The research tree spoke only the node's name and whether you could afford
it. Everything that tells you whether it is worth affording -- the
knowledge cost, the recipes it unlocks, the description -- is drawn in
the hint windows beside the tree and was never spoken, so "cannot afford"
gave no way to find out what was missing or by how much.
states/research.lua now implements details(), the same = / Shift+= hook
the item grids use: cost with the shortfall spelled out, what it unlocks,
then the description, one block each so [ and ] walk them back. Shift+=
adds the name line and the whole knowledge purse across all four types.
The focus line also takes its name from the node's title instead of
humanising the id, so it is "Sewing techniques", not "sewing techniques".
Everything is read from the state's currentNode upvalue -- the display
table updateCurrentNode() assembles for the hint window -- rather than
models/research.lua, whose nodes table is file-local and whose unlocks
are recipe ids, which would have named the recipe instead of the item it
produces. The shortfall is computed against journalModel.knowledge,
required lazily because models.journal drags in much of the game.
The tree has no hotkey and the prologue may hold no writing desk, so the
testbed enters it the way the desk does: ingame.interface("research"),
the exact call in the desk's tryInteractFunction. Require it as
"states/ingame" and not "states.ingame" -- states.lua uses the slash
form, and the dot form loads a second copy of the module whose
levelWindow is nil, which research.draw indexes on its first frame.
98 testbed checks, 0 failures.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The item grids said which item you were on ("a torch, slot 3") but nothing
about what it was -- no description, no condition, and no "what does this
refine into", which is the whole of alchemy.
The game already composes all of it in one place: item.getPopupMessage()
(modules/item.lua:199) returns the cursor popup's line list, so read that
rather than re-deriving anything from templates.
It also already gates it behind a dwell -- the popup only fades in after
examinationPopupFadeInDuration (0.4s), so a sighted player who arrows past a
slot never sees the details either. Mirror that instead of inventing a
modality: stop on an item for 0.6s and the details speak themselves, queued.
"=" reads them on demand, Shift+= keeps the name line too. ("r" was the
obvious mnemonic but is a game-claimed scancode, and getCommand() dispatches
on scancode ignoring modifiers.)
New generic hook descriptor.details() returning a LIST of blocks, so each is
also pushed into the console history and [ ] \ walk a long description back
afterwards -- the journal page trick. Only _itemgrid.lua implements it so far.
The other half is the hint panel craft/refine/trade draw permanently beside
the grid, which the popup never contains: recipe components, and price, which
appears nowhere else in the game. The three panels share a shape, so one
reader covers them. Affordability survives only as a red colour in the hint
table and decides whether enter does anything, so it is decoded and spoken.
59 testbed checks, 0 failures: a synthetic ivy_leaves item as the version-bump
canary for getPopupMessage, hasUpvalue over every hint-panel local, four
assertions on the pure settleStep, and an end-to-end "=" press. Not yet
exercised against a live item -- the prologue inventory is empty.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Accessibility ModandClaude Opus 5