After creating a community poll and receiving it’s results, we further discussed this concept and how we might satisfy the wishes of those who submitted their choices.
The results of 29 responses point to an overall preference for locked parts to be hidden, and represented by icons that would hint at the existence of undiscovered parts. However; 29 responders is a relatively small number compared to the community at large, so we continued to carefully consider our options.
The results of our discussion was a new concept!
The problem with the results from our poll is that while all locked parts being represented at once in the menu made an excellent representation of possibility in Spore, it would not nearly work as well in Thrive due to the layout of the editor. The player would need to scroll past numerous unselectable parts clogging their editor list which might not feel very streamlined.
In order to combat this, @dphKraken suggested we move all locked parts to their own category at the bottom of the parts list, which would sort these parts out of the way, while still showing the player how many parts remain locked in a visual medium.
With this concept on hand, I will now go ahead and narrow down our choices to two, to make the final decision easier to choose.
The choices are:
- Reveal all locked parts as mystery icons and sort them into their own category in the editor
Concept (None yet)
(Once I or someone else makes a concept image for this I’ll slap it here.)
- Display a single undiscovered icon in any category that contains locked parts, with optional numeric counter if so desired.
Concept
I personally feel that these may be our best options for displaying undiscovered parts, and hope that by narrowing the choices down that we will be a step closer to finally making our choice. If anyone disagrees, let me know!