Spiral Knights - Regarding the interesting new Alchemy Paths of gunner gear

Regarding the interesting new Alchemy Paths of gunner gear

65 replies [Last post]

Thu, 12/04/2014 - 09:50

Dracora-Speaking

I have a design in mind, but I likely won't be able to get to it until this weekend. In the meantime, the 800px width restriction seems to work pretty well for fixing line breaks, vs. 50%.

New design in my head involves:
merging direct repeats into a single image
adding small headers to distinguish families (such as "pathfinder," "sentinel," "shade").
and a few other things.

Should reduce visual clutter - we'll see.

EDIT:

Well, padded is quite a monstrous little devil!

So far, we have had wonderful editors produce these options:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Our classic path look, with new variables for new things.

Modified to look much more like a tree.

-PRO
--this is something that actually should have been done from the start. So gunner update aside, this improvement is just a great thing in general!

--it will take care of most alch path conditions easily, without too much editor hassle making things smoother for people who want to help, but aren't too coding savvy.

-CON
--vertical whitespace. Standard icon sizes in the center of larger (sometimes very huge) vertical cells are not so great. This is only an issue for items that have large trees.

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A grid.

-old path format possible: yes!

-new paths/design possible.
-explanatory image- a thought process

-PRO
--dynamic to suit our needs, while taking up minimal space.

-CON
--potentially very complex, (even overwhelmingly) complex, when it comes to simplifying for general use. We want editors to be able to consistently plug and chug things on pages, and getting this template to work that way might prove to be either impossible, or just not worth our time.

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Suggestions we could (and might have to) incorporate:

-headers for distinct families (like shade/sentinel/pathfinder)

-show/hide for huge trees, but only partially within the alch path pagespace, not the entire alch path.

-option to not show item name to conserve space and avoid making template appearances ugly.

Thu, 12/04/2014 - 10:55

Bopp

why?

Sorry, but I haven't seen these alchemy paths. Why do we need a new approach to showing alchemy paths on the wiki?

Thu, 12/04/2014 - 12:52

Dracora-Speaking

@Bopp

They have unusual branching, in that they branch multiple times. Icytea is working on a potential table on the Padded Cap page.

Thu, 12/04/2014 - 12:57

Bopp

just a big tree

As far as I can tell, what's happening at Padded Cap is just that the alchemy tree is really big, because there's so much coming off a 1-star root. My vote is to show the alchemy tree in its full glory, with no widespread changes to wiki styling, at least in the immediate future. Or is there something in the templating that prevents this?

Thu, 12/04/2014 - 13:36

Dracora-Speaking

@Bopp

there will be no widespread changes. There is something in the template plug-n-chug format that prevents tidy organization of a multi-branching tree. It's not that it's really big, that wouldn't cause any issues. It's that it branches in an unusual way - that's what's causing the trouble. The example table Icytea has put together isn't an elaborate, layered, named template - if you look at the code on the page, it's skcells and rows - he's done a good job of making it look like the alchemy path template at a glance, I just think that it could be a bit tidier/intuitive before we put it into plug-n-chug format.

Thu, 12/04/2014 - 22:32

Skepticraven

↓

For the interest of organizing information, I'm more of a fan of the "grouped" method.
Klipik made a graphic to try and group them their own way that makes sense.

Theres a total of 24 5* sets, which would be rather intimidating to try and sort through.

My vote is to leave the alch tree as it normally is.
Additionally, add a bit of explanation to help the readers through the big list. Something like below:

1* to 2* branches armor type [pierce/ele/shadow]
2* to 3* branches status resist/weak type [freeze/fire/poison/shock]
3* to 4* does no branching
4* to 5* branches damage bonus against monsters [2 +2 vs monsters and 1 +1 general damage increase]

Thu, 12/04/2014 - 14:40

Dracora-Speaking

@skeptic

It will look...something like that yes. But more wiki-oriented of course.

The tree won't change at all really - we'll just be adding slots for the multibranching, just figuring out how without breaking things. Hidden Ifexist stuff is similar.

Thu, 12/04/2014 - 17:43

Dracora-Speaking

Well Then

Had some fun trying to get things to do what I want, but they didn't.

Anyway, I've modified icytea's table in the Alchemy Path Sandbox Page. Simply merged the repeat items so that they branch clearly.

