[Feature] More functional area locations list

[Khat]

@Accipiter

We currently have 2 location types: room & (sub)area
As location goes, the two share similar traits; they have a name, a map position, a population.

This has mainly been the reason for mixing them in the list.
But I admit GUI wise, their difference is far from obvious. I have multiple times gotten the question why some “rooms are white”. So, I am up for improving it!

…

Because how exits work, I currently don’t reveal the destination for exits through the API. One reason why exits doesn’t show their destination is because I don’t plan for it to always have one single destination. With the coming (in the future) of scripts, exits may or may not take you to the ‘default destination’ that you configure for the exit.

This approach makes sense from a categorical standpoint, and since there are some technical hurdles in the way, rooms and sub-areas lack any distinguishing factors in this context; so it sounds like this one belongs in the “large effort for insufficient gain” bin. Maybe when we have access to some of the API changes you intend on making in preparation for Lua scripting and linkages and such, this could be re-approached.

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@Accipiter

Maybe we should have short desks for rooms too that you can see when hovering a location pin?
Hmm, or maybe short desc should be a Location property instead of area/room property…? Let me think about that

I think this would be a nice little addition, if only to homogenize the list’s behavior. Probably not especially valuable, so whether or not that is simple to implement would definitely weigh heavily on my mind in your shoes.

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@Accipiter

I prefer the idea that you have to be in a place to actually see its description. The same with characters descriptions. While being able to see a room without going there can be convenient, I’d rather want inconvenient exploration instead
Kind of like why people use lead/follow instead of summon/join.

lead/follow is wonderful, and things like it are definitely one of the factors contributing to the spatiality of MU*s in general. We don’t, after all, generally ask our friends in wetspace to travel on our behalf to later offer a teleport, we simply come along with them!

Actually, this came up at some point but it seemed too small to write a whole thread for: Would it be practical to remove the party size cap and instead display group arrivals/departures in one line? Or is this a limitation of how such notices are delivered in the backend?

Khaterín arrives.
Buddy arrives together with Khaterín.
Chum arrives together with Khaterín.
Pal arrives together with Khaterín.
Friend arrives together with Khaterín.

vs.

Khaterín arrives with Buddy, Chum, Pal, and Friend in tow.

Regardless, I can see why you want to be careful about incentives and information accessibility. Just a few tweaks can interfere with Wolfery’s illusion of spatiality, especially given modern expectations for omnipresence in apps such as Discord where users can keep tabs on any number of channels at once.

I do think that, for lack of either travel-on-click or look-through features, the area page remains an obscure and inscrutable interface. I cannot, for example, find the Silver Crescent in Do’nezo, and I don’t know whether that is because the exit is hidden or if I’ve repeatedly walked right past it.

Exit links on the map could help with such things, along with some of the other improvements to the map we’ve talked about already in the other thread. Perhaps being able to hide a room or sub-area from the locations list while still being attached to the overarching area could make this a little clearer; if the Silver Crescent is merely rumored in the area description, it’s more of a treasure hunt than a session of confused wandering.

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@Accipiter

From a technical point, the “mutual watchers” option is far from trivial to achieve, nor would I want it. Such a feature would start leak info about who is watching who, which is something I’d rather avoid:

“Hey! Why can’t I see your room, but mrX can see it? You are watching him but not me?!”

However, it would be possible to make a “Show character location for all” setting.

That’s a good point; I hadn’t considered that. I think an opt-in global setting like that is useful for its own reasons, seeing as folks are unlikely to accept an unsolicited join request from someone they’ve never spoken to before, but had they arrived on their own and initiated an organic scene I would call that the MUCK working as intended.

That doesn’t as much address the steady stream of explorers passing by, but it sounds like that is less a problem and more an unavoidable consequence of spatiality. I usually leave arrival/departure toasts on even in high traffic areas, which is, at worst, an overstimulating nuisance that I can just turn off when I need to.

Maybe the toast notifications could be delayed for a few seconds and gagged if they depart within the grace period? Still have a notice in the log and such. That feels like a really comprehensive solution to a not very big deal, though, so .