forum Site-specific suggestions

Started December 23, 2017 by @Werevampiwolf

tune

I can't find a section to send comments to the people who run the site, so I don't know where else to put this.
My suggestion is for the ability to add more things to sections without making a new page for it. Including premium pages without a subscription. For example, I don't have a subscription but I'd like to add a language to a character file, but there's not space to type one in, only to link an existing page. And ignoring premium, another example. I don't have enough info to create pages for a character's parents but I have their names. But I'm not able to just type in a name, only to link to an existing page.
It's a really cool website, though, and I look forward to using it in the future.

I think these would be very nice options. I've been a bit frustrated by the same things, but I've been hopeful for future changes to the site. I'd like to add that I really wish we could have some more detail into what the other premium features offer, such as how in-depth the prompts are for flora or languages.

Can I use this to add a few suggestions?
I've been adding characters, and I will have many to add for one universe, so of course linking to them will be great. Though, there's only a "spouses" section for any kind of romantic partner, and spouse usually implies marriage. So, perhaps a "love-interest" or "romantic partner" option that allows linking, just in case a character isn't married but has someone they love.
Also, perhaps a way to add more fields in a category, that's not a custom category the user has made. And a way to say if we want it to be a simple text field, or to link to a character or location, etc.
And to have those things available to non-premium members »

I think it'd be nice to have a way to add a minor character/location/whatever, as I have some aspects of my universe that exist, but don't need to be fully fleshed out. For example, the parents of a character that add nothing to the plot itself, but are still there nonetheless, would fall under this category. It's not really necessary, but for me personally, everything just feels overwhelming when everything tiny feature has a hundred blanks to fill in.

I was just going to say what @Bee already said, heheh. The ability to make characters "minor" and not need most of the information that major characters do would be really nice!
I have added all of the characters that are in my Council, because I need to know their names and whether or not they contribute to the governments' corruption, but most of them never even show up on screen, so I really don't care how tall they are, and etc.

I'm not sure how often the site developers check these forums, so you guys might be better off sending a message to them directly through their help menu.

If you go to the main page or your profile page, there should be a help button in the top right corner of the screen. Clicking it opens a drop down menu that lets you report problems, request features, and leave feedback.

Hey guys! Site developer here (hi!) – I actually check these forums pretty much every day (as well as the above form, and all the emails I get directly). I've been pretty swamped with holidays, but I'm planning to be back and way more active by a day or two from now.

These are all great ideas and I can't wait to bounce them around and figure out how to add them to the site for everyone. :) In the meantime, submitting suggestions through the form @Minette linked is a surefire way to make sure they get cataloged and added to the site roadmap, but the forums are a great way to discuss the ideas with other users and hear more about how more people would use each feature.

(I will be adding a "love interest" field to characters today though – just making my way through the to-do list!)

:o @andrew (Our Supreme Lord and Overseer) Thank you for adding the love internet option~! I really appreciate all you've done here ^_^ When I can afford it, I'll become a supporter.

Just want to throw in my 2 cents. I like what I see, but I am only using the freemium version right now. I thought about paying, but as far as I can tell there is only one way to pay and I do not like the idea giving out my credit card. There is no way to use paypal or amazon pay? Also, it looks like it is an automatic payment which I just do not like. Would rather manually enter it each time, just send a bill when its about time to pay.

What about a free trial period for a week without entering your credit card? I think that would bring in more people, right now its an all or nothing deal since you cannot access or see the other parts so you do not know whats worth it or not. Maybe have some screenshots at least.

Would like to have a timeline, customized relationship connection. I know there is plans for romance, but making your own connections would be nice. Like best friend, jealous of, plans to betray, owes their life too, etc.

I think locations need some major improvements. I honestly have no idea how this is supposed to work. I see you put something down, but it has cities on the side. Ok, how am I supposed to do continents, or individual towns, or big stuff like galaxies..etc Maybe a way to organize the items by size, then go smaller. solar system -> planets ->land/water masses ->countries ->regions -> city/towns -> buildings -> rooms -> people/items in location -> etc This is actually something from the amazing nested universe generator does. http://orteil.dashnet.org/nested
it is crazy, it can go from universe down to below atoms.

Customized map where we can drop pins and link it to what we wrote. Maybe link multiple maps together so that we can go from region to local map…etc.

gotta say, I agree with @Godling, the location reaaly need improvements. I'm realy struggeling with organising the Islands and Kingdoms of my water-planet

Agree with @Godling and @Jarhara, location needs an overhaul. The nested universe generator is a good idea, though the linked version doesn't seem too user-friendly.

