… Now, back to control options.
It is worthwhile to ensure that more common actions are more accessible, rather than listing everything at the same level.
Be aware of the difference between interface actions, which work first time, and in-game actions, which can fail and may have to be repeated.
It’s not unreasonable to re-open the menu for each attempt, which fails less often with progress, or it could be left open until successful or manually closed.
Dbl-LeftClick: Main Usage action.
RightClick: Drop, Transfer, and Auxilliary actions.
Ctl-LeftClick(?): Stats & Menu.
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- Drop here (At the top because universally applicable)
- Repair
- Dismantle. Needs to display what items would be recovered. “X-like” ingredients are presumably lost rather than potentially transformed e.g. stripped bark -> poor spear -> seaweed. Other components might be degraded.
- Snuff out (torch).
- Empty water bottle.
- Advanced (submenu)
- Equip, or Equip [Left] [Right].
- Quickslot [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]
- Reserve/Release [Item] [Type]. Hides/Frees items from consumption by crafting. An alternative to drop-craft-recollect for those who want the control.
- Info. Facts common to all items of the same type. Mainly for players who haven’t memorised them yet. This is where players go to drill into all the details.
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Interface/Info tasks:
Durability, Weight, and Groups are displayed immediately above the menu, so players can refer to them as they consider their actions.
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In-game frequent tasks:
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In-game infrequent or item-specific tasks: (Place under “Advanced” if toplevel menu gets cluttered.)
Hover (non-crafting):
Durabilty and Weight at the top, as the most frequently referenced stats.
Then Groups and Use/Equip* options in a separate section, with an option for advanced players to hide that part.
Hover (crafting):
Skill, Level, Usage*, Groups.
Recipe.
Description indicating the point of having it, so the player can quickly see whether it’s relevant to their interest.
Weight. (Sometimes crafting is about losing weight)
Detailed Use/Equip* options and stats, for an informed decision.
* “Usage” simply states whether it works as e.g. equipment, furniture, appliance, component, ground etc. without additional stats.
* “Use/Equip”, or “Physics” e.g. tall/short/non-blocking, and flammable for affixables.
(Note: with affixing as Main Usage action of affixables, flammable affixables could be Combustible on Right-Click)
Generic messages (“Edible”, “Throw” etc.) could be handled as links to definitions rather than always displayed.
I haven’t gone into the various info categories, but I suspect some tidying up will be appropriate in future.
Okay, that’s far enough off-topic and far too much already 😮