I'll be working below that table with a template trying to compress things and make them easy to plug-n-chug. As far as I can tell, we'll either just have to use special tables for special items, or add in elaborate switches to the existing path template. Which option is preferable?

Thu, 12/04/2014 - 17:49

Bopp

great

That table looks truly great. For years I've been waiting for the alchemy trees to be displayed as trees (rather than rows, with multiple entries redundant across rows). Please institute this change wiki-wide as soon as you're confident that all of the kinks have been worked out.

Thu, 12/04/2014 - 18:21

Dracora-Speaking

@Bopp

oooooooh you want wikiwide now? hehehe. mwahaha. MWAHAHAHAHAH.
*cough*
Okay :3

but first, feedback on the "icons only" table when I'm finished with it - this would only apply to items which have ridiculously long names, forcing a long table width. The rest of the tables can stay the same (or be modified to be icons only if we like it).

put note at top for how to use table. Mouseover, and click for more info, the basics.

Please note that the initial clarity of an icons-only table relies on distinct icons being present, which we do not have uploaded as of yet.

Thu, 12/04/2014 - 22:31

#10

Skepticraven

↓

I'm a fan of the tree as well.
If I find time laying around somewhere, I may attempt to template it up in a generic form. [Maybe over the weekend?]

Edit: As a note... theres 3 variations of each 5* branch. Damage vs 2 monsters and general damage. I've also edited my previous post to reflect that.
The "test" charts are missing the general damage ones. [Referencing patch notes to show there are 12 sacred of each type.]

Sat, 12/06/2014 - 21:55

#11

Skepticraven

↓

I'm close to making a tree-style template for the alchemy. Mostly all that is left is formatting and uniform spacing.

Take a look over here.
I chose the brandish tree because its got the craziest stuff [cautery stops at 3*, silent nightblade has 1 branch, everything else has 1 branch to 5*].
Look good yet? I feel like the code for it looks pretty clean and can be documented easily on the template page when I'm done.

Sat, 12/06/2014 - 22:20

#12

Dracora-Speaking

@Raven

yeah, looking great. I'll nitpick the details (like border colors and lining items up with stars) later.

Sat, 12/06/2014 - 22:53

#13

Skepticraven

↓

Found how to line it up with the stars. I just moved the star header into the first nest of the table. Just needs some coloring and possibly some text/image aligning. Might have to set a standard height in the template to get that to work. I put in an equation that multiplies it for testing later on.

Sun, 12/07/2014 - 06:25

#14

Bopp

looks great, but

It looks great. Really clean. I have one tiny, tiny nitpick. The cell for Acheron is much smaller than the other 5-star cells, because (A) it shares space with Obsidian Edge and (B) its name is so short. Can you enforce some kind of minimum cell size, so that all 5-star items have roughly the same visual heft?

Sun, 12/07/2014 - 06:25

#15

Bopp

looks great, but

Sun, 12/07/2014 - 06:59

#16

Skepticraven

↓

Yah, just need to pick a standard pixel count in the template. Its currently set at 40, which is obviously too small. I'm not good at measuring stuff so would need a good value to stick in there. Keep in mind it should be large enough to handle the longest named item [which is probably Sacred Snakebite Sentinel Armor].

Hopefully the standard pixel count will also resolve the misaligned items in the same row [blazebrand is above combuster].
It seems that the previous templates got around doing that by vertical aligning to the bottom.

Sun, 12/07/2014 - 14:16

#17

Skepticraven

↓

Ok. Need opinions. Link to the sandbox page

I fixed it up as best as I could thus far.
I added the padded helm tree to the sandbox because it has the largest name for an image.
The length of names cause the spacing to be slightly different. Increasing it much past 80px makes normal alch trees [with items that have shorter names] seem like they are simply wasting space. However, it wont work with the excessively long names [as demonstrated].

I tried changing the width instead, but for some reason that is remaining unchanged. Maybe it just doesnt like me.
Personally I think increasing the width so that "Pathfinder Armor" can fit in one line would work the best. Why? Given the current items, that width would allow all items to fit on 2 lines of text.

