First post so be gentle!
Recently, I've been playing a lot of Terraria with my brother (GoG, not Steam, if my profile confuses anyone). It's become painfully obvious that, for someone who hasn't really experienced the game before (him), the default crafting listing is pretty inconsistent. The big thing that's been striking him is that he's completely unaware that some items can even be crafted at all, mostly because they don't appear in your list unless you have all of the necessary materials in your inventory. Sure you can take an item to the Guide and ask him what can be made from it, but that's only really good for when you get something new and wonder what it does - it's not really any good if you're trying to make something you've long since forgotten about (or if the guide has wandered off... again).
The essence of my suggestion is that anything you have at least one of the items required to make it should be shown in the list. Only 1 Platinum Bar? The Platinum Shortsword, Broadsword, Bow, Helmet, Chainmail and Greaves all show up, despite all of them requiring more than a single bar. As do the Platinum Watch, Pickaxe, Axe, Hammer, Chandelier, Crown, Candelabra and Candle, as well as the Diamond Staff, Throne and Peace Candle, despite not only requiring more than one bar but also other materials. When selected, however, an indicator shows which items you are missing or don't have enough of, such as an exclamation mark behind/beside the icon or the required quantity enlarged and recoloured.
Obviously, the first instinct on this would be that it could make the crafting list HUGE. Which, if no other change was made, it would. After all, using the previous helm example, having the right bars available would mean the potential for 25+ types of armour, each with 3 pieces - over 75 items already, before taking into consideration weapons, furniture, decorations, bricks and walls made from these materials. Then there's those items with fixed requirements and results, like jars or the Obsidian Skull. This is too many to put into a grid, and far, far too many to scroll through.
Which brings me to the second part of the suggestion: a "fly out" or separate selector which allows you to pick your material of choice. In this way you don't tell the game you want to craft a Platinum Helmet - you tell the game you want to craft a Helmet, and that you want to use Platinum to do it so the end result is a Platinum Helmet. Instead of making a Dynasty Table, you create a Table from Dynasty Wood. And so on. This would unfortunately be a much larger task (in my opinion) as while many of the items are clearly already categorised to enable this (eg Helmets, Chest armour, Leg armour, mounts and grapnels, which can intelligently equip), I don't know that this is already the case with other things (chairs, tables, etc).
A welcome extension to this would be to also have separate "sections" of crafting. Basically if you made a Helmet out of Platinum, you probably also want to make the chest and legs to match, and the weapons, so all of these should have their selected material updated together. But you may not necessarily want to make Platinum Candles, and you can't make Platinum Doors or a Platinum Grappling Hook. Some of these things you'll likely make in thematic selections (tables, doors, walls, etc) which could also have their main material chosen collectively, but others will be one-off constructs (like the grapnels), so this requires some additional sorting/grouping work.
Thankyou for your time and consideration.
As an addendum, my brother's thoughts on this is that there should be a separate selector for the material you want, which then filters the output accordingly. Rather than picking which item you want and then what to make it out of, you instead select a material from a list and only items which use that material are shown. I personally feel this is less accessible as you would then have to know which material makes items that don't specify them by name, such as knowing that a Peace Candle requires Platinum or Gold, plus it would be complicated with the Tinkerer's Workshop.
Recently, I've been playing a lot of Terraria with my brother (GoG, not Steam, if my profile confuses anyone). It's become painfully obvious that, for someone who hasn't really experienced the game before (him), the default crafting listing is pretty inconsistent. The big thing that's been striking him is that he's completely unaware that some items can even be crafted at all, mostly because they don't appear in your list unless you have all of the necessary materials in your inventory. Sure you can take an item to the Guide and ask him what can be made from it, but that's only really good for when you get something new and wonder what it does - it's not really any good if you're trying to make something you've long since forgotten about (or if the guide has wandered off... again).
The essence of my suggestion is that anything you have at least one of the items required to make it should be shown in the list. Only 1 Platinum Bar? The Platinum Shortsword, Broadsword, Bow, Helmet, Chainmail and Greaves all show up, despite all of them requiring more than a single bar. As do the Platinum Watch, Pickaxe, Axe, Hammer, Chandelier, Crown, Candelabra and Candle, as well as the Diamond Staff, Throne and Peace Candle, despite not only requiring more than one bar but also other materials. When selected, however, an indicator shows which items you are missing or don't have enough of, such as an exclamation mark behind/beside the icon or the required quantity enlarged and recoloured.
Obviously, the first instinct on this would be that it could make the crafting list HUGE. Which, if no other change was made, it would. After all, using the previous helm example, having the right bars available would mean the potential for 25+ types of armour, each with 3 pieces - over 75 items already, before taking into consideration weapons, furniture, decorations, bricks and walls made from these materials. Then there's those items with fixed requirements and results, like jars or the Obsidian Skull. This is too many to put into a grid, and far, far too many to scroll through.
Which brings me to the second part of the suggestion: a "fly out" or separate selector which allows you to pick your material of choice. In this way you don't tell the game you want to craft a Platinum Helmet - you tell the game you want to craft a Helmet, and that you want to use Platinum to do it so the end result is a Platinum Helmet. Instead of making a Dynasty Table, you create a Table from Dynasty Wood. And so on. This would unfortunately be a much larger task (in my opinion) as while many of the items are clearly already categorised to enable this (eg Helmets, Chest armour, Leg armour, mounts and grapnels, which can intelligently equip), I don't know that this is already the case with other things (chairs, tables, etc).
A welcome extension to this would be to also have separate "sections" of crafting. Basically if you made a Helmet out of Platinum, you probably also want to make the chest and legs to match, and the weapons, so all of these should have their selected material updated together. But you may not necessarily want to make Platinum Candles, and you can't make Platinum Doors or a Platinum Grappling Hook. Some of these things you'll likely make in thematic selections (tables, doors, walls, etc) which could also have their main material chosen collectively, but others will be one-off constructs (like the grapnels), so this requires some additional sorting/grouping work.
Thankyou for your time and consideration.
As an addendum, my brother's thoughts on this is that there should be a separate selector for the material you want, which then filters the output accordingly. Rather than picking which item you want and then what to make it out of, you instead select a material from a list and only items which use that material are shown. I personally feel this is less accessible as you would then have to know which material makes items that don't specify them by name, such as knowing that a Peace Candle requires Platinum or Gold, plus it would be complicated with the Tinkerer's Workshop.
