machine usage

[Agar]

Yeah, I think Jos created the suggestions section for a reason (though some ideas are much more ridiculous for their worth)

Anywho, onto a constructive suggestion on topic with this idea:

Perhaps we should make active "white-grey" for a machine in use, full "white" for a machine used by you and "dark grey" for a machine not in use. Just like the character's page.

All something like that would require would be a well placed if statment for each machine. That might take a little work to get the placement of it just right, maybe some bugs if any tags don't get closed, but isn't all that hard and won't slow the game down all that much.

The game already checks to see if the machine is in use when you try to use it, so just put that if compare on the objects screen and if it is getting used, grey the machine name.

Cute little things like saying who is using it have an unknown level of complexity, and aren't really all that nessecary. Once you know the machine IS being used, you can find out who is using it fairly quickly.

It makes more sense to scan over the available machines and go to an open spot than bumping into people working while you try to find a spot to do your work.

[Claivuus]

Nick, the thing you don't understand about this is that you can't tell what MACHINES are being used. You just see the projects. Knowing what machines are free is what this is about.

[mikki]

I have to agree, it is a pain not knowing what machine is what. I have ran into that problem more then once when I have very few minutes left. Would be nice to know which machine is in use instead of wasting minutes to 'find' the one available.

[Nick]

So it's better for programmers to waste hours to program this, rather than people just spending 2 minutes to find out?
There must be something I'm not considering or understanding.
Because IMO it is really not that hard to click use on a machine to see if it's being used or not. Really.

[Anthony Roberts]

Nick, look at it this way.

If they're occupied with implementing this, then they're busy NOT implementing something that you don't want. Simple logic.

Plus, you know, just because they have a lot on their plate, doesn't mean a break from a large project to do a small thing isn't plausable. Personally, when I get annoyed with one large programming issue, I find a smaller one to deal with, something simple. Once I've delt with it, I usually have enough willpower to try that bigger one again.

[T-shirt]

Wow. Is this topic about whether programmers should spend their time on really really important subjects or on small subjects too.

Or is it about the fact that on the objects page you cannot see which objects are free to take or use and which ones are locked, because they are in use.

When a character of mine is working on a project; the 'enter building' button does not show up. That's nice, because I cannot enter a building while I am working a project. It would be nice to see I cannot use or take an object, because someone is working with it.

I don't need programming department to change this thing at once, but I would like it is added to their 'to-do-list' so that it can be implemented once they have some spare time besides the time they need to spend on their really really important projects.

[Chris Johnson]

From a progamming point of view this is a relatively simple feature to implement, but it does raise performance issues.

Currently opening the objects page makes one query to the database to return the list all items visible at that location and displays them

What is being suggested here requires an additional query for each machine to see if it is in use (and possibly subsequent calls to return the name of the person or person using that machine) . These additional queries would have to be made regardless of whether the player was just opening the Objects page to see what's on the ground or whether they
actually want to see if a machine is in use.

For a frequently loaded page such as the Object's Page, Programming need to take performance into account as well as functionality.