Ultimately the goals seem to be:
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Do I have all the things I need to make X, if so what do I need to craft first?
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If not, what do I need to go scavenge to be able to make this?
Maybe this could be done without recursion, if it were possible to ‘tab’ over to ingredients and do a search on them, instead of having to manualy search them, forget what the original thing was called and start all over agin.
Basically, a * (backward 1 page ( [ ), forward 1 page ( ] ), and tab over ( \ ) to incredients side of the page would do almost as much, with the supporting elements included. Depending on underlying hardcoding, page memory and such it may not be fesible, but it is a possible alternative. A way to ‘favorite’ or ‘note recipie’ or even an almost unrelated in game ‘add to shoping[ things to look for while looting list’ would go a long way to achieving the same ends.
Especially if the real goal, is just player understanding what they ACTUALLY want/ can craft without difficulty. Something as simple as that (in concept) would result in players reading through the crafting recipies more, before getting frustrated/bored/lost etc… and deciding that a wooden club or something is ‘good enough’
- Copy/paste concept from forward backward page buttons at the top of your browser. The crafting menu is not disimilar from many things already done in places like wikipedia, youtube, or other places that organize information. Once inside the menu, the urge to explore is very central to anyone interested in playing CDDA. Making that exploration easier is what is wanted, I think. Especially since the crafting menu is such a core component to the game about surviving, exploring, and building.
having either “search for craftable predicate path” or “browser-esque navigation” would be a huge boon to those trying to learn better ways to survive, if possible both.