Other people are welcome to try and play around with the witdh to get it to work. The place I have been trying [unsuccessfully] to change it is in the "6=120px" part of this template.
Maybe setting the width in the alchemy header would work better, but I dont know.

Sun, 12/07/2014 - 14:59

#18

Bopp

Brandishes look great; Padded Cap is crazily long

The Brandish tree looks great. The Padded Cap tree is crazily long, requiring multiple screens' worth of scrolling, so that you can't even see the root of the tree most of the time. Can we make this table 100% of the width of the page, so that the text expands right instead of down, so that the table becomes vertically shorter?

Mon, 12/08/2014 - 10:22

#19

Skepticraven

↓

I went ahead and did the alchemy header idea and that works just fine. [table column widths are controlled by the disassembled alch header]

No, its still excessively long. The next step would be reducing font size and/or image size. The issue is that there are 36 things craftable. The table Icytea made only had 2/3rds of the total items and chopped the image sizes in half [40px, not 80]. This alch tree is a monster.

Edit:
Opinions on testing 3 things.
1. Show/hides in the tree.
This could be done 2 ways.
a. Only show local branching by default.
Example: If you are on Nightblade's page, you would only see 2,3,4* columns since nightblade is 3*.
b. Only show current "full path" by default.
Example: If you are on Nightblade's pade, all rows would be hidden except nightblades.

2. Vertical tree.
Currently horizontal. This would shift the vertical scrolling to horizontal scrolling, but look more like a branching tree.

3. Use icons only and have a hover-over tooltip for name. I dont know what browsers dont support tooltips [maybe smartphones], but that could be an issue.

Mon, 12/08/2014 - 10:47

#20

Dracora-Speaking

I don't like b

TBH, alchemy paths are why I'm still playing SK. If I didn't know arcane sala existed cause I looked up virulisk cause it dropped out of a box, I wouldn't have remained so very interested. So I'm in full opposition to b cause of this personal experience.

I'm in favor of tooltips. Having just icons would be aesthetically pleasing and informative. Since they'll link to the page, the tooltip will automatically be taken care of. Mousehover for a moment, decide whether or not to investigate further. Besides, this game is heavily visual - how many times do you have to see the name of an item to know it in sk, when it's got icons and names and icons and names next to each other all over the place :)

Also, I just saw the blue icon for arcane on the alch path on the virulisk page, as a nub I didn't care at all what it was called beyond searching for it once or twice.

Mon, 12/08/2014 - 11:26

#21

Bopp

another option

4. Use text only. This might not save as much space as using icons only, but it would be dramatically more informative than using icons only.

Mon, 12/08/2014 - 11:30

#22

Dracora-Speaking

but...

The whole reason this is brought up is because the table is huge in part due to text... and the line breaks are horrible...dramatically more informative? for a new player, perhaps, but a picture is worth a thousand words - in a lot less space. We need feedback on the options we've come up with.

Mon, 12/08/2014 - 11:57

#23

Skepticraven

↓

@Bopp

The alchemy tree is in place to "link" the pieces together. If you want more information about a specific piece, you click the link. This, in my opinion, is a key aspect that must exist within all solutions. How it is linked/sorted is definitely up for dispute.

"but it would be dramatically more informative [to use the name only] than using icons only"
Personally, I find the icon a bit more informative than the name. There is a general theme of items in the game. Damage type is tied to a color. Status is also a bit more loosely tied to a color. Brandish splits off to key colors in the icons. The status elemental branches both have key themes in both their names and icons [red = fire]. Nightblade is arguably less descriptive than the purple icon because purple means shadow in this game.

The padded armor tree tosses us all under the rug with the "familiarity" aspect. I think the naming and icons dont particularly provide enough information. Seriously, why is falcon [shock] mostly red and snakebite [poison] mostly blue? I needed to use Klipik's image to decipher the naming and attribute connections.

Mon, 12/08/2014 - 12:13

#24

Dracora-Speaking

Hmm...

Icons actually seem to follow the normal pattern if you look at just the glowy bits. And who doesn't love glowy bits!?

Mon, 12/08/2014 - 13:04

#25

Bopp

okay

The item names also convey meaning. For example, Combuster causes things to combust, while Faust can backfire on the user. Also, players can pronounce the item names, which helps load them into short-term memory. Additionally, maybe it's my forum-centric view, but players discuss items using their names, not their icons.

