Alternate Toolbar System - Community Theorycraft Project

Greetings Devpeoples,

This post is part of the Community Theorycraft Project. Something where multiple members of the community gather together to discuss existing and potential new additions to the different elements of this wonderful game. Things we'd like to see, we'd like to change, and ways to go about doing so.

This particular post is in regards to expanding player controls and versatility through the implementation of an Alternate Toolbar system. We shall list a way this particular system could function in Nightingale, as well as thoughts on expanding what sorts of things could be placed upon the Players Toolbars.

Through some creative use of very basic things (paint is fun!), we’ve also made a mock-up of what this kind of Alternate Toolbar could visually appear like upon the Players screen (see the attached image), to help give a frame of reference for just the sort of thing we’re talking about.

As always, we would like to thank you for your time and continued development of this wonderful game we all love.

Alternate Toolbar System

So, what is it?

Essentially, it’s additional selectable toolbars that function in addition to the primary fixed toolbar.

We envision this Alternate Toolbar being placed directly above the existing one.

Placing things on the Alternate Toolbar works just the same as the primary one, drag and drop.
To use the things placed upon it, we’ve envisioned two possible ways for this.

The first is that the Player holds down the Alt key, and hits the corresponding number for the Alternate Toolbar slot they want.

The second is that the Alternate Toolbar slots are mapped to the Function keys, F1-F8. Doing this would remove the need to hold down a separate key to activate it, but would also require rebinding the existing F# key uses to the F9-F12 keys instead, such as F2, F4, etc.

Both options are solid in usefulness, and our thoughts are a bit mixed on what would be the ideal best one of the two. Whichever one is done, we’d ask that changes be made to allow for the Player to rebind things easily to use the other option, that way people can pick whichever one works easiest for them!

And that’s the most basic gist of it, new toolbar, new hotkeys, improved accessibility.

But that isn't all of it, in addition to the single extra toolbar, we actually envision this having multiple Alternate Toolbars.

In the image we’ve attached, we’ve placed an up/down arrow icon along with a number to the left side of the Alternate Toolbar.

Whilst the Player holds down the Alt key, they can instead hit the up/down arrow on the keyboard, or the up/down button on their controller. Doing so will scroll the Alternate Toolbar to the next one, with the number changing to show exactly which toolbar is currently active. How many could there be? At the most, we feel like single digits in number would be more than enough. Whether that’s 3, 5, or 9, we don’t know what would be the most ideal, or what would take the most effort to implement.

This would allow massive freedom to the player in how they want to set up their quick access toolbars, over what we currently have at this time.

Having the ability to have multiple toolbars, each custom tailored to what the Player values the most, gives us so much accessibility that it would honestly be hard to put into words.

Players could set up toolbars for different activities, a Farming toolbar, a Lumberjack toolbar, a Mage toolbar, a Survivors toolbar. The list is huge, and the ability for any Player to customize it however they like would be the pinnacle of customization.

But that’s just the basic foundational element for the system. That’s what gives people the ability to use the system easier.

Now comes the next most important part of the Alternate Toolbar system, expanding the things one can put on the new toolbars! What’s the good of having all this extra space if there aren’t things there to use it!

We envision significant improvements to many processes and aspects that could be made to use this new system, and we’ll list many of them below.

Note: During the listings below, at a few points we’ve made references to removing the radial menus for certain things. We understand that from a controller-use standpoint, radial menus are -very- user friendly, and so having a way to both allow for radial menu uses and the Alternate Toolbar System for those desiring so would be highly desirable.

Remove Primary/Off Hand Slot Restrictions

At the moment, the Players toolbar is currently separated into two parts, the left being the items that can go in the Primary hand, or two handed weapons, and the right being what goes in the Offhand.

With opening up the accessibility being foremost in mind, we’d ask that this separation be completely removed, and allow the Player to put any item in any of the slots available. No more separation. Let the Players decide what goes where, after all different players can have very different priorities and gameplay styles they’d want to use or try. So let’s enable that, and fully break open the toolbar to allow this!

Casting Enchantments

At this time, for a Player to cast an enchantment, they must use the R menu to do so. To change between enchantments, it’s either use the Radial R menu, or swap weapons.

Both ways are very clunky to use in combat, take significant time, and honestly have very limited usefulness, since each tool can only hold 3 Enchantments, and if the desired one isn’t already selected when swapping tools, then it means also having to use the Radial R menu.

So, let’s just remove the radial menu entirely, and allow the Player to place all available Enchantments on the Toolbar instead.

This will allow all Players to cast a spell with a quick button press, rather than holding the R key, waiting the time needed, selecting the enchantment with the mouse, and then waiting for the game to acknowledge the selection and let you cast it, or swap weapons, or both.

That’s a massive improvement!

To accommodate this, in the Players inventory, we would ask that in the Inventory menu there be placed an Enchantments tab, with icons for each Enchantment placed there. The icons are greyed out when the Player doesn’t have the corresponding Enchantment equipped on a tool, and are coloured in when they do, allowing it to be easily moved and understood that it is available.

To put the Enchantment into the toolbar, the Player goes to this menu, then drags the icon from there into their toolbar slot, and done!

This kind of menu system also enables a future possibility of having items with more than 3 Enchantments, or putting Enchantments on other items, such as also having an Off-hand item (like a lantern) be able to hold enchantments. One of the biggest limiting factors for these options is key bindings and usability, which the Alternate Toolbar system also addresses by its very nature, and enabling even further creativity of design in the future is something we as Players couldn’t be happier for!

Seeds

As part of a completely unaffiliated feedback, another community member suggested a wonderful idea for seed icons to be replaced / updated with seed packets, each carrying an icon for the plant type they represent, to allow the Player to easily find and distinguish the seeds they want just by visuals.

