PC [Project] Mechmod - A T-MEC community mod

Bahamut2001 said:
Yes
Definitely no knockback
Having the damage displayed would be more helpful than not having it displayed.

Do thorns type buffs still work? Must test this.

Edit: It does work.
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Ok! Also, what do you mean with thorns type buffs still working?
 
inomanoms said:
Suggestion: pare down the options. Less is more.

You can also incorporate things like infinite health and unlimited mana into "Godmode". Just wondering: does Godmode prevent you from drowning, burning, or any other inflicted debuffs like confusion? It would be cool if walking into mobs would be a one hit kill. But then you'd have to call it "Devilmode" :p
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The godmode suggestion has been added!

@ShadowDX

You can now click on wire with wire to send a signal!
 
That sounds awesome. Gonna see how it works and eventually come up with a new idea, but so far I think everything that was necessary was already told.
 
Nice update, the enable/disable ghost works. Is it possible to make it so that when you disable it, all other options are grayed out and can't be used? That would be like QOL
 
inomanoms said:
Suggestion: pare down the options. Less is more.

The most obvious examples here are in the wiring menu. I don't think there really is a need to be able to toggle the lighting influence on each of the different wire colours plus actuators. Nor do I see a situation where I would want wire opacity settings other than 100 or 0 %.

I would suggest to make a single menu toggle for lighting effects on wire, actuators and ghosts and a single toggle key (K maybe?) that:
  • masks and unmasks the wires of colours different than the wrench you are currently holding
  • toggles infinite wire when holding wire cutters
  • toggles infinite actuators when holding actuators, and
  • toggles the visibility of ghosts when holding target dummy
You can also incorporate things like infinite health and unlimited mana into "Godmode". Just wondering: does Godmode prevent you from drowning, burning, or any other inflicted debuffs like confusion? It would be cool if walking into mobs would be a one hit kill. But then you'd have to call it "Devilmode" :p

Some things like being able to toggle dummy IDs or dummy outlines I feel aren't necessary. Either I see the dummy ghosts with their IDs and outline when dummy ghost visibility is toggled on, or not.
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I don't know about you, but I personally enjoy lots of customization and options. The more things that can be changed, the happier I am. But that is just me, if everyone here would rather it the other way then that's fine.
Stefnotch alreaddy merged infinite health/mana into Godmode, but personally I don't like that - I'd rather be able to turn on infinite mana and wreak havok with the Last Prisim but still have to keep my wits about me - it's still ridiculously overpowered, but I can't just stand there.

Nor do I see a situation where I would want wire opacity settings other than 100 or 0 %.
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Yeah, that's a fair point. If the sliders weren't there though, they would probably be replaced with standard toggles anyway, and a slider looks ncicer and is more versatile anyway IMO.
stefnotch said:
:D Devilmode sounds awesome! (Die, bunny die!)
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Increased critter spawns is obviously essential to this.

Dane said:
Nice update, the enable/disable ghost works. Is it possible to make it so that when you disable it, all other options are grayed out and can't be used? That would be like QOL
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That's a glorious idea. Thanks!
 
five--three said:
I don't know about you, but I personally enjoy lots of customization and options. The more things that can be changed, the happier I am. But that is just me, if everyone here would rather it the other way then that's fine.
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I think a happy medium can be achieved. For example, "Godmode" could be a menu toggle, for which in a submenu the meaning of "Godmode" (all the individual cheats and abilities such as invulnerability to specific things and limitless mana) are defined and can be toggled. My point is, I think, I want to see less unless I want to see more; the options need to better hierarchicised (sp?), and for some things for which I currently need to be diving into the settings menu for, I would much prefer to have immediate in-game access (toggling wire colours).