But it seems that I'm being outvoted, and my solution wasn't great to begin with, so I'm okay with it not happening. I was just trying to get all options considered. Cheers.

Mon, 12/08/2014 - 13:57

#26

Skepticraven

↓

This is why I was asking to test.

[as long as I dont change the template...] This version of my sandbox has the three variations of removing text/images in the padded cap tree. Pathfinder removes text from only the 5*. Sentinel removes all the text. Shade removes all the images.

When I removed the text everywhere, it just looks wrong to me.
When I remove the images, it just looks wrong to me.
I know its not uniform, but I like how Pathfinder looks the best. If theres extra space, the text should be there. Otherwise, cut out the image or text to save on space.

Mon, 12/08/2014 - 14:13

#27

Bopp

three ideas

First, the vertical length of the table is now being limited purely by the 5-star icons. Can we make these icons, and only these icons, half size? So that they are roughly as tall as one line of text? I'm not sure that it will look good, but it's worth a try. (Or did we already decide against this?)

Second, in the 5-star column, can we have the item name extending to the *right* of the icon, on a single line?

Third, is there any non-insane way to introduce abbreviations? For example, "Woven Falcon Pathfinder Helm" could become "W. Falcon Pathf. Helm". I do this a lot in my own wiki pages, but of course that's on a smaller scale.

Mon, 12/08/2014 - 14:41

#28

Skepticraven

↓

@Bopp

3. I think the best way would to add an abbreviation parameter to just allow the editor to change if needed. We could easily run into non-uniform abbreviations given this solution though. I cannot think of any other non-insane method.

1. Yes. Purely limited by the single cell ends of a crafting line. I did some personal testing via previewing that sandbox and still thought it wasnt enough. Refer to the last part of this post if you want to preview it yourself [I explain some of the testing template parameters]. Maybe in combination with the next point it would work well.

2. I'm liking this the best. The unfortunate thing is that I'm not completely sure where to set the width without dismantling the alchemy header even more. Changing it in the individual cells because the wiki appears to lock in the width based upon the first row of cells. I guess we could possibly make an empty row of cells before the alchemy header... but that seems like a sloppy solution.

Edit: You changed your order while I wrote my response, so I just changed the numbering here to match.

@Anyone that wants to play around/view tests.

Thus far, I have a bunch of parameters that can potentially be passed defaulting to the what the brandish tree looks like.
Once the final format is complete, this info will appear in the documentation of the template along with examples for how to correctly construct a alch tree table using the template.

[Required]
name=Name of item to be called upon.
rows=# of rows the column element takes up.

[Optional]
hideName=true hides the text from showing.
hideImg=true hides the image from displaying.
imgsize=# of pixels used for the image. This also changes the spacing so that multiple row spanning items are approximately centered. [I'll do some crazy math to make sure its centered based upon lines of text, size of text, size of image once everything is close to finishing.]

Mon, 12/08/2014 - 15:30

#29

Poopsie

My selfish ignorant opinion

Actually would love to see something like collapsible list with buttons that show and hide all or partial.... something like

Padded Armor *
-Pathfinder Helm **
--Woven Falcon Pathfinder Helm *** (this choice activated so show the summary or all info on the right side)
---Plated Falcon Pathfinder Helm ****
-Sentinel Helm **
-Shade Helm **

Mon, 12/08/2014 - 17:20

#30

Dracora-Speaking

*musing*

Do we have a way to isolate a cell, and shrink everything inside it - only expanding if the user does something like hover their mouse over it or press a button? Is our wiki too old farty for that? I'm thinking users could see the general shape of the tree and the icons, and then actually go into the field to see more of the tree.

This would only apply to large trees I think, if we can do it.

Another musing:

what about a circle...path...thing, with 6 rings , each representative of star level (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)? We could always have a direct, linear path go north, and split the rings as needed for multiple branches/possibilities.

Mon, 12/08/2014 - 17:57

#31

Skepticraven

↓

@Poopsie

Although interesting, I would probably advise against that being implemented. Mostly because in order to load a page like that... you get all the information at the beginning. For the padded armor, that would be the equivalent of loading up 64 pages at the same time.

