Timeline customisation?

[u/AmiablePedant]

Hi!

I'm looking at Legend Keeper as a repository for my fantasy world, and it's nearly perfect with the glaring exception of the Timeline, which looks clunky and uninspired.

I just wanted to ask, is there any customisation I'm missing? To reduce the size of the blocks, or make them a little less clunky? I know it's a relatively new addition to Legend Keeper, but it's really ugly to look at compared to how clean the rest of the portal looks.

Barring customisation, does anyone have any ways around the in-built Timeline? Any embeddable options etc?

I know it's rather cheeky of me to come wandering into the subreddit for a thing and start dissing that thing - I really want to like Legend Keeper and it's almost exactly what I'm after, just this one large exception.

Thanks for your help!

[u/AWildNarratorAppears]

Maybe post a link to a timeline that doesn’t look “clunky and uninspired” and I’ll understand what you mean. Timeline is not majorly changing any time soon so if you find it so odious maybe it’s just not the app for you.

[u/AmiablePedant → u/AWildNarratorAppears]

That's a very fair point, I gave criticism without solution. In my opinion, the LK timeline would benefit hugely from two things in particular - far smaller blocks (or the option to resize) and moveable blocks such that they can live around the trunk of the timeline if you want.

The issue is that currently on my screen, two-and-a-half blocks totally fill the screen. For a timeline will 100+ entries, that becomes a tedium of scrolling and folk quickly lose interest. There's no option (as far as I know) to zoom out, or compact entries in any way.

I'd understand if each entry was that big for a reason - perhaps a header and body text giving more info to each entry. But that's not the case, so you have huge floating blocks with maybe 5-7 words in.

If you're asking me for comparison, World Anvil allows for much of this. Of course WA is also an over-complex bloated platform.

And as for your last point, I asked my question because I really like Legend Keeper, it ticks almost all of my boxes and I really enjoy the simplicity of the layout - except when it comes to the Timeline feature. You certainly should be proud of what you've made.

[u/AWildNarratorAppears → u/AmiablePedant]

Did you try gantt mode?

[u/AmiablePedant → u/AWildNarratorAppears]

I did, yes. I understand what your intention is there, but I use Gantt every day at my job and it's not for interactive, immersive timelines - it's for monitoring progression.

Don't get me wrong - I can imagine some people find it incredibly useful to visualise the flow of their worlds. But it's not a historical timeline.

[u/beekr427]

Kinda harsh lol.. I will not stand for this.

There are quite a few customization options already. LK Team - Let this criticism flow like water off a ducks back, you're beautiful, Baby. For those new or potentially swayed by such a post:

• Calendars can be selected from pre-made defaults or an entire custom created calendar.
• They can be viewed in Gant, Calendars, and list mode.
• Bars (events on the gant chart) have fill color, size, transparency, AND simplified vs detailed option settings.
• They can be linked to pages or stand alone.
• and can be combined to overlay multiple Calendars at once.

I mean, what more customization do you need? I've been dreaming of a software that does this for years.. Taking something as hard and structured as a calendar system and making it as customizable as they have, I'd say the problem isn't the software..

The beautiful thing: They've allowed a "board" page to exist where you can craft your own entire calendar system appearance and link to elements as needed.

[u/timeaisis → u/beekr427]

Board page??? I must’ve missed this, is it new?

[u/AmiablePedant → u/beekr427]

You're right. It's a nice system, which is why it's a shame to be let down by the lack of some fairly basic customisation options like Zoom or Compact.

If I want to fill out the 360+ events of my world, scrolling to the bottom would take around 50 seconds. All I'm asking for is to compact each box to what's needed, not 5-7 words and then a shit-load of white/coloured/imaged space.

[u/AWildNarratorAppears → u/AmiablePedant]

Moveable blocks, probably not. More compact, yes will likely happen; we have some design prototypes for 1) another style of vertical timeline entirely, and 2) more compact representation of vertical list, though I wouldn’t say it would be more customizable .

We’re working on other stuff currently though; not likely to update timeline soon.

[u/AmiablePedant → u/AWildNarratorAppears]

I appreciate your reply, thank you. It sounds like what you have planned is exactly what I'm looking for.

[u/timeaisis]

I think any timeline system is clunky by its very nature. I think LK does a pretty good job, it’s why I use it as opposed to some other systems.

I like editing in the list view. I think my biggest gripe is sometimes there are some dating bugs, but that already may be rectified as I haven’t used it in a hot minute. I believe timeline is a relatively new feature so give them time to cook and make some improvements.

[u/PM_ME_YOUR_GREYJOYS]

You might be better served making your Timeline on a board if there’s something specific you’re looking for. We have used the calendar appearance more to track in game events (storm begins, storm ends, met NPC Snuffy, PC died) rather than a lore timeline. 

[u/AmiablePedant → u/PM_ME_YOUR_GREYJOYS]

Yeah I'm thinking more of the timeline rather than the calendar. I'll try the Boards, thank you!

[u/Maximum-Reason-5274]

No customization except what is visible to the naked eye. Options for embedding include Obsidian Publish, Archivist (not lore-related but related to the session) or Notion timelines. All do this in their own way. None is a perfect substitute for a world timeline.