blkerby
[FR] Spoiler map: show in logic areas without revealing items
Right now, clicking a step in the spoiler map displays all locations that are in-logic for that sphere, but also reveals all items in those locations and the majors it expects you to collect during that step. It would be nice to have a way to just reveal what areas it considers in logic, without revealing what items are found there.
It's an interesting idea. There is currently a feature to toggle off "items" so that items do not show on the map (only the dots which show the item tier like they do in-game). Of course with that setting, the items still show in the side panel. I assume for your use case you would want all items in the side panel to show as Chozo orbs regardless of which step is selected?
Exactly. Ideally I'd even like a way for it not to show item tiers on the map either, since what I really want this for is asking it "where does it think I can go next?" rather than "where should I go next?", but even hiding the items from the side panel would be nice.
So the thing that gets tricky is how to keep the spoiler reasonable to navigate without revealing the next-step items. I think if the whole side panel hides the identity of all the items it could be a bit too confusing to figure out which step you want to select. I'm thinking of an alternative approach, which would be to show reachability for one step after the selected step. So then when you select a step you still see in the side panel which items it has assumed you already collected, but then it shows on the map which places are considered reachable for the next step, and the new items for the next step would be shown as Chozo orbs, which would hide their tier. I could see that working well as a toggleable option; it could maybe even make sense as a default-on option.
That would work great!
Thinking about it a bit more, I've realized that part of what's driving this request from me is that what I actually, fundamentally want is a tracker (i.e. something that will answer the question "given that I have these items, where can I go") and the map is more of a guided walkthrough (i.e. something that says "assuming you've followed the walkthrough so far, you should have these items, and should now go to these places").
Making it behave fully like a tracker (including the ability to do things like tell it I've gone out of logic and collected some item sooner than it expected) would be a much bigger project, possibly one that would need to be distinct from the spoiler map. But "show items for the current step and reachability for the step after that" would be most of what I want and, I think, a useful change in general.
I had another thought about how this could be implemented: when clicking a step in the side panel, we could make it so that if you click on the left side of the step (where the step number is shown) then items on that step would be shown as Chozo orbs (both on the map and in the side panel), while if you click on the right side of the step (where the items are) then the items for that step would be revealed. In either case, the items for all previous steps would be revealed, so this would only be affecting the reveal on the currently selected step. The state can be reflected in how the step is highlighted in the side panel; i.e. if clicking the left side of the step, then only the left part of that step row would be highlighted, and the same for the hover effect before selecting a different step.