I decided to test this to get an actual time. It takes my computer 2.75s to load a wiki page [yay chrome resource audits], where the majority of the time is sending multiple requests for all the little resources [icons, html fragments]. 2.17s was idle just waiting for the resources. Now imagine if I had 64x the resources to gather to complete the page. I would be sitting here for close to three minutes just waiting for the page to load.

That is, on the other hand, the entire idea of the alchemy tree. Show the related items and link them together if you would like more information. We just break it down into links so that you wait ~3s per set of info you wish to look at.

@Dracora-Speaking

Not that I know of. The closest in functionality is the show/hide collapsible divider. I'm wondering if there is an elegant way to add it in to hide parts of the current tree.

The second idea is a similar idea to the vertical tree, but we still run into the problem of needing to shrink the information to fit it reasonably somewhere. You are just expanding it in two directions at once... which I am in no way willing to try and create a template to display that.

Mon, 12/08/2014 - 19:22

#32

Dracora-Speaking

@Skepticraven

Lol, I'm having fun with a circle template. But I don't seem to be going anywhere. Just keep getting...TURNED AROUND. ahahahaha.

General idea:

a set # of content cells positioned (or forced to be with superglue) in rings. Then on top-center of each tangent-touching of two lower cells (encompassing the two starting form the center), an overlay cell. and then on top of those cells, another cell. The bottomost layer represents the maximum number of splits we've ever seen (the dastardly padded cap/armor), with the top layer being a simple, standard, straight, 0 branched path.

I just read that again and decided I should probably just draw it.

I figure getting the hang of controlling transparencies, div displays = none etc. and #if or #switch contents within these layered cells would...let this be possible? And lend itself to be a decent plug-n-chug format if we document it right.

Could easily be a square instead of a circle. I just like bubblez. Mahbubblz.

Idea here is instead of only branching in one direction...who's to say we can't branch radially? with the starter-fella in the center of the mess? Or at least in like, a few....depending on split points.

This generally favors the tooltip-only format, with linked icons, and no text, but...i think we can workaround. Ik you seem uninterested but hey, if you hit a roadblock again and get bored...

Tue, 12/09/2014 - 03:13

#33

Dracora-Speaking

I made a thing!

A thingie!

It's a tad tedious to calibrate, but I made it super ultra flexible and all those variables are variable on purpose due to the variable nature of the contents. Once we have switches in place for the various kinds, I think we'll be pretty well off. For a long time. No matter what weird stuff OOO throws at us.

As long as we agree that tooltips are awesome. We do!? Oh good. I kid -There's an option for text space if we decide to do it!

There's a huge number of options for this sort of thing, so, take a look, and coders...take a look at the code, I'm sure you'll instantly get what's going on right away. I'd love feedback from general viewers as well as nitpicky coders. Call on your in-game friends to give feedback. Annoy them to death like I do my friends! Hang around in Haven and bother strangers (people and NPC Strangers) to give feedback!

In short: it's a grid that you can completely manipulate the variables of in each cell individually, including background... font color...yeah pretty much everything.

It's so simple it makes me cry a little bit.

I'll make a few more versions in a switch tomorrow - big ones, medium ones...and one for the dreaded, awful, horrendous...padded gear. Think arrows (as in text arrows). Think "make it from 5* backwards* and so on. And the headers I mentioned in my OP? completely doable. I am very happy right now and I could do this for DAYS but I have to sleep! Not because I'm tired...but it's the right thing to do. I think.

Unless someone wants to give it a whirl :D? Simply highlight the innards of the box with your mouse to see the coordinates you want to manipulate.

Tue, 12/09/2014 - 07:26

#34

Bopp

doesn't solve the problem of this thread

It's handsome, but it doesn't solve the problem of this thread, does it? Won't the Padded Cap alchemy tree still take up too much vertical space? (I'm leaving aside for a moment the graphics vs. text argument.)

