Waypoint System

[CollinHerber]

The Premise

The waypoint system is the way the player will travel between the important areas they discover in their playthrough.

The Start

At first we will only have 1 Waypoint that they can travel to and from - Which will be to the town of Ravencrest.
At the center of the town will be a structure/device of some sort that resembles a waypoint and this is where the player will land when they use the waypoint system.

Unlocking

Upon the player entering any area that contains a waypoint it will be immediately unlocked. At some point we may add some flavor to this but for now it'll just auto unlock.

Using the Waypoint System

The player will be able to craft their own "Arcane Obelisk" I think it could look something like:

Upon right clicking on the Obelisk a "Selection" UI will appear that allow them to click on a location. Upon clicking on it they will teleport there.

The area they are currently at will be grayed out so it cannot be clicked.

Programming Needed

• Create Arcane Obelisk Item
• Create Arcane Obelisk Logic to Open UI
• Create the Waypoint UI (Can be super simple to start)
• Unlock Ravencrest Upon Joining

Worldbuilding Needed

• Build the Ravencrest Waypoint Area

Sprites Needed

• Arcane Obelisk Furniture Item
• "Home" Waypoint Image
• "Ravencrest" Waypoint Image

[pilchardheck]

does this look alright for the obelisk?

[pilchardheck]

item sprite

[pilchardheck]

fixed sheet

[pilchardheck]

made the home waypoint icon but was having trouble coming up with something for Ravencrest that i could do in a 16x16 area..

[shnakamura]

Looking all pretty good, I'll start this ASAP.

[shnakamura]

Are we aiming for waypoints to be a detailed preview of where you're travelling to with information, pictures, etc. or just a type of shortcut? This will be important for designing the whole UI.

[GabeHasWon]

It'd probably be better to have a nice detailed preview. At worst, players ignore the info. At best, players learn whatever they need to from this new info.
Without a detailed preview, at worst, players just don't know what a waypoint really goes to, or know way less about it. At best, players already know.

[shnakamura]

It'd probably be better to have a nice detailed preview. At worst, players ignore the info. At best, players learn whatever they need to from this new info. Without a detailed preview, at worst, players just don't know what a waypoint really goes to, or know way less about it. At best, players already know.

I made two different concepts for the individual waypoint preview information, I'm still looking out on a solution to include the icons and overall waypoint browsing. Let me know which one you feel is better, personally a fan of the 2nd design:

[CollinHerber]

I think the 2nd one is good however I do not think we need travel & return.
I think just clicking the area of which the waypoint is should let them travel.

Additionally we will likely want to have a tooltip at some point that includes available quests, or maybe point of interest information.

But that is to come later, just pointing it out.

[shnakamura]

Sounds like we can just insert a separate tab on the second design to fit the quests and relevant information in the future.

[shnakamura]

As for the no travel & return buttons, how would that work? In the waypoint browser would just clicking the icon be enough to automatically start travelling? I'm just confused as to how would the preview be displayed if so, since there'd be no time at all. Perhaps, the preview could be displayed when you hover over the waypoint's icon.

[shnakamura]

Made Ravencrest's waypoint area, how are we feeling about this? There wasn't anything like a reference so I just tried to come up with something.

[GabeHasWon]

Looks good. Don't think we need to overcomplicate it for Ravencrest, just nice and easy.

[shnakamura]

Yeah, I'm quite satisfied with how it turned out. On a side note, I was thinking of adding custom sound effects and visual effects to the obelisk. Maybe light rays coming out from the shiny fragments of it?

[CollinHerber]

I think sounds and visual effects are a great idea but don't want to get too hung up that stuff.

[CollinHerber]

Not yet anyway. Wanna get it into some hands.

[shnakamura]

Oh that's very reasonable, I think it may be better if we get a solid base before first, then on later stages come back at stuff and polish.

[shnakamura]

So here's the final preview UI concept, and down below the waypoint browser concept:

The way I interpreted it is when you use the obelisk you open a browser of all waypoints, and upon selecting one you get more detailed information about it (preview).

[shnakamura]

So here's the final preview UI concept, and down below the waypoint browser concept:

The way I interpreted it is when you use the obelisk you open a browser of all waypoints, and upon selecting one you get more detailed information about it (preview).

1st option is just a common button selector above the obelisk.
2nd option is the same as the 1st option, except its a carrousel picker instead of a button selector.
3rd option is a regular UI page that contains a list of all waypoints.

[GabeHasWon]

I'd go with a carousel. A little more intuitive than 3, but more immediate information than 1.

[shnakamura]

Yeh, I agree. Perhaps once you click on the selected icon its preview will fade upwards and the icons will fade out. Collin mentioned there'd be no need for a travel & return button, so I'm not sure how that would work, because in my mind you'd be able to see the preview then make a decision to whether go back to the waypoints browser or travel to the selected waypoint.

[pilchardheck]

redid the home icon as well as doing the ravencrest one (2 options, i think the second one is probably more readable)

[shnakamura]

Big fan of the second icon as well.

[shnakamura]

wps.mp4

Current looks of the UI, plenty of it is unpolished. As you can see there's not quite a lot of animations and some icons are not drawn at times.

[shnakamura]

The new icons featured in the video are purely just for testing purposes, so you can actually scroll and change waypoints.

[shnakamura]

Might require a background texture for the new browser design, it's been decided it'll be something like this:

[shnakamura]

Ideally it would fit the inventory frames and the rest of the mod's UI.

[shnakamura]

Here's a small prototype for a reference.

[CollinHerber]

Here's a small prototype for a reference.

Yea that looks good. Might wanna make the background darker however, not as transparent.

[shnakamura]

Oh its just a placeholder, I'm using Terraria's own UIPanel which has that texture by default. I requested a proper background texture here so, soon we might have that.

[CollinHerber]

I'd say just use the same background color as the passive/skill trees do. The darker blue

[shnakamura]

Perhaps we should start thinking about standardizing the looks of our UI throughout the mod

[shnakamura]

Made a final UI concept based on the input given, how is this? You can collapse/uncollapse each menu.

[GabeHasWon]

This is really nice.

[shnakamura]

Here's an alternate version which might fit the inventory UI and reworks more, not sure what we're aiming for.

[CollinHerber]

I think that looks great. What will the player click to travel there?

[shnakamura]

I think that looks great. What will the player click to travel there?

That flew over my head for a bit, we can just slap a travel button on the right side of the waypoint tab, next to the text.

[CollinHerber]

Yea that works for me.

[shnakamura]

Been a bit quiet about this but here's some progress, it's been pain to figure out all the allignments and how UIList (properly) works:

way.mp4

[shnakamura]

The indicator icon is a placeholder and I'd appreciate if someone could wrap up something for me.

[shnakamura]

Oh and also an image for the close button.