Yup yup- agree with all three above! I have a lot of dimensions, countries, cities/towns. I pile the dimensions in the universes, and countries, cities, certain little locations in the location. Which can get pretty messy unless I specifically say 'a country' or 'a city'. :S It would be nice to have an opinion to tick whichever it is a country, city, misc location, or something like that!

I think a PayPal option is really really needed. Please, add that.

Alot of the sugestions or requests involve quickly adding just text for a bit char's name in a field.
I think instead of that if you have't made them yet there should be an 'add name' option a the bottom of the drop down menu and that will be the same as doing a 'quick add'
And it would auto add them to the same universe.
It would know where to put them (char, location, language, etc.) based on what drop down menu you're using.

Now this might be a bit complicated to make work right, but on the user end it would vastly streamline the creation process.

This is perhaps an unsolvable problem, but when adding a custom field, the end result text shows up in the enormous size by default, instead of the much more friendly standard block test size. I added custom fields hoping to input large amounts of information there (since I've been using the site to coördinate word documents for my D&D players) but the result once saved was illegible due to being basically the equivalent of ALLCAPS due to the text size. It would be useful to be able to select what text field type shows up in a custom (or extant) field.

As well, I second those who call for adding fields to extant subcategories, the need for minor character status, and the need for nesting in locations. Nesting everywhere, really. The "Groups" tag is not as useful as simply having the option for organising characters at the character level, as would be useful for organising locations. I'd suggest
Locations» Planet (Earth/Middle Earth)> Country (France/Rhovanion)> Province or area (Normandy/Mirkwood)> City (Rouen/Elven-king's Halls)> Locale (Church of Saint-Maclou/Thranduil's Throneroom)

But really, having user-defineable nesting would be best, especially for people who want to get in very deep for, persay, Creatures differentiated by taxonomy. Some people would just like to sort locations by country and city, others by borough and block. Some people would like to sort by protagonist and antagonist, others by specific clans or holdings, all within the character tag. Some people might have large lists of items or spells they'd like to nest by type. In fact, this would be a great incentive to add to premium membership! Premium: access to all categories and custom nesting and organisational options! However, I fully understand that adding these organisational options would require quite a bit of extra code.

Dungeon Master insight: I've been listing custom classes as separate races and frankly that works for now, since on character sheets I can select more than one "race." I don't think there's utility to adding a "jobs" category, but I figured I should make my workaround public for other DMs who might read this board. Also, tables in text fields?

Master in Linguistics insight: The languages tab is… very bare and uninviting. As a dream, I'd love for Phonology to bring up an interactive IPA chart (click on a phoneme and it gets highlighted and used in the final phonology) plus a notes field for phonotactics etc. But that is just… asking too much, I'm entirely aware. However, it remains really rather hard to get a table of any sort into the text field, and tables are essential to grammars relying on conjugation or multiple registers. Entities has just numbers and qualifiers? Like, there's nothing here other than a text box for dumping a complete grammar, because the other sub sections are less than helpful. Not all languages have conjugations, but a few subheadings under Grammar for things such as Sentence Order, Register (move it here), Verbs» Tense Aspect Mood Negative Questions Agreement, Nouns» Case Number Person Pronouns Noun-Clauses, Adjectives/Adverbs» Placement Agreement Conjugation… would be nice and probably helpful. Typology separate from phonology is super unhelpful because it's unwieldy to have to go to a separate section to learn the orthography of the sound system you've just read.

I once did not have a master in linguistics insight: For people who are real newbies at language, I think it would be really super helpful to expand the "Entities" tag to include just some basic vocabulary groups. Most people making languages just need to know the phonology and a basic themed lexicon for character and map naming! So it's helpful to have some basic lexical entry groups such as: Numbers (already here), Colours, Community Members, Common Plants, Common Animals, Landscape Features (river, mountain, field, town, road), Heroic Attributes (big, little, brave, shining, beautiful), Tools & Occupations (hunter, smith, singer, sword, hammer, lyre), and Traditional Names (Moses, Brittany, Megatron, Apollo). This well covers naming places and even people as long as the beginner is reminded to have rules about adjective order in their language: a language could put adjectives after nouns as in "forest-green" but not "green-forest" or "for-green-est."