Tue, 12/09/2014 - 07:50

#35

Skepticraven

↓

@Dracora-Speaking

There are a couple differences between my solution and yours.
1. Background is modifiable. I dont like this being an option because then you get inconsistent formatting between pages.
2. Font size is modifiable. I've thought about adding this into my current template. I've decided against it for the same reason as #1. If we want to change the size, it would be best to pick one, put it in the template, and have all the charts be the same.
3. Each item doesnt have its own box. I stayed with the light blue box enveloping things because the height tells you which items it correlates to. It doesnt mean much for the blaster example you gave, but means a lot in the brandish example.
4. Your solution needs additional redundant code in SKWindows/Grid to expand past 3 rows. I set up my template specifically to reuse as much code as possible and still be able to create tables of size and shape of whatever OOO throws at us. You would need to copy-paste the current code and just change the number/lettering about 13 times to handle the 36x6 grid for padded helm [since it currently only supports a 3x6 grid where 1 row is used for the alchemy *'s].

All in all, I dont feel that the template design really solves the problem elegantly. If you change it to remove all my coding gripes, you would get my current template.

Additionally, it doesnt resolve any of the issues described above. It just makes testing those potential solution permutations of said issues slightly faster.

Tue, 12/09/2014 - 09:34

#36

Dracora-Speaking

*facepalm*

I guess I didn't make the right examples, it was pretty late last night and other things are on my mind. I made it look too much like the current alch path in an attempt to make it seem familiar, but no - that wasn't the goal at all, it was just to show that we can maintain old format while having options for new format in a single template. New format could be something like radial branching, or show/hide for distinct branches+twigs (padded), headers, etc. These new variables can be put in as desired for clarity, while maintaining the simplicity and familiarity of our more..."normal" trees.

@Bopp it will solve most, if not all, of the issues in this thread. This will be crystal clear once I figure out how best to demonstrate it. I was going to do something complex, even the padded itself, but I just got too tired. I suppose I'll do that tonight.

@Skeptic
Issues 1,2 vanish once we have switches for {{{branches|#}}} in place. Those are options right now only because it lets us decide how to cement in the template. Of course these will not be variables from page to page. That would be a nightmare.

Issue 3 is one of the reasons we're having so much trouble, so, each item with its own box - modified as needed - is a good thing. The height enveloping is something I suggested in comment #7, but I feel that it's actually what's roadblocking us the most at this point. And users have told me in general don't like the look of the padded cap's cell stretched with all the vertical internal whitespace. The other reason we're having trouble is locking things into a linear, horizontal star path. That forces us to use vertical spaces in unpleasant ways. With my template, two cells (above/below each other) can be placed anywhere with stars (and/or name) anywhere in the field..which leads me to:

issue 4 I've already mentioned in comment #33, it's in junk code stage now - but I did ask to get nitpicked. I guess I didn't mean nitpick things at this level of detail yet, cause it's not warranted for junk code, IMO, that's like worrying about the mint on the pillow in a room on a ship that's navigating a storm. The grid's switches will eventually have only 3 main options - small, med, large. there will be a huge variety of plug-n-chug options, but only if we want to do it that way - otherwise, we can just set up a {{content}} field for each cell within each type.

All in all, the goal is elegance :( ... Like I said, I guess I just didn't display things the way I should have, but I have to put the wiki down for the next 2-3 weeks, starting tomorrow, for university events.

It should solve all of our issues, I mean that's why I made it. *sniffle* I think I projected one of the permutations of padded to be 500x500 px with a design I made, but whatever. (using 36px icons)
-it actually makes testing things slower due to its high level of calibration ;P

To get a better idea...until I have time to modify tonight...just look at the padded cap example and think of the possibilities. I feel like we should just make exceptions for exceptions, making a radial path for things like padded, but keeping things simple for things that are straight branches. This is new.
Our template works for old. I feel like OOO is probably going to keep doing this sort of thing, maybe for swordies and bombers too.

DO:

try the template out yourself, getting headers and showhides to look right.

Look at this and get a better idea of what I'm trying to do in general. Don't nitpick the details like where to put the star data, name of each item data, etc. Just consider the idea itself, and know that with the grid, something like this is really quite doable.

DON'T -
give up hope! We don't have Obi Wan Kenobi, but we do have very skilled editors working on this together, and that's always amazing.

I'll try not to get so excited next time and make better examples ;P

For those concerned - father is doing a lot better, but we are very worried about bradycardia right now. I hope we don't have to get him a pacemaker, ugh.

Tue, 12/09/2014 - 09:45

#37

Dracora-Speaking

EDIT

Updated OP with options.

