Open building menus horizontally?

[pschulka 52]

hey forum, 

every time i play the game and open my crammed building menus (the side bar where all the stuff to build is popping up when you click on the category icons) i make a deep sigh for with many plugins installed it takes a loooooooooooooooong time to scroll down to the lot you want (especially the landmark folder...oh boy). this is not helped by the way the game opens up a long downwards-oriented ..well..folder? whatever you wanna call this scrolldown-thingie. (SEE FIGURE A of the attached ..ehr..."schematic drawing".)

here's my question: could this be changed to have it pop out horizontally? this way you would have multiple times the space as icons could load in lines under each other. this would take more space on the screen, naturally, but it would make picking (and comparing) lots much easier and faster. (FIGURE B)

 

is this a feasible change? or is it impossible to code? i am a noob in those things, so sorry if my idea is perhaps outlandishly ignorant.

[rsc204 21,866]

Honestly, you are not alone in seeing the problem, but the behaviour here is pretty much dictated by how the game was written. In all the years people looked at the issue, the general consensus is that we're not able to change the number of categories are how they display, well sort-of. A few attempts to lessen the impact of this problem have been made:

• MML
  MML stands for Menu Management Lot. All items linked to this single lot will not appear in the menus, until you place the "Construction" lot on the map.
• DAMN
  Daley's Advanced Menu Navigator or DAMN, hides all your items, just like MMLs do. Except, now you can find them through the news-ticker interface, where you can completely customise and control the order and folders/sub-folders used.
• Scroll Wheel Accelleration
  Sounds ridiculously simple, but if your Mouse/Driver supports it,  you can set your wheel mouse to scroll faster, the more you scroll. Using an expensive Corsair M65 mouse^*, I can get from one end to the other of long menus, in about 4-5 flicks of the wheel. But because the wheel on this mouse allows for very precise scrolling, you can go much slower too, it's just very intuitive.
  Note 3rd party software exists for this too, but every one I tried was clunky somehow. MS's Intellipoint drivers, include this function and can work with 3rd party mice (v7 NOT 8). I believe you simply need some form of MS mouse plugged in when you install the software. Note too, the latest Mouse and Keyboard Center drivers mess this all up, so are best avoided.
• Organisation
  It can be a lot of work (and planning), but manually organising your menus to be more tidy, can also be very rewarding. With things more personalised, your menus become more familiar and intuitive. Plus you can switch the menu items are in and keep things you use more often, easier to get too.

^*I urge everyone not to buy a Corsair mouse, they are way too expensive and incredibly unreliable as hardware. I constantly have to repair mine, which is a warranty replacement of the first which broke in 12months! 95% of the mouse is wonderfully crafted with the best materials, then the other 5% is clearly designed to fail. I love the mouse itself, but at this price a mouse should last at least couple years. My cheap MS ones typically gave 8-10 years of perfect service.

[Propfam 2,305]

24 minutes ago, rsc204 said:

Honestly, you are not alone in seeing the problem, but the behaviour here is pretty much dictated by how the game was written. In all the years people looked at the issue, the general consensus is that we're not able to change the number of categories are how they display, well sort-of. A few attempts to lessen the impact of this problem have been made:

• MML
  MML stands for Menu Management Lot. All items linked to this single lot will not appear in the menus, until you place the "Construction" lot on the map.
• DAMN
  Daley's Advanced Menu Navigator or DAMN, hides all your items, just like MMLs do. Except, now you can find them through the news-ticker interface, where you can completely customise and control the order and folders/sub-folders used.
• Scroll Wheel Accelleration
  Sounds ridiculously simple, but if your Mouse/Driver supports it,  you can set your wheel mouse to scroll faster, the more you scroll. Using an expensive Corsair M65 mouse^*, I can get from one end to the other of long menus, in about 4-5 flicks of the wheel. But because the wheel on this mouse allows for very precise scrolling, you can go much slower too, it's just very intuitive.
  Note 3rd party software exists for this too, but every one I tried was clunky somehow. MS's Intellipoint drivers, include this function and can work with 3rd party mice (v7 NOT 8). I believe you simply need some form of MS mouse plugged in when you install the software. Note too, the latest Mouse and Keyboard Center drivers mess this all up, so are best avoided.
• Organisation
  It can be a lot of work (and planning), but manually organising your menus to be more tidy, can also be very rewarding. With things more personalised, your menus become more familiar and intuitive. Plus you can switch the menu items are in and keep things you use more often, easier to get too.