Enjoying the Mod immensely. Thanks for all your hard work.
[DOUBLEPOST=1451987777,1451957800][/DOUBLEPOST]Further suggestions:
  • Being able to force teleport town NPCs to their housing regardless of the time of day. Useful for checking builds that incorporate NPCs as hoiking agents.
  • Being able to set and freeze time to mid-day. Being able to start time at the start of night. Useful for being able to see while building, and testing boss areanas.
  • Infinite dummies. I am always placing dummies in-game, resaving in TEdit without them, and therefore continually losing them.
 
inomanoms said:
I think a happy medium can be achieved. For example, "Godmode" could be a menu toggle, for which in a submenu the meaning of "Godmode" (all the individual cheats and abilities such as invulnerability to specific things and limitless mana) are defined and can be toggled. My point is, I think, I want to see less unless I want to see more; the options need to better hierarchicised (sp?), and for some things for which I currently need to be diving into the settings menu for, I would much prefer to have immediate in-game access (toggling wire colours).
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That's an awesome idea.
In the next few updates, this will be included in the settings menu (along with a few other tweaks). Aside from that, "immediate in-game access" is definitely something that is needed. Keyboard shortcuts are, in many respects, sub-optimal here, so what do you think of the idea of a sort of hotbar? Speaking theoretically, each toggle in the menu would include a button - when clicked, it would be added to a hotbar in the bottom-right corner of the screen. Through gameplay, these buttons could easily be clicked to toggle that respective feature. It doesn't seem to be too impossible.

inomanoms said:
  • Being able to force teleport town NPCs to their housing regardless of the time of day. Useful for checking builds that incorporate NPCs as hoiking agents.
  • Being able to set and freeze time to mid-day. Being able to start time at the start of night. Useful for being able to see while building, and testing boss areanas.
  • Infinite dummies. I am always placing dummies in-game, resaving in TEdit without them, and therefore continually losing them.
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These are all awesome ideas! What about making Target Dummies purchasable from the Merchant/Mechanic for, say, 50 silver?
 
five--three said:
These are all awesome ideas! What about making Target Dummies purchasable from the Merchant/Mechanic for, say, 50 silver?
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Genious.

five--three said:
Keyboard shortcuts are, in many respects, sub-optimal here, so what do you think of the idea of a sort of hotbar? Speaking theoretically, each toggle in the menu would include a button - when clicked, it would be added to a hotbar in the bottom-right corner of the screen. Through gameplay, these buttons could easily be clicked to toggle that respective feature. It doesn't seem to be too impossible.
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I'll let you guys decide that as. I'm sure you'll come up with something good. I just wanted to communicate a very general point of... dissatisfaction with the way the menu is now.
 
inomanoms said:
I'll let you guys decide that as. I'm sure you'll come up with something good. I just wanted to communicate a very general point of... dissatisfaction with the way the menu is now.
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Yeah - it's a very valid point ... just too many things that are too hard to get to. It's on the todo list :)
 
five--three said:
Stefnotch alreaddy merged infinite health/mana into Godmode, but personally I don't like that - I'd rather be able to turn on infinite mana and wreak havok with the Last Prisim but still have to keep my wits about me - it's still ridiculously overpowered, but I can't just stand there.
Click to expand...

I guess I am going to separate them again. (Or use a sub-submenu, as suggested by
@inomanoms )

But, how would you get into the sub-submenus? (A little button next to the toggle?)
 
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Hey everyone!

Wire highlighting is pretty simple - it will highlight a single "chain" of wire, starting from under the mouse. This is activated by holding the Mechanical Ruler (purchased from the Mechanic) or a wrench. The Mechanical Ruler can highlight wire of any color, whereas wrenches are restricted to only their color.

Wire can be used to send a signal - a normal click will trip the entire wire, or holding Alt will only activate that single block. Alt-clicking will also work regardless of whether or not the clicked tile is wired.

Dane said:
the mod creates a folder on my desktop for logs, but it's always empty. Can it not?
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Should be fixed now :) sorry!
 
I suggest your remove "Keyboard" from options until you actually implement it.

Edit: I'll just put this here: When using the gravity potion the screen goes black instead of reverting, is this a mod glitch or my game?
 
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Hey guys! I've been pretty busy recently, but all done now.
Dane said:
I suggest your remove "Keyboard" from options until you actually implement it.

Edit: I'll just put this here: When using the gravity potion the screen goes black instead of reverting, is this a mod glitch or my game?
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Mod glitch, sorry :p I fixed it recently, I don't think it made it into the release though, it'll work in the next update.
[DOUBLEPOST=1453205100,1453096317][/DOUBLEPOST]Hiya!