Tue, 12/09/2014 - 10:32

#38

Skepticraven

↓

You asked for me to nitpick in its current state.
I like the image idea you have, but it is no where near that currently.

Nitpicks on that idea:
There should be an informative way to ensure the reader knows that the center is a specific star count.
There is a maximum possible length of 6. 0*-5*. Currently no lines are that length, but it should be able to handle it.
The padded line wont work with this idea. Step 1 allows a maximum of 8 branches. Further steps only allow 1 or 3 depending if you are in a corner or not. Padded has 4 branches from each line on the 2nd layer. Unless you break the uniformity of "circle from the center", it literally wont fit without being confusing.

It is difficult for me to accurately give input if you show me something that looks nothing like the end objective.

Tue, 12/09/2014 - 12:07

#39

Dracora-Speaking

*another facepalm for me*

It is difficult for me to accurately give input if you show me something that looks nothing like the end objective.

I thought you could read minds, Raven. I'm so disappoint.

Yeah, sorry about getting overexcited...basically, I made it, did a bad example, and fell asleep 5 minutes later hoping that people would "get it" by looking at the code. I suppose that's like asking someone to understand what a building is, when I'm gesturing at a doorframe - and you don't even know if said building is a house or a restaurant. Much apologies. But at least we know we can easily maintain familiar format, with what I did post, right? heh?

Also I made this a few days ago. *facepalm*........thought I posted it too. Narp. Also no, there is no padded cap in that image, the arrow goes nowhere atm. Heh.

In the image: white text is initial thought process, black text is "I came back 3 hours later and thought about it again."

It seems that people "get it" in general, which is good!

I have a design in mind with show/hide, which I'll experiment with today after attempting to put the padded cap into the Grid.

Tue, 12/16/2014 - 08:20

#40

Skepticraven

↓

Had more time to play around with parameters.
See for yourself.
It's about as good as the alch tree will get, leaving padded at about 2.5 pages of scrolling on my computer.

Horizontally, 650px is needed for the padded cap tree to fit 5* text on one line.
Reducing the icon size to 20px square and having text takes up the same space as just having text in a column [if text is on one line].

Tue, 12/16/2014 - 09:35

#41

Bopp

I may take a whack at it

I may take a whack at fitting in that last column. Why is the table 650px wide instead of 800px or 100%?

Assuming that I can't pull it off, here are two ideas:

First, leave off the 0-star column. This will give extra room to the 5-star column, to help us fit it on one line. I'm not opposed to letting this idea affect all alchemy trees. For example, the Magic Cloak alchemy tree would leave out the 0- and 1-star columns.

Second, have two versions of the alchemy tree template: the regular one, and a special version made for cramming gigantic trees like this. The latter could have tighter padding, smaller icons, etc.

Tue, 12/16/2014 - 10:25

#42

Skepticraven

↓

@Bopp
"Why is the table 650px wide instead of 800px or 100%?"

Because 650 is all that it needs. Currently it tosses the extra 150px into the 5* column. Of course with better spacing control, we could set it up so that any extra space is divided between all the columns.

"First, leave off the 0-star column."

Definitely doable. However, as with the mention above... that could possibly chop off an extra 80px width per removed column more than the current. Our problem is with height.

"Second, have two versions of the alchemy tree template: the regular one, and a special version made for cramming gigantic trees like this. The latter could have tighter padding, smaller icons, etc."

Default parameters can easily make it have only one tree template.

As of right now, the padding only adds about 25% of the columns [at 650px wide, 58px/78px are content on a column].
Padding adds about 33% height for the last column [51px height, 14px each line, 5px between lines, icon extends into the padding].
I'm not sure how much the vertical padding can be reduced with still having it look nice. Might be able to kick it down from 5 to 2... but the Cell template forces the padding to be the same and doesnt allow it to be edited [currently].

Tue, 12/16/2014 - 11:56

#43

Bopp

my point

The table is vertically too long, because there are too many vertically fat 5-star entries. My (first stab at a) solution is to make every 5-star entry just one line in height. To do this, I need each 5-star name to fit on a single line. To do that, I need lots of *horizontal* space.

Let me know if I've misunderstood you.

