Blinking HP bars

Ragwortshire · Post by **Ragwortshire** » May 30th, 2006, 9:48 pm

I'm not sure where to put this, so I figured this was the safest bet.

I am experiencing the phenomenon of unit HP bars blinking on during combat (Wesnoth 1.1.4 on Windows XP). For most of the combat the bars are not visible, but they appear for a split second between attacks.

I'm not sure if this is the way it's meant to be, but it seems very jarring and unpleasant, enough so that I'm highlighting it as a possible bug.

Post by **Yogibear** » May 30th, 2006, 9:51 pm

As i recall from discussions on IRC we (the devs) are not sure if it is a bug or not, too

. But it is a know problem, err feature, err --- thing

.

Post by **irrevenant** » May 30th, 2006, 9:54 pm

Y'know, if you wanted to make the health bar (rather than the entire unit) flash when the unit is hit, I think that would be an improvement.

The whole unit flashing is really distracting and interferes with the animation...

Ragwortshire · Post by **Ragwortshire** » May 30th, 2006, 9:58 pm

That sounds like a good idea - although after playing for ~10 minutes, I don't notice the flash at all. ATM, for most of the combat there are no HP bars, so they can't exactly flash white.

If the bars were visible for longer (i.e. long enough to actually see what the HP is) then have a feeling it would not seem nearly as bad, to me anyway.

Post by **zookeeper** » May 30th, 2006, 10:29 pm

The HP bars, orbs and team ellipses are going to be removed completely for the duration of the whole fight. I gathered this should be done for 1.2.

Post by **irrevenant** » May 30th, 2006, 10:41 pm

zookeeper wrote:The HP bars, orbs and team ellipses are going to be removed completely for the duration of the whole fight. I gathered this should be done for 1.2.

IMO, the HP bar shouldn't be removed; watching the HP go down is the dramatic focus of the fight. I know I find myself flinching a little as an important unit's health drops to a couple of red pixels high.

(Yes, I realise this undermines my last post).

Elvish_Pillager · Post by **Elvish_Pillager** » May 30th, 2006, 10:43 pm

Agreed, the HP bars should not be removed.

(IMHO, the whole unit contraption - bars, orbs, overlays, everything - would be better off staying. It doesn't seem right having the unit change for the fight.)

Also, am I the only one who likes the white flashing?

Post by **irrevenant** » May 30th, 2006, 11:03 pm

Elvish Pillager wrote:Also, am I the only one who likes the white flashing?

It's hard to say since the flashing works so badly in 1.1.3. I may change my mind when I see 1.1.4.

Elvish_Pillager · Post by **Elvish_Pillager** » May 30th, 2006, 11:07 pm

(I've been running SVN for a while. Expect me to not always remember that I'm ahead of everyone.)

Stilgar · Post by **Stilgar** » May 30th, 2006, 11:27 pm

On one hand, removing the bars and stuff during the fight does make less clutter over the animations, but on the other hand, the information there is fairly important. I agree that it's good to be able to see how badly damaged a unit is getting during a fight, and the red numbers don't fulfill this fully because they don't show how near the unit is to dying.

Elvish Pillager wrote:Also, am I the only one who likes the white flashing?

I don't hate it, but I don't like it much either. If it gets taken out, fine. If it stays, I suppose that's fine too. It just seems to me like an oldschool/nintendo-ish effect while the rest of the game's visuals seem to be moving away from that vibe.

I might like the effect better if they flashed transluscent instead of white, but I suppose that's harder on system performance.

Dragon Master · Post by **Dragon Master** » May 31st, 2006, 12:49 am

I'm partial to the flashing. I feel it flashes very quickly so it doesn't seem very seizure-riffic. Even so, the option to turn it off would be nice...

scott · Post by **scott** » May 31st, 2006, 1:07 am

There is a bug report for the blinking HP bars. I would also like to see them stay on the whole time (as opposed to disappearing once per combat), but such is life.

JW · Post by JW » May 31st, 2006, 2:09 am

The hp bars should stay. The battle is only about hp and xp, so why would you remove that information? That's a step backwards.

Post by **zookeeper** » May 31st, 2006, 6:16 am

I think (not sure though) that one of the reasons for removing them is that they may obstruct the fight - imagine being attacked from the northwest with melee. Also when attacking with melee, should the bars stick to the hex or move with the unit? Both ways it would look at least a bit silly, and with both you'd have the problem of the bars potentially obstructing the animations.

Dragon Master · Post by **Dragon Master** » May 31st, 2006, 10:20 am

I believe the reason they flash is when an opposing unit goes through its attack animation the defending unit goes into its defense animation/pic, thus removing the status bars, then when the attacking unit recedes back to its hex open for counterstrike, the defending unit blinks to its normal picture, status bars present, then goes directly to attack animation where the status bars dissappear again. Fixing this problem would be to simply include status bars all the time and removing the code that makes them go away during actual fighting of combat.