HUD Design Contest!

[Samapico]

But the kill message is useful as well

 

I kinda liked the solution of updating only on specific events, and not in real time...

Events that make the hud $ update:

-kill (you kill someone, not allied kills)

-?money

-?buy, ?sell

-flag game end

-powerball goal

 

And for allied kills, you only update after 4 or 5 of them in a row

 

OR get rid of the allied kill message, but not the kill message... but even then, it's always fun to see that some dude made a triple kill, for example... and it can be useful to confirm that someone killed a cloaker if you're not sure.

OR make them optional with some ?toggle command, and only people who really want them would turn it on

[»Ceiu]

Thing is, Continuum already has a function for logging kill messages (type ?kill a couple times), so it's largely unnecessary to have a module spamming it. Further, it makes arena messages that much less important as most green spam is ignored as there's so damn much of it. Besides, the events you specified are pretty much when you get spammed with something relating to money anyway, so why not just update the counter then and get rid of the extra spam?

[Dr Brain]

Reducing green spam is enough reason for me to fully support the money+exp HUD, whatever form it may take.

[Samapico]

?kill logs EVERY F****** kill though... even if it happens on the other side of the arena, it's pretty annoying

 

Anyway, I prefer HUD money over the messages, if I have to make a choice...

 

It needs some +254$ thing popping up though

[»Ceiu]

That's part of the plan. I liked your animation idea, I just don't like doubling the bandwidth to do both your idea and mine (I was planning on having the +$$$ and +exp values on the map where the player died, and having +$$$ money popup on teammates for shared kills). Hopefully I can hack something with LVZs to make it work right and save bandwidth in the process (something about doubling up object IDs makes Continuum act funny with LVZs -- I remember playing with it before on Subgame, but I don't remember specifics). Or maybe we'll do both... who knows. I haven't even started coding this thing yet, so a lot of this is still debatable.

 

Also, we can fix what kill messages you get on the server end. I won't make any promises because it's really not that important (sorry mate), but it's not that difficult to do distance or sector-based kill message forwarding.

[Corey]

An idea I had, not sure if that is what you were already going to do?

http://img530.imageshack.us/img530/8382/idea2.jpg

Edited August 26, 2009 by Corey

[Acer]

I don't know what you did, Corey.

[Corey]

I was discussing with Cerium about arranging the cooldown times along with the freq/ flags/ bounty up in the top right, there would have to be a space, cause of the power ups, and then there is the border problem. Solution, make the border under the power ups? will it work Cer?

[Kilo]

I like knowing what reward I got though, ?kill isn't good enough. Instead of a money display I want something that would display like an RPG damage displayer. (Animated numbers that bounce up and settle before disappearing for each kill.)

[Emit]

An idea I had, not sure if that is what you were already going to do?

 

Notice how the shield etc graphics will overlap that boarder, rest works.

[Dr Brain]

I like knowing what reward I got though, ?kill isn't good enough. Instead of a money display I want something that would display like an RPG damage displayer. (Animated numbers that bounce up and settle before disappearing for each kill.)

Yes, that's what we're talking about.

[Samapico]

The (potential) problem with "+xxx$ +y exp" fading popup animations is that you can use a maximum of one of these animations at a time for each player. You can move object ID's around, but if another kill pops up, you'll have to either:

- wait until the first animation ended before moving and starting the next one

- objoff the ongoing animation, move and start the next one

- create multiple sets of objectID's that do the same thing, say 2 or 3 sets, and program some kind of queue that uses whatever set is available for that player

 

You could separate the sets for player kills and allied kills, probably have different colors anyway...

 

So you're looking at... say you do the easy one set for each:

Player kills: 3 digits $, 2 digits exp, 1 'frame' object (with + ___ $ __ exp, for example)

that's 51 screenobjects

 

For allied kills you don't need the exp part, so add another 31 screenobjects

 

It's not really a problem, objectID-wise, to add a couple of sets, it's just much more of a hassle to program.

 

Hmm, if you want to make them show up wherever the person died, change 'screenobject' by 'mapobject' in my post

But you'd have a problem if you do that... when you kill someone outside of your screen, you won't see anything. IMO make them show up over your ship, or over your ally's ship for allied kills. So mapobjects for allied kills, screenobjs for your own kills

[Exiili]

I'm glad that Cerium has a brain and insists the HUD thingy to be small and something you can toggle off.

I, for one, Do not like crap on my screen.

I even hate the Flagradar thing. Yes, it's useful. Yes, it's MASSIVE. Yes, it takes half of your screen. No, I do not like it. Yes, I'm against other things which clutter my screen.

[Dr Brain]

It's not really a problem, objectID-wise, to add a couple of sets, it's just much more of a hassle to program.

 

We already do that, actually. For ID, Jump, and Transwarp, we have 20 map objects (each) that we rotate through. It's really not that difficult to program.

[»Ceiu]

@sama:

I plan on having 10 sets of objects and cycling through them so the animations look fluid and shouldn't ever get chopped up due to an insane number of kills. Hell, with basing that may need to go up to 20 sets. Fortunately, we've 65k object ids to pick from.

 

 

 

More updates on the hud follow. I'm still not entirely satisfied with the money/exp counters, so I may end up changing them (maybe go with the LED look for those as well?); but I think I like where they are, though I may line up the digits. I dunno.

 

Edit: All lined up. Looks a lot better, I think.

 

[Samapico]

It's not really a problem, objectID-wise, to add a couple of sets, it's just much more of a hassle to program.

 

We already do that, actually. For ID, Jump, and Transwarp, we have 20 map objects (each) that we rotate through. It's really not that difficult to program.

Good point... if you already have the code to do it... yeah it's not that difficult to program, but you still have to do it

Actually... now that I think about it a little bit, it's pretty easy indeed... just have a counter loop (++i); i%=20, and use that set... I had in mind you had to put timestamps on each available set for the last use and check if the animation ended... pft screw that.

[Kilo]

Since there's no real disadvantage in having more IDs than you'd ever use at one time, all that's required is to set up more IDs than would ever happen at one time. Objimage is our friend. Of course things like Cobalt would have to be accounted for, so there'd actually be a lot of IDs for a kill reward lvz.

[Dr Brain]

I totally forgot about things like cobalt. Yeah, we're gonna need a lot of ids.

[Samapico]

does cobalt gives reward to the person who launches it?

[»Ceiu]

No.

[Samapico]

So....

Of course things like Cobalt would have to be accounted for, so there'd actually be a lot of IDs for a kill reward lvz.

^

That does not apply, right?

Unless you want to waste time sending lvz packets to

 

ô.o

[Cheese]

looking nice so far

 

 

still would like to have parasite kills.

and is s exp = ship exp? =S

[Kilo]

So....

 

That does not apply, right?

Unless you want to waste time sending lvz packets to

 

ô.o

there is no leech money in this zone i forgot

 

^ applies if cobalt makes kills as your freq or not, i don't know

Edited August 27, 2009 by Kilo

[»Ceiu]

It doesn't. Cobalt blows up everyone in the blast radius from whatever freq it and engine failure are on. You get absolutely nothing for it's kills.

[Dr Brain]

Even so, there are other things that will kill people en masse, either directly or allied kills. So we need to provide enough ids to make that possible.