Increase the number of toolbars or allow the player to set the number of toolbars

5URG3 commented 2 years ago

Hi Tsuna,

I really think the player needs to be able to access more toolbars.

Here is my usual toolbar setup.

toolbar

Almost all of this will remain static, except for the five free slots on toolbar one, which I have to use for everything else. This is awkward, and requires me to open the codex repeatedly when building.

Allowing the player to set the number of toolbars would be great. Maybe a value from 3 to 9.

If this is not viable, then please increase the number of toolbars to 5.

ProPeach commented 2 years ago

My toolbars look very similar, most of them are kept the same then I only have a few flexible slots for way too many other systems or logic etc. Back in the Skywanderers days we had 4 toolbars which helped out, it'd be a great quality of life improvement to have any additional toolbars

piotmetans commented 2 years ago

+1 As an additional request, I'd love to have the ability to bookmark entire toolbars. Whenever I start a new character, I need to dig through the codex to grab all the bricks I like, and I think just picking a whole toolbar from my bookmarks would be so much easier. Another use case would be if a player doesn't want a large amount of toolbars to scroll through. In this case, bookmarked toolbars can be easily hot-swapped depending on what the builder is working on in the moment.

tsunamayo commented 2 years ago

@5URG3 Hi, well my problem is just how to deal with the drag and drop when the codex is open, it would be more complex and will require a dev, but I can do it. How is it working in SE on in other game? One thing I must add is I will likely do something to "merge" items of a similar shape, for survival purpose. I do not want you to craft a hull box, then some hull wedge ect. I only want you to craft a hull, then press a key (or some other UI interaction, might be MMB or scroll + key) to swap the shape. That would mean those 5 hull shape could be merge under the same item. Likewise the other shape would merge into another category. For example we would have the two grating together, the two barrier together ect. This should reduce the number of item in the toolbar by quite a lot - but I am still need to make up my mind on the best way to do it as it will again increase the control (which I am always reluctant). => I will open a thread to talk about that because there are other thing to decide.

@piotmetans again thats it another dev, with likely some overhead with bug / issue and so on, so I will pass onto that for now...

ProPeach commented 2 years ago

SE has up to 9 toolbars, and it only shows one when you open their version of the codex The keybind is ctrl + (1-9) to change between the toolbars, then you drag and drop the icon of the block you want down to it and use the number keys to select an item 1-9 on that toolbar. Pressing 0 gives you an empty hand for clicking buttons etc (really handy feature).

With regards to the "merging", SE does something similar. You can see that there is a + symbol next to some bricks, that means there are multiple versions of the brick in that item - like conveyors, there will be a straight, curved, 6 way and T junction in one slot. iirc you use the mouse scroll wheel to choose which one you want when you hold it in your hand. It's a neat concept, but to be honest I'd be happier with just having the individual parts on my bar so I can just navigate straight to them like sevo.

edit - Looks like in SE you can either have the icons with the + on your toolbar for multiple types of bricks, or you can have the individual bricks on your bar. That seems like a nice combination

tsunamayo commented 1 year ago

@5URG3 @ProPeach Okay so I dont know if you had time to build a bit since the multi-shape variant update, do still think we need more toolbars? It should have reduced the number of slot taken by a lot. If you any feedback on the multi-shape implementation you can make suggestion too. Cheers

kynamats commented 1 year ago

I've been really enjoying building with the multi-shapes, it does reduce the amount that i have to open the codex by a lot. Personally I ran into a couple of small issues with it:

I like to scroll through my hotbars, and because of the fact that the scroll wheel also changes hotbars with shift, and changes the multi shape, i have found myself getting confused sometimes, knowing where a brick is in my hotbars but not knowing how to get to it intuitively. I'd suggest an extra (optional) keybinding for changing the multi shape could make this better.
There should be more grouping! eg: all brick systems (reactor, shield, warp), all computers, all logic gates, etc. I do think despite this that we do still need 1 extra hotbar as tools and paints will always consume at least 1 hotbar.

ProPeach commented 1 year ago

I think the idea is really nice to clean up the codex especially, and for some instances I use the multi-shape icons on my codex too. For the most part, I still definitely prefer to have most of my bricks in their single form on my toolbars, just so I can see where they are and my muscle memory can help me quickly switch to them. I find that the scroll wheel being used to change shape in the multi-shape interferes too much with regular use of the hotbar personally. So I'll use a multi-shape for bricks that I don't use often, but are nice to have on my bar. Things like the thrusters, or the pipes (apart from when I'm using the pipes for greeble, then I'll want each individually on my hotbar).

I still feel the need for an additional hotbar, especially when I make a switch to using paints or logic bricks as well as hull bricks, I run out of room and find myself having to sacrifice some bricks on the bar, only to need them again a few minutes later. So I would still love 4 hotbars please!

Another thing to perhaps mention is that the new grouping in the codex makes it more difficult for newbies to search for shapes they might want. I suggest that combined with the condensed view, when the player rolls over the item in the codex there should be a pop up window showing all of the items in that multi-slot. Then the player can grab the shape they want from the popup, or grab the main icon for the multi-shape. A bit like the old Skywanderers sub menu.

Here if I roll over the multi-shape, it only shows the cube in the popup on the right Whereas here if I roll over the multishape, I can see all the bricks in that menu individually and make my pick

Also, I don't think the ability to grab an individual brick from a multi-shape in the codex is clear enough, quite a few players were confused as to how they could do that after the update. I think the popup submenu could help with this too.

Seems like players really enjoy being able to have a mix between individual bricks and multi-shapes on their toolbar, it's a great feature that we can choose!

Kaiser-Indrasil commented 1 year ago

In Space Engineers it's solved the way I presented on the screenshot below.

Also, funny thing is, if you've got a multi-block with a + sign in the toolbar, using the scroll only scrolls through that particular block's group. And so, you can only switch through different toolbar slots with 1-9 keys.

tsunamayo / Starship-EVO

Increase the number of toolbars or allow the player to set the number of toolbars #4860