[aquaria] Minor improvements suggestions

[Dustin Voss]

On Jun 24, 2010, at 1:10 PM, breversa wrote:

> Here are some toughts about gameplay improvements :
> 
> 
> - Tweak the cooking interface to be able to cook several dishes at a time.
> 
> This could be achieved by adding a "+" and "-" buttons next to the
> result of the cooking to select the number of dishes to cook. Of
> course, the maximum would be equal to the smallest amount of needed
> ingredients.
> 
> Example :
> If you have 6 eggs and 3 fish oils, you could only make a maximum of 3
> sea cakes a time.

I don’t think we should add additional controls; that would make the UI too complex for a gamepad. However, if there are more ingredients of the selected kind, we could keep them in the ingredient slots, and then the user could simply press the cook button repeatedly to get the same dish again. The better UI would probably to empty the slots but then refill them, to show something was consumed.


> - Slightly tweak the minimap so that the white or red circles are
> shown as (small) direction arrows, unless the corresponding
> exit/crystal is "within range" of the minimap.
> 
> I've seen new players get confused by a red circle they tought was
> near, while it was in fact at the other end of the area. If they had
> seen an arrow (or anything else), they would have tought "Alright,
> there's a save crystal in this direction, but it may be very far, so
> let's not rush there carelessly", while the circle provoqued a
> confusing "Am I there yet ?" feeling while looking for it.

This is a good idea. I’m not sure how the white circles are supposed to work anyway. Are they exits from the current map? Unexplored areas?


> - More than 2 pyramid markers colours in the map ?

I don’t see a need for this. Even 1 marker would be fine, because you can label them whatever you like.


> - Still in the map screen : displaying visited/unvisited zones in
> unselected areas (like in selected area, but of course in dimmer
> colours)

No strong opinion either way. But I would like the map to be scrollable.


> - Lastly, a kind of log of narrations would prevent those "Now, what
> was I supposed to do ?", or "What did Mithala tell me again ?"
> moments, especially if you stopped playing for quite a time (several
> days, weeks, months…).

This would be nice, just to remember what has happened, but most of that is flavor text so I don’t know if it would actually inform your decisions.