So, for this next update it looks like we're going to be focusing on an upgrade to the menu. This will probably include:
  1. Submenus for some options
  2. Cleaning things up a bit for less clutter an a better experience
  3. Adding the "Keyboard" menu in (depending on how 1/2 turn out, this may only be a small sub-menu
  4. (maybe) a hotbar-esqe row of toggles on the bottom of the screen (more info below)
There are a couple of different directions that we can go with these, so I'd like to run a few things by you guys to see what the best way to go is.
Starting with 1 & 2:
As @inomanoms pointed out, the menu in its current state is pretty cluttered. There's also the point of customizing certain options. For example, Godmode currently makes you completely invincible to damage, disables mana draining, and will soon protect from debuffs. But what if you don't want all that, only part of the feature? We could seperate the toggles (as they were in previous versions) but that both clutters the menu and makes it a hassle to go full Overkill on anything. I'm looking at a "happy medium": making Godmode its own single option, but enabling users to customize what that option entails somehow. Additionally, some options (wire opacity, wire lighting, dummy ghost display) are very clunky in the menu, but all have the same basic function. The best solution for this that I can see is to include a sub-submenu - grouping similar options by what they do.

These solutions are both very similar - but they are not the same thing. From a design perspective, it's important to show that there is a difference - in one subsubmenu, you're changing how a feature works & in another you're changing multiple individual features.

A whole new column of menu options would be unnesssecary overkill, as not all toggles require the third menu and if it's not being used it's a massive chunk of wasted space. I think a good way of doing it would be a small pop-up menu that appears next to the option or subcategory. This menu could be accessed by a small button to the right of the toggle - a ▶ symbol for categories (e.g. wire opacity) and a settings cog for option customization (e.g. godmode). I'm not sure if this is enough of a difference for the menu to still feel intuitive, but we'll see how it goes.
edit: I fell asleep :p sorry
3 & 4: Keyboard/Toggle Bar
Previously, in a time where the list of features of this mod was much shorter, we used keyboard shortcuts to activate certain features. This was great; it was both easy to use and unobtrusive, but also simple for us to make. However, keyboards only have so many keys, so we couldn't keep adding more buttons. Thus the menu was born - but now, it's much harder to access these features in a snap. When making the interface, I had plans to give a bit more customizability to the keyboard toggles, but they were pretty bad and would have been a pani to set up. Even so, if you can't see exactly what you have set, it can be a bit tricky to find out what a key does. I'm proposing to have a togglebar shown on the bottom-left of the screen - menu options can be set to the togglebar (shift-click, drag, button next to it?) where a nice-looking icon will display. The first 4 buttons on this togglebar would be able to be activated by remappable keys (set to L,K,P,O by default). This means that you can set your favourite options to a nifty shortcut and easily change them depending on what project you're working on.

Each option in the menu will be given an icon to represent it in the hotbar. As for putting toggles into the hotbar, a couple of options come to mind:
  1. Dragging a toggle directly from the menu
  2. Shift-clicking (or alt-clicking) a menu option
  3. Clicking an icon next to a menu option
Each of these have their pros and cons. Dragging toggles gives you nice freedom to put things where you want, but (depending on how we code it) can get in the road of trying to actually activate the toggle. Shift-clicking an option doesn't get in the road of normal use, but means that you can't see the icon until it pops up in a random place half-a-screen away from where you clicked. My art skills aren't fantastic, and while I'll try to make the icons for each options itentifiable and unique, it's better to directly see the connection between a setting and its icon as to eliminate confusion. Finally, showing a menu option's icon next to the menu option itself shows this relationship clearly, but further clutters the already-cluttered menu.

To bypass these disadvantages I'm proposing a mixture of the three - holding Shift will extend the menu's width slightly and display an icon next to each setting. This icon could be dragged to the desired location on the hotbar.

Over today, I'll whip up some 'concept code' to give you an idea of what it will look like. Thanks for reading this guys! :p
[DOUBLEPOST=1453357260][/DOUBLEPOST]Sorry! Here's a mini-demo of what the "pop-up" configuration style menus might look like. The arrow will be replaced with a settings icon once I figure out how to draw one nicely :p and it will be generally a bit more polished.
 
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