I will gather here the various ideas which are being suggested on the original r.a.i.f Usenet thread and the mailing list, add a few of my own and attempt to prioritize them. Please feel free to send feedback if you have anything to add, or would like to change any of the priority. Eventiually, some of these may be prompted to the to-do list.
| Description | Difficulty | Effort | Priority (these can be changed on request) |
| What about using plug ins to support the different i-f languages? This could be a major, major, effor to implement, but it could also save me some serious effort too. I must look into this. | |||
| Perhaps an option to act as a mapping tool only, by making non-mapping stuff invisible and disabled? |
Reasonably Easy | Medium | Medium |
| Someone suggested that I remove the ability to generate TADS code internally and add support for plug-ins which others could write to allow Plugh to generate code in any i-f language. I will look into this when I eventually get time (anyone want to make any technical suggestions?). | Sounds rather tough. | Much | Low |
| Resizeable panels on the map (configurable option)? | Easy | Medium | Low |
| I may add 'snap to grid' on the map. | Complex | Much | Low |
| I have added a 'plot' tab, with a memo form to allow one to jot ideas for game development - but what about a to-do list? with priorities. And the ability to associate each entry with a room/actor/item/other class (verb)? | Medium | High | Low |
| Also, a plot development tool, showing a sort of time line (i.e. the order of dependence of the puzzles). Question to users, how should this look? | Medium | Medium | Low |
| Allow user to rename room/item/actor 'in place', rather than using the prompt form (change the combo box style to add an edit box at top). | Easy | Little | Low |
| Add an option when generating code to warn of 'ophaned' rooms, which can not be reached by any passage. Of course, this may be intentional, with entrance being by magic word or passage created at run time. So, we could allow the user to mark rooms with a class or property which generates no code and will supress this warning. | Relatively Easy | Relatively Little | Low |
| I may add a mechanism to the Rooms/Directions tab to allow adding of oddball directions like ssw & other means of moving between rooms (like magic words). These aren't common enough to have a permanent place on the tab, like the cardinal compass points, but if I add such a mechanism, I can automatically add the corresponding passage on the map, which I can not do if the user simply adds code to the room to handle oddball directions & spells/magic words. | Medium | Medium | Low - Medium |
| Pop-up tooltips on the map, showing information about the rooms. | Medium | Medium | Low - Medium |
| Whenever a list of classes or properties is presented to the user, perhaps I could colo(u)r the text, to indicate which classes are built in & which are user defined? (or, at least add a '+' at the end of the new ones (e.g, class = elevator+). (already begun - see the class tree tab) | Easy | Little | Low - Medium |
| A splash screen? if so, make it configurable not to show. | Easy | Medium | Low |
| Some folks like the idea of a 'literal' map. If the user creates a room to the north of an existing room, they would have me place it above it on the map, if to the west, then to the left of it, etc. These same folks don't tell me what I should do if the 'correct' place on the map is already occupied. This one won't go any further until someone specifies it. It is listed here in order that it not be forgotten. Addendum: I could actually agree to do this - it is not so much effort - except for one major stumbling block: When the room is created, it is created without passages, so at that point the program does not know where it will lie with respect to other rooms. I am extremely unkeen to rearrange the map every time a passage is added, changed or deleted (which becomes a major effort).. |
Complex | High | Very low |
| Someone has mooted the idea of 'tracks' which an actor will follow. He did mention dragging the mouse over the map to specify the tracks, but I am not how I should generate them in TADS code. If more fully specified, I will consider it. Does anyone else foresee the need for such a feature? | Hiedously complex | High | Very low |
| That same suggestive someone would like to see conversation trees. Anyone else? | Complex | High | Very low |
| Is there any point in 'wizards' to create rooms/items/actors? or is the process already simple enough? | Medium | Medium | Low |
| The status line is getting rather crowded. Perhaps a new Info panel? | Easy | Easy | Medium |
| What about having icons, rather than colo(u)red boxes on the map? Of course, they would have to be bigger, so that I couldn't fit as many in. | Easy | Easy | Low |
| Someone suggested a map at the room level, so that you can know that the desk is against the west wall, the window in the north wall, etc Hmm, what about a map at building level, showing how buildings, or areas are connected (north from the forest to the castle), then a further level where you enter the area/building and see the connection of the sub-areas/rooms within it? |
Medium | Medium | Low |
| Yet another Uli Kusterer idea - if I decide to support literal maps then when the user places 2 rooms on the map and connects them, I should calculate the direction, based on the relative positions of the rooms. So long as it is an option, I could do it without too much trouble. However, I think I would prefer to not just automatically generate the passage without user intervention, but to still show the 'create passage' dialog and to have programatcially set the driections to the proper defaults, so tha the user can just click OK to accept it. This allows for cases where a room drawn further up the screen than another can be 'north' 'up' or 'out'. | Medium | Medium | Low - Medium |
| A multiple window approach, so that the user can see the map while editing the room in another window, etc This would be a major paradigm shift and would probably destablize the program (maybe V3.0?) |
Rather complex | Medium - High | Low |
| "I can envision a complex map eventually developing a lot of criss-crossing passages because rooms were not optimally placed initially. It would be very cool if an automated "untangle" function could analyze the mess and neatly rearrange the rooms to minimize crossing passages." | Rather complex | Medium - High | Low |
| What about some way to select a class and see everything which is of that class or derived from that class? To some extent this can be done with the little coloured boxes on the map, but perhaps a string grid would give a more concise overview? | Easy | Easy | Low - Medium |
| It has been suggested that the Nav Bar behavwe differently depending on what is currentlky in view. I.E, if I am currently looking at a rooom & click on an actor or an item, I should flip to editiing that actor or ite, but if I am looking at a mao & click on an actor or item in the Nav Bar, then perhaps I should simply centre the map on the room containing that acotr or item. | Medium | Medium | Low |
| Currently, each Room/Actor/Item has it's location shown & this location can be clicked to examine it (and then we can click to examine itslocation), but do we also need a list to show us tha the torch is in the briefcase which is on the chair, in the cupboard which is in the cloaroom, which is in the vestibule ? | Easy | Medium | Low |
| Allow nav Bar to dock with main window ? | Medium | Medium | Low |
| It has been suggested that the code tab of R/A/I may quickly become 'busy' and should itself be tabbed (along the bottom) e.g verbs, daemons, Flags/User-defined properties, other - or user defined? | Medium- Hard | Medium | Low |
| Hmm, an "Insert sublist" button while editing a list property? When clicked, it calls a list input-field recursively. The sublist should then be displayed in a different font or color or enclosed in braces. It should not be possible to place the cursor inside it; it should be treated as an entity of its own (like some word-processors treat cross-references or URLs). | Medium - Hard | Medium - Hard | Low |
| Borland Delphi (and C++ Builder) style property editors ? | Medium - Hard | Medium - Hard | Low |
Last updated 3 June, 2003 9:28 PM