Showing defense ratings on units.

Brainstorm ideas of possible additions to the game. Read this before posting!

Moderator: Forum Moderators

Forum rules
Before posting a new idea, you must read the following:
joshudson
Posts: 501
Joined: January 17th, 2006, 8:04 pm
Contact:

Post by joshudson »

Has nobody understood my post? Defense in a particular terrain can vary from 0% to 100% in single percent increments. Zolpha is a unit in Gryphon Tale that can enter cavewall and has 98% defense there.
CHKDSK has repaired bad sectors in CHKDSK.EXE
User avatar
zookeeper
WML Wizard
Posts: 9742
Joined: September 11th, 2004, 10:40 pm
Location: Finland

Post by zookeeper »

joshudson wrote:Has nobody understood my post? Defense in a particular terrain can vary from 0% to 100% in single percent increments. Zolpha is a unit in Gryphon Tale that can enter cavewall and has 98% defense there.
Defense values in 99.9% of cases go from 10% to 70% - seven possible values. A zolpha might have 98%, but that's irrelevant, as it's such a special case - it would simply show the "max defense" (implicit 70%) in the "defense orb". The player would still see the real 98% defense through the means he sees them now.

I don't consider this to be a problem at all, really. Defense technically can go from 0% to 100% in single percent increments, but it does not do so in the game.
Darth Fool
Retired Developer
Posts: 2633
Joined: March 22nd, 2004, 11:22 pm
Location: An Earl's Roadstead

Post by Darth Fool »

joshudson wrote:Has nobody understood my post? Defense in a particular terrain can vary from 0% to 100% in single percent increments. Zolpha is a unit in Gryphon Tale that can enter cavewall and has 98% defense there.
Everybody understood your post, they just didn't care. It is obvious that if someone wants to know the precise value of the defense rating they will have to look for information somewhere other than on the unit on the main map. The question at hand is how much information needs to be shown on the main map display about unit defense and if any, what is the best method, not how to deal with defense ratings at values other than multiple of 10%. The question you should ask yourself is why I had to waste my time explaining this to you. Are you not reading the other posts in this thread, did you just not understand them, or are you in such an egocentric narcissistic haze that everything must revolve around you?
User avatar
Eleazar
Retired Terrain Art Director
Posts: 2481
Joined: July 16th, 2004, 1:47 am
Location: US Midwest
Contact:

Post by Eleazar »

I find ideas like this one intriguing in spite of the fact, in the current form it's incompatable with some of my other proposals.
Image

The seven defence increments conceptually sound, as explained by DFool and Zookeeper.

Cramming so much info that may use the same colors into such a small space is not good, nor are the bars that continue under the gold band, and around the orb. That would probably be sometimes harder to read than the current bars. Curving bars might look neat, but in this case are bad design.

I'm not sure that we should display this info, and if so, i'm not sure ringing the orb is the best place. Perhaps off to the left of the HP bar makes more sense. I'm not really proposing this, just kicking around some ideas.
Attachments
def-bars.png
def-bars.png (10.21 KiB) Viewed 2494 times
Feel free to PM me if you start a new terrain oriented thread. It's easy for me to miss them among all the other art threads.
-> What i might be working on
Attempting Lucidity
User avatar
JW
Posts: 5046
Joined: November 10th, 2005, 7:06 am
Location: Chicago-ish, Illinois

Post by JW »

Maybe there should be an option to have the %s displayed at the units' feet numerically. Enough with the bars. There's plenty of stuff you have to interpret on the unit already. If somebody wants to use this "feature" to help them see defense values more easily, why not show the defense values? Basically, it won't be as pretty as any of these proposals, but it does what it's intended to, does it easily, and should also help people learn the values faster than seeing 3,4,5,6 little bars surrounding a bulb.

These would be off by default and would essentialy look like the % values when you're moving a unit to different terrains.
Boucman
Inactive Developer
Posts: 2119
Joined: March 31st, 2004, 1:04 pm

Post by Boucman »

numbers are not easier to read than a color shift...

however, I agree with Eleazar that the quantity of info in the hex is quite big right now, and some will have to go out...

after discussing with Dragonking today, he feels that the least usefull info in the hex is.... the orb itself.

so, if some info had to be removed, what would that be ?

remember that the most important info is the one that

1) you need to evaluate the situation (i.e see at a glance on the map, else it's better to only have it in the sidebar)
2) less important : info you can't memorize: HP changes, defense doesn't

I think we really need to solve out what info we want before looking at how to display it
Fight key loggers: write some perl using vim
User avatar
Noyga
Inactive Developer
Posts: 1790
Joined: September 26th, 2005, 5:56 pm
Location: France

Post by Noyga »

Well my feeling is those defense rating displays are so far, unintuitive, and clutter the display.
It is already displayed on the profile, which is IHMO sufficient.
"Ooh, man, my mage had a 30% chance to miss, but he still managed to hit! Awesome!" ;) -- xtifr
User avatar
JW
Posts: 5046
Joined: November 10th, 2005, 7:06 am
Location: Chicago-ish, Illinois

Post by JW »

