Cantr II Discussion Forum

Large clothing, like dresses, cover more body parts and warrant a detailed description of many of their areas. it seems Like they should be allowed a longer discription.

the silk dress:

an elegant dress of fine silk clings to the body, starting close around the neck and, flaring at the hips, hangs beautifully to the ankles. Well fitted sleeves end at the wrists and small pieces of embroidery decorate the bodice

begins with -68 available characters if you try to customize the description.

What if, as a rule of thumb, clothing could have 12 more characters than their normal description at the very least you could describe your silk dress as being "yellow" or "red" without having to butcher the description.

I think that would just over complicate things, all items should have a higher character cap, if something like a short skirt doesn't need as much description, then you just have a number of characters left over when you describe it.

I agree with keeping it simple. Besides, you can have a very intricate design on something as small as a ring.

SumBum wrote:I agree with keeping it simple. Besides, you can have a very intricate design on something as small as a ring.

Agreed, just because something is small does not mean it's simple to describe. A generally larger character cap for everything is ideal.

I agree that character limit for descriptions is low. That's because:
1.

Even currently allowed amount of text can make inventory/objects page cluttered. It's a result of a small page width (700px). Object description shouldn't make table row higher.

Let's try 500 characters:


Oooch. Ok, it's exaggerated. But anyway, I don't see possibility of significant increase for object description length when default page width is 700px.

Offtopic: You can increase it by using custom CSS if you like. For example I'm using the following style:

It works for most of elements.

2.
Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules.
So max description length should be the same for all objects, or at least it should be clear what to expect. That's important because simple is better than complex.

3.
Why 160 and not 150 or 180? Well, no good reason. But 160 is max len of SMS.
There are players who spend 1000 characters for uni-lingual character description just because they can. I find such over-detailed descriptions completely unreadable.
(Character description length was increased to allow use of bilingual description in one text field)
I don't know where's the reasonable limit for obj desc, but probably about 300 characters.

When can UI be changed? Well, first I'm going to upgrade smarty (which won't cause any visual changes), then I'm willing to look for possibility of using some CSS framework and slowly adapt the code. I didn't even start to think about possibility of using a framework, so ETA before end of 2014 would be too optimistic.
My advice with current state of affairs is: focus on most important details and omit things which are obvious.

What if, as a rule of thumb, clothing could have 12 more characters than their normal description at the very least you could describe your silk dress as being "yellow" or "red" without having to butcher the description.

Which language should be taken into account?

What if, past three lines it would just say "..." or "etc"? Then to view the full descriptions people would have to put it on, to get a full view of the item. Or alternatively there could be a "view" button for clothing items.

Greek wrote:I agree that character limit for descriptions is low. That's because:
1.

Even currently allowed amount of text can make inventory/objects page cluttered. It's a result of a small page width (700px). Object description shouldn't make table row higher.

Let's try 500 characters:


Oooch. Ok, it's exaggerated. But anyway, I don't see possibility of significant increase for object description length when default page width is 700px.

Offtopic: You can increase it by using custom CSS if you like. For example I'm using the following style:

Code: Select all

@media all and (min-width: 1300px) {
  .page, center > table, center > div, #eventsList > div, .obj_object {
    width: 1100px !important;
  }
}


It works for most of elements.

2.
Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules.
So max description length should be the same for all objects, or at least it should be clear what to expect. That's important because simple is better than complex.

3.
Why 160 and not 150 or 180? Well, no good reason. But 160 is max len of SMS.
There are players who spend 1000 characters for uni-lingual character description just because they can. I find such over-detailed descriptions completely unreadable.
(Character description length was increased to allow use of bilingual description in one text field)
I don't know where's the reasonable limit for obj desc, but probably about 300 characters.

When can UI be changed? Well, first I'm going to upgrade smarty (which won't cause any visual changes), then I'm willing to look for possibility of using some CSS framework and slowly adapt the code. I didn't even start to think about possibility of using a framework, so ETA before end of 2014 would be too optimistic.
My advice with current state of affairs is: focus on most important details and omit things which are obvious.

What if, as a rule of thumb, clothing could have 12 more characters than their normal description at the very least you could describe your silk dress as being "yellow" or "red" without having to butcher the description.

