PC Simple things make for great user experience

KingSlayerGM

KingSlayerGM

New member
Hi all,

I just started playing Minecraft again and, as always when I switch from 7DTD, I'm amazed by how simple things improve the user experience.

Imagine you have a nice base with a few forges running. Maybe 3 are smelting iron and 2 cement. You have a stack of 6000 wood and you want to divide it among all the forges. So 6000 / 5 = 1200. How do you get 1200? Well, you split 6000 into 2 3000s, then you split them into 4 1500s and then you are ♥♥♥♥ed. YES! You will eventually be able to achieve the division, but it takes a ridiculous amount of time.

Minecraft offers an easier manipulation of stacks of items. Drag a stack holding down mouse1 and it will be evenly distributed between all the slots you pass over. MC has also many more tricks, but this is the most useful IMO.

So, adopting such shortcut in our previous scenario, you would just drag the stack over 5 slots and have your 5 1200 stacks of wood, taking you 1.2 seconds for the entire operation.

Can you TFP please give us this? Don't say you have other priorities, because this takes 5 minutes to code..

Do you guys have other tricks that maybe I miss?

KingSlayerGM

 
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Never played Mindcraft myself, but that does sound like a great qol improvment!

But I wonder if this is not for the "polishing stage" of the game...

Better to fix broken stuff or add new stuff, before adding qol.

I don't know... Just a thought.

 
Wasn't it an option one time to be able to right click on a stack and put in how many you wanted to split off from a stack?

 
This is pretty far down the list of stuff I'd like TFP to work on, to be honest.

"this takes 5 minutes to code.." is right up there with, "I tested my code, and it works correctly." Best case is that this takes an hour to code and test, but if you don't know the code, it's really hard to say how long it'll take to change something.

 
Minecraft offers an easier manipulation of stacks of items. Drag a stack holding down mouse1 and it will be evenly distributed between all the slots you pass over.
So, applaying such shortcut to our previous scenario, you would just drag the stack over 5 slots and have your 5 1200 stacks of wood, taking you 1.2 seconds for the entire operation.
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Thumbs up on this one. Splitting stacks one by one is certainly is one of my pet peeves for managing fuel for multiple workstations.

 
Thumbs up on this one. Splitting stacks one by one is certainly is one of my pet peeves for managing fuel for multiple workstations.
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Me too, I often just wonder why I can't specify a number out of a stack I wanna take. Maybe left click and hold then drag and it pops up a thing asking how many to take? Insted I usually gotta spam the hell out of right click.

 
Alternate possibility:

At the moment pressing the right button with a stack of wood deploys 1 wood. Holding the right button should drop more wood at an increasing speed.

 
"this takes 5 minutes to code.."-snip-
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I get your point...

But in all fairness, this thread is not about: "Why has this not been done yet" or "It's so easy, it takes 5mins", like many others...

This was just a suggestion, nothing more... And a good one at that :)

 
So an improvement that takes 5 minutes to code should be left for last because it belongs in the polishing stage?
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Yes, it's a nice feature to have but there are bigger and better bugs to tackle. What happens if the UI system is changed? Every change requires you to redo that "5 minute fix" over and over again.

 
Wasn't it an option one time to be able to right click on a stack and put in how many you wanted to split off from a stack?
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Yes, in the UI before this UI. The one they scrapped for yet-to-be-known reasons.

...mm will probably mention it in his Tell All book. =)

 
+1 for basic QoL improvements.

Delaying until the game is close to being finished is not a good argument, when we're already playing the game.

 
Yes, in the UI before this UI. The one they scrapped for yet-to-be-known reasons.
...mm will probably mention it in his Tell All book. =)
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The right click menu got ♥♥♥♥-canned suspiciously close to the console release. Speculation abounds.

 
So an improvement that takes 5 minutes to code should be left for last because it belongs in the polishing stage?
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Not at all. In my experience developing a lot of software, there are just aren't any 5 minute improvements. And it shouldn't be left for last because it belongs in the polishing stage, it just shouldn't be worked on right now because there are serious bugs that need to be fixed.

The suggestion itself is fine, it's just that there are other things to fix and add that are more important to me.

 
So an improvement that takes 5 minutes to code should be left for last because it belongs in the polishing stage?
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Not implicitly no...

But take 1000 things that takes only 5mins, and your up to 80hours...

See my point?

 
You've got to think about how many systems that "5 minute code" is going to affect. What impact will it have on containers? What happens if you cross a stack from your inventory over to a container, or vice versa? What happens when you run off to the side into the drop item area when dropping stacks?

There is no "5 minute code" in development. One "simple" change will have a cascade effect on a hundred other systems. All have to be tested and coded individually.

Which is exactly why icing items like this can wait until after the cake is done.

 
The right click menu got ♥♥♥♥-canned suspiciously close to the console release. Speculation abounds.
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What else is new consoles always ruin pc games. Its not the first time I seen the pc version of a game get dumbed down due to it getting a console release and it probally won't be the last game to get it either. Its either the game gets dumbed down for console users which they then put into the pc version so they don't need to worry about 2 ui's. or the other option is the console version ends up holding the pc version back like FF11/FF14 as there was certan things they can't do because the consoles just aren't powerful enough so they just don't bother to do it at all.

 
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