This is awesome feedback, everyone, and it's falling on eager ears. I'm implementing (and/or planning/prioritizing it for implementation) all of it as quickly as I can. :)

Eikkiyi and others (regarding locations): I just released three new page types that expand on Locations that should make organizing them a bit easier – Towns, Countries, and Landmarks. Locations should still be used as a more generic catch-all for all kinds of locations (and are staying free for everyone, forever), but these more specific page types (and more coming soon) should be specific enough to drill down into the nitty gritty of each type of location in your world. Locations will only expand from here.

obfuscobble: That (and your other comment in the Languages section) are great, and it gives me a lot to go off of when fleshing out the Languages section soon. I think you're definitely right in demonstrating there's a huge gap between someone just starting out with a conlang and someone who's got a masters in linguistics – I'm hoping to build out some wizards/tools/apps and other helpful processes for people each level to design their language with.. without the system itself getting in the way (because we all know how open-ended designing a language can end up being). Thank you, and I hope to have some updates soon.

@Lengna I can't believe how many times I've been working on pages and wished I had that exact feature. I guess it's time to finally just sit down and just do it. :)

A few other notes:

• Something along the lines of major/minor separation, starring/favoriting pages, and/or just reordering lists yourself (especially for Scenes!) is coming soon.

• I'm planning on adding premium trials soon so everyone can try out everyone on the site (and, of course, everyone with an account already will have a shot too – not just for new users). Just haven't gotten to it yet.

• You can currently add custom fields to pages, but it's pretty basic in functionality right now. A rework soon will allow you to edit/reorder those custom fields, add them to existing tabs (like Overview, etc), and include links to other pages as well.

Can't wait to share the next updates. A very special thank you to everyone who's offered suggestions. I originally built Notebook.ai just for my own writing, but it makes me infinitely happy to see others using it now and I'm always extremely happy to make it better for everyone.

This tool is amazing, I'm so glad you made it.
I'm excited for the more in-depth language tools too, and the reordering. And well everything really. <3

This is going to be awesome! Thank you ever so much, andrew (Our Supreme Lord and Overseer). The new location types are already very helpful for organisation.

I am really enjoying this tool so far! I just have a few quality of life suggestions so far:

Being able to quick refresh the worldbuilding prompts, both on the content hub page and the dedicated worldbuilding prompt page. Sometimes the prompt is something I am currently not willing to put brain power in, and I feel like refreshing the whole page 30 times to get something I can work on is not site-friendly.
Visually distinguishing the forums with read topics. The forums themselves grey out read topics, but on the upper level, the only way to see if nothing's been posted since you last visited is by reading the (much smaller) "updated some time ago" text underneath the forum title.

Nitpicking observations:
Under Flora, one is prompted to provide a plant's Fruit, Seed, Nut, and Berry. And, well, there are no plants that produce Fruits, Nuts, and Berries all at once. "Edible Parts" might be better. You could answer None to that, or if your plant does in fact produce fruits, nuts, and berries all at once alongside the seeds, they can be detailed there. Medicinal purposes is a very nice field, and one can always answer None to it; also having reproduction and seasonality fields is great. However, I'm stymied where to put info on plants used for fibre, dyes, or building materials. These shouldn't be separate fields, but probably grouped together. Dividing Produce into "Edible Parts," "Medicinal Purposes," and "Material Uses" would be nice.
Under Creatures, I hope it gets the same taxonomy features as Flora soon. Everything else about the creatures section is =thumbs up motion= NICE.
I feel like I should really heap praise on the newest features and the other sections after being such a pain in this thread!

I guess this is the official suggestions thread now.

Here's a random thought:

Add the ability to pin certain things you've created to the top of the lefthand side. If you know you're going to be editing a certain thing frequently, it might be nice to have a hotlink to it at the top.

Perhaps that's redundant and useless, I don't know.

I would like a section where I can search for other users and add them to my list, see in which works I am invited as collaborator.

It would be nice to have pages/fields to describe the relationships between characters. Like if you were editing a character's page you could choose another character from the drop down bar and it would give you a text box to write in. And it would appear on both character's pages. Also I don't know how difficult it would be, but giving an option to customize the font size/line breaks on things would be great.

Thanks so much for this website! <3

Now that I have premium and have been exploring the capabilities the different pages…if it hasn't been suggested already, being able to nest a universe inside a universe (for rules about multiverses) and having a character be a part of multiple universes (for those multiverse hoppers) would be appreciated!

Might I suggest that the birthplace dropdown be changed to select town pages rather than the current location pages?