^*I urge everyone not to buy a Corsair mouse, they are way too expensive and incredibly unreliable as hardware. I constantly have to repair mine, which is a warranty replacement of the first which broke in 12months! 95% of the mouse is wonderfully crafted with the best materials, then the other 5% is clearly designed to fail. I love the mouse itself, but at this price a mouse should last at least couple years. My cheap MS ones typically gave 8-10 years of perfect service.

I think, the most reliable way to organize menus is DAMN. As long as you use the reliable app to structure the menu (I personally have a bad experience with a particular app), you will be fine. Also, you're not limited by MML restrictions such as having to quit to region to close the menu or speed the game up to show up the menu. Organization is still a key, tho regardless of using DAMN or not.

[pschulka 52]

@rsc204  @chfzdn ,

i looked into this damn-mod..and DAMN, that's a lot of work (cheap pun, best pun). i don't know if this is not just another complicated overlay when i was originally thinking of a strictly visual impovement. shame...but the game IS almost 20 years old. 

i'll stick to scrolling until my fingers fall off. gives one time to think about life and such!

thank you for giving me more insight!

re mouse settings: tried upping the scrollwheel speed and that actually alleviates it a bit, THANKS.

[Cyclone Boom 17,031]

While there is no known way to edit the menus in the style you desire, in addition to the above I'll just mention another possibility...

Cori explained in this part of her guide to our WSSNCOPFL mod about a new Cohort Controller method.

We believe this opens up a new concept of menu management for the ease of flexibility. The idea as explained, revolves around the simplicity of repositioning or removing items from the game menu, while still keeping them plopped in a given city with no ill effects.

What it involves is consolidating 2 key exemplar properties which determine menu location:

• Item Order
• OccupantGroups

(As shown in Cori's linked post, other properties can be copied over as well.)

Then what happens is each Buildings exemplar links to the Cohort Controller file. It loads up the properties inside, additionally to those inside individual Buildings exemplars themselves. What this means is all items of a set are grouped together in the menu, and it allows adjustments to be made for which menu they're in, along with the position up or down. Editing the Plop Cost is useful for this inside each Buildings exemplar, and a higher cost makes an item appear further down the menu.

At this point, it's possible to plop the lots in a city. Then if not wanting them to be shown in the menu anymore, one simply has to move the given Cohort Controller file out of Plugins completely. Maybe to a "holding bay" storage folder so it can always be easily added back again.

The benefit is how functionality of the plopped lots in game is preserved, and menu clutter for lesser needed items is removed.

In due course we have ideas to make a full-fledged presentation to explain about this in more detail as a method, but just thought I'd mention it here.

[pschulka 52]

man, talk about overhauls. what an exciting time to have started this game again. you guys rock, all of you.:)

[rsc204 21,866]

3 hours ago, Cyclone Boom said:

In due course we have ideas to make a full-fledged presentation to explain about this in more detail as a method, but just thought I'd mention it here.

It was pretty clear to me, damn good idea too frankly.

The drawback of course, every bit of content you wanted to work with it, would require some effort to set it up (i.e. making/linking the cohorts). From an individual user's perspective, if you are editing all the lots, you might as well just edit the Item Order property and be done with it.

Secondly, it relies on using Plop Cost to then organise the lots in the group. Nothing wrong with that, something I've done myself so I can keep a single Item Order for a group of lots. But in respect of pre-existing content being modified to work with this method, it sure would be more work to convert them to this system.

5 hours ago, pschulka said:

i looked into this damn-mod..and DAMN, that's a lot of work

Thing is, if you are starting out with custom content, it's not that terrible, you just gradually convert things as you go. But indeed, if you've a large folder of content already, the workload might seem too hideous to contemplate.