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[Anticheese]

The way it is now you might order one of your workers to build a bridge. However you want to build the bridge out of a certain type of material, you know that there is plenty of it scattered around your fortress so you choose a certain stone. However the dwarf walks halfway around the fortress to pick it up, wasting valuable time.

This suggestion is all about making the choosing material screen more user friendly.

As it is right now the screen for choosing building materials looks like this:

Image 1

You are just presented with a list of items.

I believe that the screen would be more useful if you were simply presented with a list of available construction materials, how many there are and how far away they are from your current position.

Image 2

I know that it is not a very good mock up, but all the same I believe that it would make construction a lot more painless.

Constructive criticism is welcome.

--

P.S - I'm not sure how builders choose the particular stone to work with at the moment, is each unit of material assigned its own selection box? Or do the dwarfs just jump to the nearest one?

[ April 10, 2007: Message edited by: Anticheese ]

[prklts]

Good thoughts, Anticheese. To this I would add that it would be nice to have pageup / pagedown help us scroll faster through a list of items. As it is now, it just scrolls our view of the world (even if we're trying to select building materials).

Tim

[Captain Mayday]

use * and /

[Anticheese]

He's right, we already have a pageup/down feature in DF buildmode.

Also for clarification: The numbers on the left are how many units of said rock are left over, being colour coded to make it easier. The numbers on the right is the distance from the buildsite the nearest rock is.

And before you say anything, I only put in random values for that one.

As an aside thought, what font does DF use? I used Ariel in Bold with some anti aliasing for the new and improved numbers, but any mockups I do in the future could be better if I knew exactly what I need to use.

[prklts]

Nuts. I had mentioned this on another thread, and another kind poster pointed out the * and / feature, and I hadn't seen it yet.

Don't mind me, folks. Just another n00b. =\

Tim

P.S. Thanks for the help!

[TerminatorII]

Hehe I brouht this up nearly two hours before you  

Here

[Anticheese]

Not really, they are two totally different ideas. You want to be able to choose what to encrust, I want to make construction in general more user friendly.

Besides, I've got pictures    

EDIT: Oh. I spoke too soon..your post is at the BOTTOM of the thread.

Well, at least this thread is dedicated to the idea..

And besides..pictures!

[ April 11, 2007: Message edited by: Anticheese ]

[Xeirxes]

terminator, i'm pretty sure this is a different thing

[BikingBear]

Dunno if this has been mentioned before...
How about listing the materials by stockpile?
so that the material selection screen would first list the relevent stockpiles i.e.

stockpile #23
stockpile #13
stockpile #45
unassigned material

any materials not in a stockpiles would be listed under 'unassigned material'
Selecting a stockpile with +/- would then list all the items in that stockpile.

[TerminatorII]

Just giving you a hard time.

[schnobs]

The original poster's suggestion is far more to my liking than the "by stockpile approach". I don't think we even need to know the distance.

Just type and amount, like:
Gneiss 47
Onyx  11
...and so on. A seperate entry named "rock" would possibly come in handy, too. The figures aren't even stricly necessary and could be considered an information leak, though: usually you need a bookkeeper to see such a detailed rundown. Most of the time you ought to have enough of any materialy anyway, really.

The architects would then go after their building materials the same way as a worker in a workshop would: just pick the closest item (though there's a few gotchas, too, but what the heck).

[thebear]

That interface would be a great improvement. I hate having to build the road, because I know it will involve excessive scrolling.

[Mechanoid]

Combining raw stone into this isn't new, but the distance from build site is. A very good idea for later on, when you have blocks and bars everywhere.

[BikingBear]

The advantage with a stockpile approach is that  a custom stockpile can be built near a construction site - for example a stockpile set to only receive stone blocks.
When that stockpile has a couple of bins of blocks you can start to build your road or bridge and tell your dwarves to take material only from this local stockpile.

The problem with the 'quantity' 'item' 'distance' system is that every stone and block is a different distance and if the distance isn't stated you'll still be asking your dwarves to collect materials from anywhere and everywhere.

[Mechanoid]

It's automatically assumed that the dwarf would take the material from the safest, closest source, be it stockpile or otherwise.