I need your Feedback! Changes to the "stuff" category

There are two plans regarding the "stuff" category I would like to discuss:

1) New "stuff" categories?

I knew this time would come... the "everything else" category is full. I will be able to add 3 or 4 more items to it, but that's it. So I will have to reorganize the whole "stuff" category next year. Since you are the people who have to deal with it I guess it is best to ask you for your opinion ;). This is not the first time I have thought about this topic, but I never came around to actually reorganize the category. Now I HAVE to do it, if I want it or not.
So this is my plan right now:

• beards
• make-up & extra body parts
• glasses & masks
• fashion accessoris & jewelry
• shirt motifs
• animals
• food & drugs
• tools & weapons
• art & music
• toys & sports
• electronics (or "foreground"?)
• everything else

12 instead of 9. This way the "everything else" category would become smaller and the small "music" and "weapons" categories a bit bigger. I think it makes sense to combine the "extra bodyparts" with "make-up", because right now they are mixed up a bit already.

What do you think about it? Do you have better ideas for how to sort it?

It would be possible as well to put items to the body parts they belong to instead of the "stuff" category. For example the "fashion accessories" could be included in the "shirts" category or "beards" in "hair". But I am afraid this would be a very confusing change if not done right.

2) New order for layers?

The second thing I think about is the layer order of the items. In case you do not know this already: Every new "stuff" item I add has a unique number assigned to it. This number is the layer it belongs to. The higher the number, the more on top it will appear. For example the wings have a very low number (so they appear in back of the character) and the hearts have a very heigh number (so they are in the foreground).

This current system with a fix order worked pretty well so far, but it has two downsides:

• You can not manipulate the order of the items because the layer number is set
• It is complicated for me to include new items

When I include a new stuff item I need to look through my looong list of already included items. On this list I see the filenames and layers. I have to make sure I use a layer that is not used already by another item and that fits with the order of all the other items. It gets harder and harder, because many numbers in the middle are taken already. Rearranging everything yould be a hell of work for me, but if all the numbers in the middle are gone there will be no other way.

The solution? I would like to change the layer system, so when you add an item it will automatically be assigned one layer above the last item you added.

This way you would be able to manipulate the order and I would have much less work with including new items. The number of items would not be limited anymore. And maybe you could include one item multiple times.
This new system would only apply to the "stuff" category, because it would be annoying if you want to change the hair or clothes of your character later and they suddenly are in front of everything else.

I have no idea yet if I can code this. But before I start to work on something you don't want I wanted to ask you for your opinion :).

Unfortunately this would not be possible. While I might be able to handle a "+1" function for the layer number, choosing it freely would be too complicated. And I have to think of the people who want to select things easily... they should not be forced to decide about something like a layer when they click on an item (many people don't even understand the freestyle collection, that's why I worry about that ;)).

I would like to include a button in the small pop up menu (the one to move around or delete the item) to switch through layers. But even this would be impossible for me, because after an item was chosen the layer can not be changed anymore.

Yes, it's difficult...
There is the problem that you'd have to think first about what items you add. If you combine a lot of items and suddenly realize "oops, this should be behind the others" this could be annoying. But the advantage of being able to choose your own order at all might be bigger. Exactly how you wrote ;).

But the new "stuff" categories are more important right now, so I will do this first and we have some time to think about the layer problem.

That's why I want to combine wepaons and tools ;). It's supposed to be a tool, but of course it could be used as a weapon...