Cave Feedback

[Predat0rs]

Another idea: Have a "Are you sure you want to navigate away from this page?" built into the sorting page. I cannot tell you how many times I've accidentally hit the refresh CTRL+R button combination trying to CTRL+F to find things...

[Angelina Gienah]

Is there any way that an entire lineage can be shown, even if it's long? I only ask because I bet this gal's full lineage looks awesome. I get that it might be too big and break the website, but if we can scroll up and down for a really long distance, why not side to side?

[TJ09]

On 9/1/2017 at 2:55 PM, StormWizard212 said:

If it's at the top it could get a little annoying when you're trying to add a dragon to move than one group. It would shift the rest of the list down and could result in misclicking the wrong groups. Another alternative could be to have a loading symbol then then tick next to the group itself that you've added it to. So instead of being down the bottom, being next to an individual group when you add it there.

I don't think the full icon + text would fit next to a grid. It's not even guaranteed that the icon will fit...I'll try to think of something that's better than the indicator being invisible due to scrolling, but we'll see.

[TJ09]

On 9/3/2017 at 10:05 PM, Angelina Gienah said:

Is there any way that an entire lineage can be shown, even if it's long? I only ask because I bet this gal's full lineage looks awesome. I get that it might be too big and break the website, but if we can scroll up and down for a really long distance, why not side to side?

Loading lineages can be resource intensive due to exponential blow up. I don't know what the highest even-gen dragon is, but could a 12-gen lineage can have up to 2¹² = 4096 dragons, anything beyond that is guaranteed to be double that or more (15th generation is up to 32,768).

 

While there are cases where it'd both be useful to see more dragons and the number of dragons is actually low (the number of dragons in your sample lineage is 2-per-generation, which is a pretty small linear scaling), the number of times that such a thing would be useful isn't necessarily worth supporting compared to the extra complication.

 

I've thought about adding fancy logic like "allow loading more gens as long as there's less than some number in the previous gen," but that's pretty "magical" in a bad way (it's not necessarily clear why a lineage does or does not load more, and consistency is probably better here).

[TJ09]

On 9/3/2017 at 0:40 PM, Metal-n-Monster said:

Another idea: Have a "Are you sure you want to navigate away from this page?" built into the sorting page. I cannot tell you how many times I've accidentally hit the refresh CTRL+R button combination trying to CTRL+F to find things...

[angelicdragonpuppy]

A positive: thanks again for adding tiles of mates to the progeny page! It's made it so, so much easier to find what I'm looking for among many offspring across multiple mates. <3

A negative: I still really truly desperately want to see undead creation rates go way up, or some zombie BSA added with better rates. I have been trying since they were added, always on the 31st when possible, always past midnight when not, and still have less than 1 of each of the adult sprites. It's very disheartening, especially coupled with 1) the crazy high dodge rate, which often means the dragons I put aside for use are unusable, 2) the low amount of kill slots per month, and 3) the recent introduction of bailaka zombies, which suggests the already really high amount of zombie sprites is just going to keep going up.

[StormWizard212]

On the topic of the progeny page, it looks kind of messy if you have dragons with multiple mates and not that many offspring from each. Here is an example of what I mean. The tiles for each new mate are closer to the offspring of the mate above (vertically) than the siblings are (horizontally) which makes it a bit confusing to look at, in my opinion. It ends up looking quite cluttered and can get especially confusing if you have different mates of the same breed or same colour, which makes it even more difficult to differentiate between different parts of the family. Even with the difference in the size of the tiles, I find it doesn't make a lot of difference since the text is the same size and it all ends up looking a bit cluttered.

 

What I'm wondering is whether it would be possible to have a bit more separation between different mates on the progeny page, whether that be in terms of empty space between the last row of children and the next mate, or some kind of visible divider like a physical line. I'm not quite sure. Compared to lineage pages and a lot of other pages on the site, I just think it can end up looking quite messy and confusing and could be a bit clearer. Maybe just my opinion, though!

Edited September 8, 2017 by StormWizard212

[Angelina Gienah]

On September 6, 2017 at 1:33 AM, TJ09 said:

Loading lineages can be resource intensive due to exponential blow up. I don't know what the highest even-gen dragon is, but could a 12-gen lineage can have up to 2¹² = 4096 dragons, anything beyond that is guaranteed to be double that or more (15th generation is up to 32,768).

 

While there are cases where it'd both be useful to see more dragons and the number of dragons is actually low (the number of dragons in your sample lineage is 2-per-generation, which is a pretty small linear scaling), the number of times that such a thing would be useful isn't necessarily worth supporting compared to the extra complication.

 

I've thought about adding fancy logic like "allow loading more gens as long as there's less than some number in the previous gen," but that's pretty "magical" in a bad way (it's not necessarily clear why a lineage does or does not load more, and consistency is probably better here).

Point taken. I wasn't considering even gens and I can definitely understand the issue there

[Predat0rs]

OR, OR, PRETTY FAR FETCHED IDEA BUT... what if we actually put information in the Dragonopedia??? Honestly, what's the point of having it if half of the Breeds still say:

There are no notes available for this breed. Check back later; new information will be added periodically.

Even some breeds that have been around for YEARS have empty information... like... Um...

Edited September 10, 2017 by Metal-n-Monster

[Fuzzbucket]

I think - no. I think only people involved in their creation could legitimately do that - or if they are too long gone - TJ. I can see it now - what I might add as "info" about a couple of the breeds I don't actually like, for instance...

 

"This ugly beast is blind and can only mate with dragons who throw themselves at it."

"This nasty creature only eats its own young."

 

As a creator, I would not be happy to see people posting that as gospel truth about my dragons - even if I no longer played here.