Which language should be taken into account?

I understand that if you have a ton of described items in your inventory it will look cluttered, but I don't think many people would mind? Plus you'd be wearing the item, and if you're not you can stash it somewhere. That's what storage is for. Also simple is not often better, I'd be happy with just a couple of extra lines of space. So I don't have to sacrifice details for other details. For instance, I was trying to describe a dagger, and if I had just one extra line to work with, I could have added all the important details on its looks. Now people will look at it and think it's just a straight dagger, but it's meant to be curved with ridges. But I had to leave that out because of lack of space. That is rather annoying when you have to sacrifice so much, for so little.

For almost half of the items I had intended to alter, they were small alterations, and changing part of the description and keeping the rest was significantly above the length limit, so I had to give up.
The way it is now, it also is not enough to fit anything but the most simplistic wording. The custom descriptions have to be short, straightforward sentences if they can even hope to give the same impression of detail or completeness as the non-custom descriptions.

Welp, somebody finally made the topic. So here we go; I both agree heartily and disagree heartily.

I think that the charlimit should be a flat 400 for all items.
I think that you should only see the first 200 before it cuts off, requiring you to click a little JS [...] button that would not be painful.
I think that the time of the project should be tied to the length of the description. If you use all 400, it'd take half as long as it does to make it, meaning that experts could produce such a detailed object in the same time it'd take an efficient(?) person to do it. (not going to bring up the fact that it should take longer after manufacturing, but IT SHOULD) If you use 200, a quarter of the time. 300, three eighths. 150, three sixteenths, etc, and rounding up so that it takes at least 1/16 as much time even if you leave it blank, and then rounding up so at least an hour.
Oh, yeah, I'm mentioning it. It should take at least 1.5 as much time to modify something after it's been manufactured as it would to make it that way.

*Wiro wrote:What if, past three lines it would just say "..." or "etc"? Then to view the full descriptions people would have to put it on, to get a full view of the item. Or alternatively there could be a "view" button for clothing items.

I love this idea. And I agree.. there is far too little room to really get things described to my liking.

kicking jay wrote:Welp, somebody finally made the topic. So here we go; I both agree heartily and disagree heartily.

I think that the charlimit should be a flat 400 for all items.
I think that you should only see the first 200 before it cuts off, requiring you to click a little JS [...] button that would not be painful.
I think that the time of the project should be tied to the length of the description. If you use all 400, it'd take half as long as it does to make it, meaning that experts could produce such a detailed object in the same time it'd take an efficient(?) person to do it. (not going to bring up the fact that it should take longer after manufacturing, but IT SHOULD) If you use 200, a quarter of the time. 300, three eighths. 150, three sixteenths, etc, and rounding up so that it takes at least 1/16 as much time even if you leave it blank, and then rounding up so at least an hour.
Oh, yeah, I'm mentioning it. It should take at least 1.5 as much time to modify something after it's been manufactured as it would to make it that way.

I think this is the best suggestion. should i change my original post to be this?

I think it took a lil while for some one to make the topic because everyone's been waiting for the opportunity to try it (Then kind of disappointed with the space usage)

Forget ever trying to alter the description of your dress loafers without completely editing the description.

"a pair of leather shoes puckered up with a thin cord. Small feathers are attached to the cord with pressed copper and dangle from the ends. The leather is folded down at the ankle to reveal the soft fur lining. The sides are adorned with decorative stitching and the tongue embellished with colorful glass beads in a pattern"

How many character is that? Way more than we're currently allowed. I couldn't even make my chemise pink without shortening the stock description.

I generally assume that if some detail hasn't been altered in the description, it is the way it is in the original item, and people can check that in the build menu, so it's not necessarily necessary to repeat parts of the original description, only things that differ from it.

I would still rather see longer descriptions for more complex items.

JS idea looks best. We've got quite much JS on objects&inventory pages, so adding it won't be a big change.

Greek wrote:JS idea looks best. We've got quite much JS on objects&inventory pages, so adding it won't be a big change.

If this means we're going to get longer description limits, I will cry from happiness. xD Fat tears of joy to go along with my equally fat descriptions.