An idea for message log improvement

[dd]

This is an idea I think would be useful for improving the readability of the message log. I'm not sure if everyone agrees with the idea, but I just thought I'd throw this out here.

But what I suggest is, basically, differentiating the messages in the log to player actions (eg. "you hit the orc"), other actions/events (eg. "the orc hits you", "you hear a shout", "the portal crumbles" etc.), prompts for input (eg. "shoot in which direction?"), and warnings (eg. "warning - low hitpoints!")

How this would work: currently, the messages are separated by underscores _ which divide them to messages that show between each command. Basically, a message log might look like this:

  Code:

_An orc comes into view.
_You hit the orc. The orc hits you. The orc misses you.
 You hit the orc.
_You kill the orc!


What I propose is, differentiating the messages with different symbols. For example, player actions could be prefixed with >, other actions/events with _, input prompts with @ and warnings with !.

So basically, with this new system, a message log might look like this:

  Code:

_An orc comes into view.
>You hit the orc.
_The orc hits you. The orc misses you.
!**** LOW HITPOINT WARNING ****
>You hit the orc.
 You kill the orc!
_The orc hits you.
@Throwing (i - inventory): e - 3 darts (quivered)
 Press: ? - help, Shift-Dir - straight line, f - you
>The dart misses the orc.
_The orc hits you.


[galehar]

Most of the message types your talking about are already distinguished by having a different colour. What would be good in my opinion, is removing the _ and having all the messages from the previous turns in dark grey (except maybe warnings). Only the last turn would be in full colour.

[Tiber]

If nothing else, this seems like it could be an init option.

[mageykun]

I don't see the jumble of symbols increasing clarity at all. We have one clear marker you can scan for, to clearly show you the turn breaks which might otherwise to hard to discern. Adding all that other stuff seems like noise.

What would be good in my opinion, is removing the _ and having all the messages from the previous turns in dark grey (except maybe warnings). Only the last turn would be in full colour.

I'm not sure I like that idea. It's pretty vague to tell where turns start and end in the logs without them, and I at least occasionally try to scan back because I've missed something. No divisions and uniform color would make that slightly more inconvenient.

[galehar]

I'm not sure I like that idea. It's pretty vague to tell where turns start and end in the logs without them, and I at least occasionally try to scan back because I've missed something. No divisions and uniform color would make that slightly more inconvenient.

I think the only important distinction is what happened in the last turn, and what happened before. When looking further back in the log, I don't really care if something happened 4 or 5 turns ago, but maybe that's just me.
This could also be applied only to the message are, and when viewing the log, it would be full colour (the _ still seems unnecessary to me).

[crate]

I would leave the _ in the message log. There are definitely situations where it is useful to count turns in the log (when will that dragon be able to breathe again? when will my teleport happen?).

If you want distinction in the message area about what happened just this current turn you get that very easily by simply setting clear_messages=true, but greying-out old messages sounds ok too (but I use clear_messages=true so I don't care what you do if it only affects old messages).

[BlackSheep]

The underscore is already optional if it bothers you. Parsing a message log to understand a sequence of events is much easier if you can see the start of each turn.