Better Catalog UI | Patreon Weekly #260

Hey Patrons, in this weekly I’m going to share some progress on a new UI for the journal!

This weekly also includes an audio Q&A! You can find audio timestamps at the end of this weekly.

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Especially after the most recent patreon poll, it’s pretty clear that some changes are being made to the journal, which gives me an opportunity to re-evaluate the current UI. The current list structure works okay for the current way the UI is structured, but it does not scale well to containing many items. The current way around this is to have a bunch of tabs, but that’s also at its scaling limit, so I’m changing the UI to be much more condensed.

Here's a little proof of concept image for how that looks, note that the eventual final UI might look a bit different. Tapping on each grid item will bring up the usual description window, assuming you have it identified.

This changes the grouping from one item category per tab to an entire class of things per tab. The current idea is to split items into equipment and consumables, and add a third tab for creatures! The more compact grid means it’s easier to add a bunch more things as well, so this new UI can easily contain enchantments, glyphs, curses, trinkets, alchemy produce, etc.

While names are being dropped from the main UI, I can easily solve that for things like potions/scrolls/rings using the item icons added a while ago.

I don’t have a solid plan yet, but I’ll definitely be adjusting badges in some way to compensate for this. I might just change it to something like a couple badges for each category, rather than adding a bunch more badges for all the item types.

There’s also a pretty good chance that I’ll extend this UI to other tabs such as documents as well, making them more compact. Similarly, this would make expanding much easier in the future.

Audio Timestamps

This month there were 31 questions from 9 different patrons

• 0:17 "i bravely move my queen to e2 to protect my king from your evil attack of EVIL!! what do you have to say about that?" - radiantchaos

• 0:33 "When I'm "blessed" what exactly am I blessed by? Is it of the same origin as the Ankh? Would the blessing from "thing" be the opposite of Yog?" - Chewyou

• 1:16 "what do u consider of floorgen re-rework，such as new gen rules of region&harder to find shops？" - Oxide111

• 2:13 "How frustrating for you as a creator is it when people tell you what to do, how to do things, what should or shouldn't happen? And how do you balance helpful suggestions and improvements / versus new ideas?" - Chewyou

• 4:27 "how was your day?" - Depresbian

• 5:23 "does shattered have any items/mechanics/entities that have never been buffed or nerfed, either from vanilla or from the first shattered iteration of them? for example, i think rats and gnolls have the exact same stats in vanilla pd, and i don't know if weapons like the sword have ever had balance changes since shattered's first weapon rework. if there are, why do you think their original balance states worked so well that they've never needed adjusting?" - Depresbian

• 7:36 "if shattered pixel dungeon somehow got turned into a movie, who would you want to cast as each character?" - radiantchaos

• 8:07 "I know you said a while back that you rarely get to play the game for the sake of enjoyment anymore. When you do get to play, what character and playstyle do you enjoy the most?" - Raynuva

• 9:00 "how much better do you think the rose would be if the ghost had one ring slot? what kind of nerfs might it warrant in other areas, like stats or charge speed?" - Depresbian

• 10:18 "Any plans or ideas for when or if the player curses their trinket?" - Veek

• 10:56 "I barely passed my java course from last year, and I really don't think I should've. I consider Java a good language but I find it hell to learn, do you have any advice for learning java again from scratch besides watching tutorials?" - Arclightning

• 12:17 "if you could have any mundane super power (a power that couldn't be used to become a super hero or super villain), what would it be?" - Raynuva

• 13:34 "If there were a universe where all the characters of SPD were in a party, what do you think their personalities would be? A brief DnD intro of them mid season I guess is what I'm asking about." - Little Trans Punk

• 15:38 "Any ideas or plans for more enchantments or glyphs in the future?" - Veek

• 16:50 "What are your thoughts on the overall balance of the Wands? More specifically, are the wand usage rates balanced, as well as their win rates?" - Raynuva

• 17:36 "The heros go to the bathroom in between floor right? I like to imagine there's a little restroom along the way down." - Chewyou

• 18:08 "where do the rubber backs on the pins come from? they hold much better than most of the metal-backed ones i have" - radiantchaos

• 19:07 "Are any of the artists you consult with active players of the game?" - Veek

• 20:33 "where would you place rat king on the critter/creature spectrum? is he more critter or creature, or about equal? what about yourself? (the spectrum is entirely vibes based)" - Depresbian

• 21:07 "Game play mechanics aside, what the lore reasoning for finding keys in front of doors? Have fun with it Evan, I don't wanna hear no RNG logical reason." - Chewyou

• 22:08 "What are you reading these days?" - LibraryTwink

• 22:44 "my girlfriend wants to know when shattered pixel dungeon hd with 3d 4k graphics, raytracing, and vr is coming out. oh and of course it has a battle royale mode and dubiously legal loot boxes. She also wants to know why the characters "can't read"." - Depresbian

• 23:43 "How big can the Rat King's treasure be? Both in chests and overall gold. Usually I find 3x3 rooms but today I found a 5x5." - Chewyou

• 24:25 "We have seasonal food items, why not Zoidberg!?" - Chewyou

• 25:05 "Why not more seasonal hats for the Rat King?" - Chewyou

• 25:44 "What are the requirements for having the shop keeper to have two doors? I've experienced it before but it has been a long time since, so maybe it's been coded out." - Chewyou

• 26:03 "What is your favorite weapon ability you designed? Is there one you’re still not happy with?" - Veek

•  earlygame mechanics.

• 26:41 "i remember a while back you talked about doing meditation (or something similar), are you still doing that stuff? (you dont have to include this one if you feel its too personal so dw)" - radiantchaos

• 27:14 "do u want 2 say smth abt ShPD 10th anniversary celebration？" - Oxide111

• 27:45 "have you had the grimace shake?" - radiantchaos

• king to you right now aren't I? So no.

• 27:54 "have you ever sang "99 bottles of beer on the wall" from start to finish?" - radiantchaos