all, the Legend could use some tweaks:
- Add icons to the Legend for everything that actually appears on the map, i.e. notes, the 'monsters lurk here' symbol.
- Show counts next to the Legend icons for how many of that have been identified on the map.
- When you mouse over a Legend entry, highlight everything of that type on the map. Useful for quickly reminding yourself where the stairs are in a cluttered map.
Second, I think the page with the Legend on it should have one or more buttons to replace the Legend with other screens of info:
- A list of Notes would be good, again mouse over the note and it should highlight its location on the map
- An actual journal, i,e, a record of events that have happened to the party (battles, special events, etc.) would be good. I'd like to be able to go back through the history of my playthrough and see where I was when I got a particular piece of gear. It would also serve as a useful debug dump if we can send you i.e. evidence that we've run into the same group of enemies 15 times in a row. I'd suggest just having a short headline visible at first but click or mouse over or something and it should show much more info, e.g. for battles the headline should just be the list of monsters you fought (or possibly even just the number of groups) and whether you fought or ran, but the detail would include any statuses that persisted after the fight (poison, death, old, etc.) and the rewards gained.
I think most of the above should be pretty simple to implement and are purely UI enhancements. The obvious exception is the last request, which would require creating a full historical tracking system, which would be a major change requiring a complete revamp of the save format, so I know it's a big ask. I still think it would be worth the effort though.
Thoughts, everyone? Anything else you can think of?
First of all, the Legend could use some tweaks:
- Add icons to the Legend for everything that actually appears on the map, i.e. notes, the 'monsters lurk here' symbol.
- Show counts next to the Legend icons for how many of that have been identified on the map.
- When you mouse over a Legend entry, highlight everything of that type on the map. Useful for quickly reminding yourself where the stairs are in a cluttered map.
Second, I think the page with the Legend on it should have one or more buttons to replace the Legend with other screens of info:
- A list of Notes would be good, again mouse over the note and it should highlight its location on the map
- An actual journal, i,e, a record of events that have happened to the party (battles, special events, etc.) would be good. I'd like to be able to go back through the history of my playthrough and see where I was when I got a particular piece of gear. It would also serve as a useful debug dump if we can send you i.e. evidence that we've run into the same group of enemies 15 times in a row. I'd suggest just having a short headline visible at first but click or mouse over or something and it should show much more info, e.g. for battles the headline should just be the list of monsters you fought (or possibly even just the number of groups) and whether you fought or ran, but the detail would include any statuses that persisted after the fight (poison, death, old, etc.) and the rewards gained.
I think most of the above should be pretty simple to implement and are purely UI enhancements. The obvious exception is the last request, which would require creating a full historical tracking system, which would be a major change requiring a complete revamp of the save format, so I know it's a big ask. I still think it would be worth the effort though.
Thoughts, everyone? Anything else you can think of?