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Author Topic: Labels toggled by Hotkey stay longer  (Read 5321 times)

yngwi

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Labels toggled by Hotkey stay longer
« on: May 21, 2015, 04:31:30 AM »

Hi
it would be great (imho) if the labels, that appear for items on the map after clicking for instance "3", would not disappear so soon but instead stay longer, or even stay until either disabled by clicking the hotkey again or until the next action (move, click, etc.). I always have to click it several times to really understand what items are in a room if I don't know what the symbols represent.

thanks,
daniel
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Kyzrati

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Re: Labels toggled by Hotkey stay longer
« Reply #1 on: May 21, 2015, 04:41:34 AM »

I was waiting for someone to suggest this... I, too, sometimes have to press multiple times, but as I recall there was no easy way (in the internal interface code) to do something more intuitive/user-friendly.

Because I know it's annoying in some cases I'll look into solutions again. Thanks!

As a side note, if you are using mouse-keyboard hybrid controls another effective way to quickly inspect parts is to hold Ctrl-Shift while you mouse over them. I sometimes use that instead.
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yngwi

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Re: Labels toggled by Hotkey stay longer
« Reply #2 on: May 21, 2015, 04:50:43 AM »

At least, make it stay visible a while longer, this would already help a lot ^^
Thanks for your efforts and being very responsive to the community
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Kyzrati

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Re: Labels toggled by Hotkey stay longer
« Reply #3 on: May 21, 2015, 04:54:25 AM »

Setting that time was originally difficult because I kinda wanted it to be short enough that you could press it and keep moving without worrying about turning it off manually (and you could also see the cool associated fade animation). It would certainly be very easy (like a 5-second fix =p) to just lengthen the duration, but then we lose some flair. I'll think about it...

Edit: Actually, it the duration could also be an option in the options menu you could set to whatever you want...

Thanks for your efforts and being very responsive to the community

I've said this a couple times already, but it works in two directions here: The community supports me, so I support the community ;D
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yngwi

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Re: Labels toggled by Hotkey stay longer
« Reply #4 on: May 21, 2015, 05:11:11 AM »

Edit: Actually, it the duration could also be an option in the options menu you could set to whatever you want...

This :)
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Łukasz

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UI: Holding a key to keep showing screen item names
« Reply #5 on: July 09, 2015, 03:37:00 AM »

Current situation: Pressing and holding e.g. "show item names" key '3' results in a blinking behavior. Trying to read them when many items are on a screen is frustrating experience of waiting until the timeout and then pressing '3' again.

Expected behavior: While holding '3' key, the item names stay on the screen. After letting go of the key, they disappear gracefully like currently after timeout. Also this key should be mentioned in the tutorial near the relevant description of the floor items.
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Kyzrati

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Re: Labels toggled by Hotkey stay longer
« Reply #6 on: July 09, 2015, 06:14:49 AM »

(merged your topic with the previous one)

This has been suggested a number of times and is already being added to Alpha 2, so you'll see it next release :). Ideally I would've implemented back in pre-alpha, but holding that key is not normally supported by the engine, so I'll have to figure out some kind of hack or alternative.

About the tutorial, there is already a message that tells you to use the '3' key--it's shown when you get your first kill, as long as it has resulted in salvageable items. Despite the beeping and flashing, tutorial messages are sometimes missed, but I don't want to go full out and force the player to click on something to confirm. That's just annoying and breaks immersion ;)
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zxc

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Re: Labels toggled by Hotkey stay longer
« Reply #7 on: July 12, 2015, 02:10:26 AM »

What would be great is if there were an option to adjust between different delays and toggle mode. I would opt for toggle mode myself (at this stage).
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Kyzrati

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Re: Labels toggled by Hotkey stay longer
« Reply #8 on: July 12, 2015, 05:19:54 AM »

I was just mulling over this today (will be implementing soon), and was thinking of doing away with delays entirely and making it so you just hold the key for as long as you want to keep the labels up. This is what I originally wanted to do, but the engine doesn't support it very well. I think I've come up with a suitable workaround, for the keyboard anyway. No really good solution for the mouse, so I may still end up going with a delay or toggle.

Technically if you set it to a really long delay, that's the equivalent of being a toggle since you then have more or less as much time as you need to read and turn it off when done. So they can essentially be wrapped into a single option. That's also by far the easiest to implement!
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nsg21

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Re: Labels toggled by Hotkey stay longer
« Reply #9 on: July 25, 2015, 02:11:56 PM »

Can you start the "turn off" timer starting from next move? The scenario goes like this: I enter room, see bunch of things, labels pop up, I start reading, labels disappear. WTF. I press 3, labels go back, I finish reading and as I move away labels stay, obstructing the view, so I have to press 3 or esc again.
So there are 2 moments of annoyance spike when UI does something that I do not want it to do.

What I would like to happen: I enter the room, see things, labels pop up and stay indefinitely until next move. If I stopped like a deer in a headlight and read them, it is ok, they stay there for me, indefinitely. As I am done reading and move (either away or to one of the items) the timer starts and in a few moments the labels would disappear as they have served their purpose.
If on the other hand, I enter the room and not care about what is in there and proceed moving (say I am running away and looking for some cover), the timer start as I make a move and labels get out of the way as I scan for good place to hide.

If you attach disappearance of a labels to movement, it will be what player naturally wants: read the labels when he saw them first and stopped for reading and clear them out of the way as he proceeds moving. Existing "3" functionality is good, but I would also tie it to the next move: 3 turns on the labels and they stay on until next move (timer starts, so they don't disappear raight away for ambiance)
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Kyzrati

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Re: Labels toggled by Hotkey stay longer
« Reply #10 on: July 25, 2015, 08:13:22 PM »

Tying auto-label disappearance to a move is problematic since you'll often want them out of the way before deciding on a move direction, as they may be covering something important. (That behavior is also incompatible with mouse movement.)

I was thinking of making it so that if you call up labels manually, then any move will automatically remove all labels, since at that point you probably already saw the surroundings and know which way you might want to move, anyway. You'd still have to call up labels manually if you want unlimited reading time--the auto-label feature is simply to provide a quick glance when there are a few items.

In fact, now I'm wondering why I didn't already implement the "move to erase labels" feature, because I know I considered it before. I wonder if there was some other reason...

Edit: Now I remember. The game doesn't currently have a way to distinguish between auto-labels and manual labels, so trying to erase the latter automatically on movement would erase the former as well, forcing auto-labels to destroy themselves immediately while running/pathing to a destination. I'll have to add a way to distinguish the two in order to enable this feature.
« Last Edit: July 25, 2015, 08:15:18 PM by Kyzrati »
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