[Feature] More functional area locations list

[Khat]

@Jagrabbit

As far as separating sub-areas from rooms however, I disagree with splitting the two. The feature is intended to be a list of all rooms contained within an area , even if some of those rooms are grouped up as a sub-area. Not really all that different from folders and files on a computer.

In that case, I think another way to do this would be to sort them above rooms, as we generally expect file browsers to do with folders. There really is no way to know the difference, aside from the text color, which means nothing to users who haven’t experimented a lot with the interface or building tools and such, since it’s sort of niche and undocumented.

I dig a little bit deeper into what I think this could look like here:

@Khat

We could sort locations based on navigability first, then alphabetical, displaying all sub-areas on top, then all rooms with an accessible exit, and finally those rooms beyond reach or whose exits are hidden.

But if areas remain a part of the same list category while adding a third mechanically-distinct list item, we will need a better signal than text color for whether an item describes an accessible room, an inaccessible room, or an area. Perhaps section headers could be inserted in the list for each of nearby locations, sub-areas, and other rooms.

---

@Jagrabbit

Considering the idea, remote viewing of rooms may also be undesirable other than nearby locations for the sake of privacy. Area owners may desire privacy to inaccessible areas. if a user can’t see an exit, it’s probably best not to let them view into the room they can’t otherwise get into, regardless of them knowing it exists somewhere .

@Khat

Perhaps clicking on a room with an accessible exit leading to it should open its own description page

---

@Jagrabbit

Question is, do we simply allow one-click travel or do we make people click twice to unnecessarily view the room first every time? Might get clunky with extra clicks all the time. Having remote room viewing might be best to keep to a small side button (eyeball or something?) or avoided entirely for the sake of simply having clickable travel to nearby locations . I know that functionality wise, I’d prefer to have single click travel.

I agree, traveling through the exit on-click and saving the look-through option for a separate button off to the side (like we have for character notes in the awake list) would be a wonderful way to minimize unnecessary clicking. Much better than opening a page and clicking a button up top. I imagine it’s a little less work to implement, too.

My question is whether we should be concerned about the change in behavior; people are currently accustomed to rooms in the area locations list doing nothing but auto-panning the map. How can we make that transition smoother? Or is this something that’s not much of a concern?

---

@Jagrabbit

Unless we’re letting people see who is in remote rooms and introducing that loss of privacy along with it, I’m not sure how much value we gain in remote room view - tackling that matter is its own can of worms however. Lots gained by allowing people to find out where people are without having to dash around frantically, but also some loss of privacy if people don’t have lockable areas to go with privacy tagged rooms.

I definitely lean in favor of simply omitting the present characters list when viewing a room remotely. Players already have access to the population of each room in the world, and it sounds like Accipiter intends to add a population heatmap to further advertise that information. I think that’s a good enough gauge of whether it’s worth visiting a room to see what folks are up to without deprivatizing character locations.

The utility, however, in enabling players to remotely view rooms (and, ideally, areas and sub-areas too) is in permitting folks to explore the world of Wolfery without spamming rooms with intermittent …

Khaterín arrived.
Khaterín left.

… messages. We can mute these and that helps, but I think that I do want to know when people arrive … and intend on staying. So reducing this demographic of ephemeral traffic (people who are probably not interested in getting involved in any incidental scenes anyways), is ideal to that end. It also offers some privacy to folks who don’t want to be noticed when all they’re trying to do is figure out the lay of the land.