We actually love this idea, and would whole-hearted desire for this change to occur.

You can find that particular feedback here below, which we highly encourage everyone to visit and support!

Seed Packet Icon: https://playnightingale.ideas.aha.io/ideas/RRFEEDBACK-I-878

For the Alternate Toolbar system, we would envision being able to place these seed packets into the Toolbar directly, and to be able to plant these seeds using this, either through a unique system or for them to be considered 1-hand objects held in the primary or off-hand, and “placing” them into pots / etc using left click.

Survivor Actions

For a long time there has been experienced a mild frustration at the complexity and sometimes wonky Survivor activities. Having them run back and forth without a stop making it difficult to even tell them to stand still, or get to their inventory, as one prime example.

For this, we envision something in a manner similar to Enchantments, that there be a Survivor Actions tab placed within the Inventory menu for the Player.

Within this tab are a selection of available survivor actions with appropriate icons that can be dragged and dropped into the Players toolbar, allowing them to interact with their survivor simply using the toolbar numbers.

We envision these being realistic, however. Not like “I can magickally open inventory miles away” kinds of things. We’ve included a short list of things that can be in this menu, and we’ll actually be submitting a separate CTP topic at a later date focusing on significantly expanding survivor usability!

Some Survivor Actions:

• “Come Here!”

• “Stand Still”

• “Work Here”

• “Attack!”

• “Move Here”

• “Toggle Harvesting”

The potential list for this is honestly massive, so we’ve only listed a handful.

Having Survivor Actions placed upon the toolbar will grant to the Player significantly improved controls, and may even set the groundwork for expanding the Survivors combat commands, allowing for complex coordinated maneuvers and attacks, and maybe even for handling multiple Survivors!

For commands that would require selecting a location (such as the “Move Here” command), we envision when hitting the key to activate the command, it provides a marker tied to the Players mouse, allowing the Player to position it exactly where they want to, and when placed the Survivor attempts to path there normally. Underneath it could also be an arrow pointing to denote facing, which could be rotated using the mouse scroll wheel, giving exceptionally fine control.

For commands that require selecting a target, it could use the similar “proximity” system used for spell targeting; when you point near a creature, it snaps to them, allowing you to easily click to confirm the target, whilst also having the benefit of using an already existing mechanic to allow for easier implementations (we hope).

Survivor Voice Interactivity Idea:

Following on from the Survivor Actions idea was that for each of these available survivor actions, for these to essentially be voice commands. At character selection each Player selects from a voice set list. We would love for that voice set to actually speak these commands out loud when used, giving the Player another layer of immersion to the interaction of Players / Survivors.

If this additional element was able to be considered, we wonder whether it would be possible for our Survivor to even respond vocally to the command, such as with an “Affirmative” / “Yes!” / “On my way!”

Having their voices suit the available body types within the game, and maybe even different voice sets for each for all the available Factions one could recruit survivors from, to give added diversity to the vocal aspect. Having a Calcularian respond differently from a Druid or Hermetic, would be wonderfully engaging.

Again, simply another element to build connections and immersion with the Player and the world at large, it’s definitely optional, but it’s an option we would absolutely love!

Survivor Weapons

Similar to how Players can place their weapons onto the toolbar, we could also envision being able to drag/drop the weapons from our Survivor onto the toolbar as well.

This would allow us to provide our Survivors with multiple weapon options, such as a Maul for close range, a Rifle for long range, and for us to easily and quickly “tell” our Survivor to swap weapons.

This again expands the usefulness of our Survivors in combat, and could also benefit from the “Voice Command” / “Out Loud” element as we listed above. The more immersive our experience, the better!

Clothing

Being able to place clothing items upon the toolbar may allow for the Player to carry separate clothing items with them to take advantage of specific game environments. Bringing a ranged glove to use with Alpha strike shots, and a melee glove to swap quickly to when things get dicey, or a heavily fire resistant cloak just for Kyrosiphon Bound.

Placeable Items

Having pre-built placeable items such as bait traps, hunting traps, bear traps, and other objects that the Player could craft in advance, and throw or place upon the ground quickly and easily.

Having such items be placeable upon the toolbar would again provide significant accessibility and ease of use, enabling such items to be a definite consideration for future implementations!

This could even be expanded, having things like the Pepys Box being a pre-built item the Player can place upon the toolbar, reducing the necessity to navigate menus and sacrifice multiple inventory slots just to carry the parts needed to build the item.

We don’t see the Crude Remote Realmic Transmuter being small enough to basically fit in a Players backpack, but with future technological improvement (courtesy of the Calcularians!), perhaps a Refined Remote Realmic Transmuter could!

Ammunition

Within the community and this feedback forum, we’ve often seen the desire to be able to easily and efficiently switch up our ammunition, without having to use the often clunky radial system.

With having massively increased toolbar space and customizability, it could be considered to allow ammunition to also be placed here!

This would allow the Players to easily and effortlessly swap ammunition on the fly, without needing to sacrifice significant combat time just to navigate the menus.

Tile Set Pieces

One of the banes of quick and efficient construction is having to perpetually return to the Build menu to pick a construction piece, or else search around for something to hit Q on.

Being able to place tile set blueprints onto the Players toolbar will grant significant construction accessibility, especially for complex or large builds. This can even be extended to include other buildables, such as chests, lights, etc.

Many of us have done significant large scale and complex constructions, so we know the pain of having to open menus just for a single piece that isn’t near by, or making a mistake and having to remove something only to be reminded that we’ve got to go back into the menu to select the piece again (or else spend eternity spamming Q).

Granting the ability to include the Building aspect to the Players toolbar using this system would be a definite step towards more efficient and painless constructions, something we think everyone could get behind!

Contributors:

Kahz, Koriania, Lunarhound, Shrike, Tepetkhet, Zeratica