Tue, 12/16/2014 - 13:47

#44

Skepticraven

↓

Ah, so have the icon next to the text? That could reduce the size by 19px in the current setup [37% shorter]... which would put it at almost 1.5 pages for me.

I specifically took the pixel measurements to make these estimates without even testing. [Assuming that 5* would be the limiting height still]
Of course, at 1 line per 5*... 4* may become the limiting height, which would need to have the columns adjusted more.

That being said, 1.5 pages is probably good. That means that the padded cap would be visible to without scrolling for me.
Unless you have already set it up, I could probably make a good example of it by tomorrow sometime.

Tue, 12/16/2014 - 14:17

#45

Bopp

please do

Yes, icons next to text, on a single line. Yes, I see how this might require tweaks to the 4-star column.

I have not set it up ( $*@!# Christmas shopping). So please do.

Wed, 12/17/2014 - 08:15

#46

Skepticraven

↓

Shifted the icons over

For some reason its padding 14px above and below. It appears that we will need to reduce the padding even further...

I'm going to go ahead and make a big change to my template. Instead of passing a ton of formatting options, just have one for "minimize size" which will do all the little things as needed to shrink it down.

Shade branch uses the modified paddings all set to 0.
38px seems to be the minimum even with setting the paddings all to 0.
I've set up AlchTreeTemplate2 with the SKCell info so that the padding can be modified. I cant get it to work. Maybe someone else can give it a swing [feel free to edit my sandbox files without making a copy].

Wed, 12/17/2014 - 09:16

#47

Bopp

egads

Egads, the wiki code is complicated. This is serious. I'll need to remove my mittens...

So far I've done merely cosmetic things (and only to the Shade branch of the tree). In order to get the 5-star icons to line up, I've left-aligned the final column, and I've placed the icon to the left of the name.

We are ready to tighten the 4-star column. I'm not sure about the best way to do it, but maybe I'll tinker some more.

General wiki question: In cases like this, where we are changing a page merely by changing a template that it uses, is there a way to preview the appearance of the page without saving the template?

Edit: On the very last line, I've tried activating minSize for the 3- and 4-star columns. The results are ugly, which doesn't surprise me. What does surprise me is that the last 5-star line still incurs extra vertical fat. I'm not sure why. Work in progress.

Wed, 12/17/2014 - 10:12

#48

Skepticraven

↓

"In cases like this, where we are changing a page merely by changing a template that it uses, is there a way to preview the appearance of the page without saving the template?"

If there is a way, I dont know about it. [Except tediously copying what the template should output and modifying it everywhere for the preview...]

"What does surprise me is that the last 5-star line still incurs extra vertical fat. I'm not sure why."

Actually, glancing at you changes at the time of this post...
The last shade [snakebite] one is at 28px height.
The rows above it [grizzly] is still at 38px height.

It looks like the 3/4* lines were causing the extra padding, despite not appearing to be the limiters.

Maybe it is time to figure out why there is an extra [p][br][/p] being sent in 3/4* lines.
Finding where that is being placed would also resolve the vertical center alignment [since its padding ~20px extra on the bottom of those cells].
It appears that this bonus row break is still limiting the 28px.

Wed, 12/17/2014 - 10:55

#49

Skepticraven

↓

Success.

There were enough newlines between the template include/noinclude tags to somehow combine with other things to allow for a [p] tag to develop.

Deleting them from the template results in the controls as needed.
I've modified both templates to have the correct includeonly/noinclude tags.

Padding at 2px above/below seems to work the best for my eyes.
It forces the height to be 24px total.
The total scroll area on my screen is about 1.3 pages worth [if all the 3/4/5* columns use the minSize parameter, since the 3/4* limit unless they are widened].

Wed, 12/17/2014 - 11:03

#50

Bopp

that caching

Sometimes I see your cleaned-up version, and sometimes I don't. I've tried clearing my browser cache and reloading, but the problem is independent of that. Maybe I'm forgetting something.

Anyway, your cleaned-up version is looking much better for "vertical fat", although we still have to think about the 3- and 4-star columns. Here is an idea that would produce nice results (I think). Would it be too complicated as wiki code?

if minSize:

left align (as we have now)
text to the right of icon (as we have now)
if multi-row:

regular size icon

if not multi-row:

small icon

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Regarding the interesting new Alchemy Paths of gunner gear