 

Also - allowing us to add stuff would allow spammers. It happens on the wiki as it is - and the encyclopaedia is OFFICIAL; the thing people can (at the moment) rely on - yes the wiki is wonderful, but it is also vulnerable -  so we VERY much don't want spammers to have access to the actual on site stuff. I Not to mention that if they could get into that there would likely be hackable pathways to other areas.

 

Um - no thanks.

Edited September 10, 2017 by fuzzbucket

[Predat0rs]

I didn't say let random people add things to it. I'm saying, why would we need separate posts telling us about the dragon instead of actually putting information about the dragon where it belongs in the first place?

[Fuzzbucket]

In that case I don't know what you mean. Even if a creator posts something about a dragon THEY should be the ones who add it. And if WE could add even just what the creators have posted - we could add any old junk.

 

You said:

Quote

OR, OR, PRETTY FAR FETCHED IDEA BUT... what if we actually put information in the Dragonopedia???

 

How did you see that working, then ?

[TJ09]

4 hours ago, Metal-n-Monster said:

OR, OR, PRETTY FAR FETCHED IDEA BUT... what if we actually put information in the Dragonopedia??? Honestly, what's the point of having it if half of the Breeds still say:

There are no notes available for this breed. Check back later; new information will be added periodically.

Even some breeds that have been around for YEARS have empty information... like... Um...

This sounds like you're passive-aggressively asking why more breeds aren't filled out. In which case, I don't have an answer since it's up to the concept-creators to put information into a tool so it can be added.

 

You will hopefully be pleased to learn, though, that the Carinas already have an entry filled out, and that I'm working on better tooling that allows encyclopedia entries to be filled out before a concept is even released (people tend to throw them in the threads anyways).

[angelicdragonpuppy]

Weren't the breeds whose creators were long gone having information added by mods? 

 

Either way, it DOES feel like the encyclopedia is really bare bones and underused, and it's been a while since an update. Could some sort of form letter be sent to active and inactive spriters alike, saying if they don't submit the info within 6 months the right to do so will be handed over to others?

 

like...

 

"greetings spriters; in the interest of filling out the largely empty encyclopedia, we ask that all conceptors submit such information for their breeds within the next six months. If a submission is not received within this time or if the concepter chooses to pass on the chance to submit info, creation of lore to fill the encyclopedia may be assigned to other staff members."

Edited September 11, 2017 by angelicdragonpuppy

[HeatherMarie]

I like angelicdragonpuppy's idea. But maybe something that's less work then that, what if some older breed's encyclopedias just had a few small facts that we *do* know? Like, there are many random facts that spriters/conceptors have mentioned over time for different breeds, but I guess they never made an actual Encyclopedia entry so none of that shows... Like for instance, Earthgirl gave us some information on the size of Glory Drakes here: https://forums.dragcave.net/topic/93293-how-big-are-our-dragons/?page=2&tab=comments#comment-3856386

Lythiaren gave us information on why the Frills were thought to be extinct for so long in the News thread when they were re-released: https://forums.dragcave.net/topic/174664-2016-05-21-dragon-caves-10th-birthday/?page=60&tab=comments#comment-9213628

Shiny Hazard Sign gave us information about the Frostbites in their release thread: https://forums.dragcave.net/topic/160830-2014-05-03-may-release/?page=46&tab=comments#comment-8217699

Etc etc. Since all this information did in fact come from the spriters, why can't it just be added to the Encyclopedia? Does it really have to be a full fleshed-out entry before anything at all gets added?

[Aleoleo]

AH! This is so nice:

 

 

The "Back to actions" link followed by " You search, but......." has been driving me crazy for years. Thanks for changing it.

[Fuzzbucket]

1 hour ago, Aleoleo said:

AH! This is so nice:

 

 

The "Back to actions" link followed by " You search, but......." has been driving me crazy for years. Thanks for changing it.

 

I second this. Thanks, TJ.

[angelicdragonpuppy]

As of about a week ago, when you used influence on an egg, said egg would appear hotlinked under the pink dragon. This appears to have been removed--can it be brought back? It was nice to have a quick way to double check from the page that I'd for sure influenced the right egg, whereas now I have to look at codes or fumble to the action log.

[Fuzzbucket]

Ouch. Yes please.

[TJ09]

3 hours ago, angelicdragonpuppy said:

As of about a week ago, when you used influence on an egg, said egg would appear hotlinked under the pink dragon. This appears to have been removed--can it be brought back? It was nice to have a quick way to double check from the page that I'd for sure influenced the right egg, whereas now I have to look at codes or fumble to the action log.

This wasn't intentional—I'll look into fixing this over the coming days.

[TJ09]

1 hour ago, TJ09 said:

This wasn't intentional—I'll look into fixing this over the coming days.

This should now be fixed.

[HeatherMarie]

Fixed! I see the egg on the Influence page again. Thanks!

[angelicdragonpuppy]

On 9/29/2017 at 11:58 PM, TJ09 said:

This should now be fixed.

 

Thanks TJ! Really appreciate all the quick fixes and tweaks you've been doing lately.

[Shokomon]

For the mobile version of the cave, could the icons for actions, hyperlinks, and groups be moved closer together towards the right?

 

Because right now:

The gear icon overlaps with the name or code of the adult dragons.

[jumpsnake]

A while back I suggested this but I think it got lost......

One thing that would be useful/ make navigating better would be if you could return to the thing you were just doing after using an action.

For example, if I breed things I tend to do it all at once, and I'm sure many people are this way. When you breed, your options after breeding are really only to go back to actions. But what I'd really like to do is return to the same place in my group or dragon list as I was when I selected the dragon to breed. Something like "Return to list" or "Go back to dragons" would be AWESOME.

Same for if I go to incubate things, it would be super-fantastic to go back to the list of dragons that are available for incubate (or at least back to where I was in the dragons available for BSA list.)