Combining menu

[mastechno]

Could we possibly add a function to split the combining into food items and crafting weapons/equipment...

Not for everyone all the time, but making it an option to split

[jupider]

As the number of combinable items in the game increases, I too would like to see the food combinables separated from the rest. Maybe a link from one of the cooking devices could take you to a Food Only Combine Items page?

On another note, I think it would be nice if when you selected a recipe from the drop-down menu, the Recipe list would populate with the ingredients (if you have them) and also indicate (somehow) what ingredients you *don't* have. Or at least the number of items that are in the recipe so you know how many turns it will take to make it.

[Gobberwart]

If I find myself being really really bored some day and desperate for some really complicated code to write, I'll give it a look. In the meantime, there's always greasemonkey if you really want it.

[Gobberwart]

Ok, so I wasn't bored and desperate, but recipes can now be grouped/filtered by the type of recipe.

HOWEVER, I have no plans to group the ingredients in any way, because I just can't do that. For one, it's too much of a hint for people who haven't found a recipe, and two - if an item is used in a food recipe AND a weapon recipe (and it could happen), how exactly would the be grouped? Yes, I COULD make the game do all the work for you, with a bucketload of code and a ton of database hits, but I'm not going to.

[jupider]

Maybe one day if I find myself being really bored and desperate, I'll learn Greasemonkey. In the meantime, I'll keep pestering you with ideas and suggestion. In true political fashion, you never really answered my question about populating the recipe textbox with individual ingredients, but if that is not possible (which I'm assuming you'll just say to get out of doing it) I have another idea: When you do make something, display/show the items used and the new amount you have left prior to the combining and result messages. It won't help with knowing what a recipe needs to be made, but it will let you know if you're low or out of something.

[Gobberwart]

No, I would never say something's impossible to get out of doing it. Very little is actually impossible, and I'm not a liar. What I will say is that it's complex and tedious and I don't feel like doing it right now. Also that I have way too much stuff on my plate to justify prioritising something like this, which falls under the category of "nice to have but not actually necessary". I HAVE put it on the to-do list and, at some stage, will probably get around to it.

As for your second request.. no, that's impossible

By which I mean sounds fair, added to the list. That's also a lot less complicated than populating the ingredients list box when a recipe is selected, so should be able to done when I have a spare few minutes.

UPDATE: Think about this for a second. What would you RATHER have: a nice bit of code that gets the list of ingredients for a recipe you select and populates the ingredients list automagically, thereby saving you from clicking "Combine" and getting a message that tells you you're out of something, OR would you rather have a class system, skills system, familiars, a bunch of quests and a ton of content? Because that's what it comes down to. If I'm working on the former, I'm not working on the latter.

[Gobberwart]

1. When you combine stuff, you'll now see what you lost and how many of each item you have remaining. Hopefully that's useful.

2. Regarding the automatic population of the recipe listbox on selecting a known recipe, as much as this isn't a priority right now, I was thinking over it on the train on the way in to work today...

There are now two similar requests, one involving known recipes, the other involving a player's last attempted recipe (useful to spaders mostly). Both of these require a javascript function that takes an array of item ids and quantities, and move the required number of each item id from the left listbox to the right list box, displaying relevant errors (ie. insufficient quantity) as it goes.

Are there any people out there with javascript experience (or general programming experience) who would be interested in taking a look at this? The existing javascript is easily obtained from the page source, so I don't see it as that much of a challenge for anyone vaguely competent.

Need motivation? If someone does this, competently, then who's the first person I'm going to look at when the time comes where I need another coder on the dev team?

If nobody takes this on, I imagine it'll get looked at by me eventually, but in the meantime... well, the challenge is there. Feel free to talk to me for further details.