Noyga wrote:Well my feeling is those defense rating displays are so far, unintuitive, and clutter the display.
It is already displayed on the profile, which is IHMO sufficient.
I agree with this and also share the feeling that the mouseover view of defense is sufficient.
User avatar
zookeeper
WML Wizard
Posts: 9742
Joined: September 11th, 2004, 10:40 pm
Location: Finland

Post by zookeeper »

JW wrote:
Noyga wrote:Well my feeling is those defense rating displays are so far, unintuitive, and clutter the display.
It is already displayed on the profile, which is IHMO sufficient.
I agree with this and also share the feeling that the mouseover view of defense is sufficient.
How about you guys give some reasons why it's sufficient to display defense just in the right panel, but not sufficient to display HP or XP just in the right panel? If you think that would be sufficient, then it would have made sense to say so.
User avatar
Zhukov
Art Contributor
Posts: 1685
Joined: November 9th, 2005, 5:48 am
Location: Australia

Post by Zhukov »

zookeeper wrote:How about you guys give some reasons why it's sufficient to display defense just in the right panel, but not sufficient to display HP or XP just in the right panel? If you think that would be sufficient, then it would have made sense to say so.
Well, defense values never change, while obviously HP and XP change all the time.

Whenever I see, say, a goblin on hills, I know he has 50% defense no matter what. I don't need the GUI to tell me. Or to put it another way, the GUI is already telling me defense values by showing me a picture of a goblin on some hills. Along with the clutter factor, this is why I am against the idea.
User avatar
JW
Posts: 5046
Joined: November 10th, 2005, 7:06 am
Location: Chicago-ish, Illinois

Post by JW »

zookeeper wrote:
JW wrote: I agree with this and also share the feeling that the mouseover view of defense is sufficient.
How about you guys give some reasons why it's sufficient to display defense just in the right panel, but not sufficient to display HP or XP just in the right panel? If you think that would be sufficient, then it would have made sense to say so.
A unit will always have the same defense on the same type of terrain. This is not true for either hp or xp.
User avatar
Noyga
Inactive Developer
Posts: 1790
Joined: September 26th, 2005, 5:56 pm
Location: France

Post by Noyga »

Well,
- current proposal is unintuitive, so it doesn't help much to show the defense. IHMO it clutter more the display than really help. And with some experience of the game you learn to know the units and how they treat terrain, so you don't need to display the information : you already know it. If you have some doubt on some unit or terrain you can still quckly use the mouse to display the defense rating in the displayed profile .
- the hp bar is something critical to find the weakness of the ennemy defense line, so it's probably the most useful information
- the xp bar is generally useless, except from units close to levelup where it become critical: a unit close to levelup can usually take more risks and if it is not killed by a single attack, it would more likely survive than a unit far from levelup. That's why it is also one of the most useful information to display.

Btw i would like to display the resistance information in the profile for 1.3. Something that is not yet displayed decently IMHO, and doesn't change so doesn't need to appear as a bar.
"Ooh, man, my mage had a 30% chance to miss, but he still managed to hit! Awesome!" ;) -- xtifr
Naeddyr
Posts: 107
Joined: December 5th, 2004, 5:46 pm
Location: Helsinki, Finland

Post by Naeddyr »

I'm still trying to figure out stuff, but here's something:

Slanting bars, no XP, though, just the blob and HP.

Maybe there should be options to chose between different styles of unit info?
Attachments
hexaborderhp.png
hexaborderhp.png (44.6 KiB) Viewed 2345 times
User avatar
Simons Mith
Posts: 821
Joined: January 27th, 2005, 10:46 pm
Location: Twickenham
Contact:

Post by Simons Mith »

Hm, I don't like the slanting bars, although it was a good idea worth trying. If you or anyone else cares to experiment with non-straight status bars, why not look at incorporating them into the ellipses? Say, hit points are on the left-hand side, start at 7 or 8 o'clock, and work round clockwise. XPs are on the right-hand side, start at 4 or 5 o'clock and work round anti-clockwise. Probably an impractical gimmick, but . . . I thought I'd at least suggest it, while people are experimenting.

[Edit: Another option: Bars with bends in them may look funny to me, but a hit point bar with perspective that disappeared off into the distance might work. If the angle was chosen such that it was parallel to the hex edges, that would maximise the amount of space for the unit graphic. This would allow HPs on one side of the hex, XPS on the other.]
Last edited by Simons Mith on November 21st, 2006, 4:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
zookeeper
WML Wizard
Posts: 9742
Joined: September 11th, 2004, 10:40 pm
Location: Finland

Post by zookeeper »

Simons Mith wrote:Hm, I don't like the slanting bars, although it was a good idea worth trying. If you or anyone else cares to experiment with non-straight status bars, why not look at incorporating them into the ellipses? Say, hit points are on the left-hand side, start at 7 or 8 o'clock, and work round clockwise. XPs are on the right-hand side, start at 4 or 5 o'clock and work round anti-clockwise. Probably an impractical gimmick, but . . . I thought I'd at least suggest it, while people are experimenting.
Here's one attempt. It didn't go very far though.
Post Reply