[SUGGESTION] Pointers at Teammates

I think it would be nice to have a small pointer above teammates, so you can always see where they are... like the "HERE" or the "DANGER" ... only smaller
This could be a nice option(!!!) for TDM and CTF (especially non-public)!

I already made an example (it has to be scaled down!!!)

  pointat.png (Size: 50.55 KB / Downloads: 233)

What do you think of this idea? (remember: OPTION! ...like the crosshair style)

Basically a good idea. But why? For nonpublic ctf there are brightskins, for me they are enough.

There are funny guys around that play with some "brightskin hacks" (Just heard about that, dont know if its true; but why supporting them?)... hm

When you played quakelive teammodes a bit, you know what he means. It is very nice, I like it. You can see this sign over your teammates behind walls (exactly everywhere) on the map, which helps a lot for coordination (especially on publics).

There are funny guys around that play with some "brightskin hacks" (Just heard about that, dont know if its true; but why supporting them?)... hm

?

Anyway, good idea but definitely client side cvar it: I do not want to see a sea of circumflexes on a public ctf server.

This definitely a nice feature to have! After playing WolfET, QuakeLive, etc. and I return to Nexuiz/Xonotic, I just feel like something is missing.

However, I agree that there should be a cvar permitting players to turn it on/off.

Many players use a method to constantly give their location to their teammates using the "help" sprite. They combine the command with +jump in their jump key bind.

It's nearly the same idea. It allows your teammates to see your location as long as you are moving and jumping. I think some other players were also doing something similar by using defer to constantly broadcast their location to their teammates.

If players can do that already, it might as well become an official feature in the game and allow everyone to use it rather than the select few who happen to know that trick.

We already have the team radar for this...

Ideally we'll need CSQC players first, so we can make it a purely clientside option (i.e. that can be changed without telling the server about it, so it would be possible to enable/disable it in demos for example).
And I'd vote to prevent the waypoint spam Doku is talking about, it's truly obnoxious as there is no way to hide them without hiding the more useful team waypoints.

I could be a feature, that could be disabled/enabled it the player options menu (where you can change the colors, name,...)

Don't think this is needed. There's already the radar. Also, Competive players already use the waypoint spirtes to know where each other is and what he's actually doing.

Teamradar gives no indication of altitude, and helpme spam makes you wonder who actually needs help.

How is this different from the TEAM MATE bubble we already have? Just bigger and brighter? Sure, why not then.

He's suggesting waypoints that are visible through walls.

I like the idea, as long as it's an optional feature. Things would get confusing if you were playing in a 10-a-side game!

As a optional feature it is good, because if there are 20 players on a ctf server it doesnt help anymore

Plus then the location of the team mates would have to be communicated by the server even if you couldn't possibly see them in game. Wouldn't this cause significantly more traffic?

Plus then the location of the team mates would have to be communicated by the server even if you couldn't possibly see them in game. Wouldn't this cause significantly more traffic?

aren't they already?

I'd love it. For me the 'teammete' signs are too small in Nexuiz and not seeing them through walls makes them useless for me. I frequently shoot at my teammates by accident while approaching them from around a corner.

If those were visible through walls (also they could indicate the distance - closer teammates have larger markers, those on the other end of the map has smaller) - it would finally make sense to me. And would help me to not shoot my teammates, I woudn't be surprised of where thay are, that would greatly help me cooperating with team.

This thing could actually also show a small health-bar so you know if your teammate needs help or is he rather capable of helping you instead.

Colour of this thingy might also tell you how good (skilled) is every teammate simply ranging the colour on a band of red~yellow~green~blue.

Best player in the team has a blue marker, the worst has a red one, and all other guys are somewhere more or less in the middle. How about that?

Here is a little concept I've made for this - you can both read player's place in the scoretab (skill?) and health from this thingie. Connect it with varying size and you've got approximate distance aswell. That would be super-functional I'd say

   

Attaching HELPMEs today is a hack and is annoying at best.

I like unfa's suggestion minus the noob/pro colors (I'm not sure knowing the top scorer on your team would be all that valuable when you already have the scoreboard ). Instead of making the colors based on score, you could change the colors based on health. This is a common practice in other games - a green sprite above your teammate means they are nice and healthy, while red indicates that they are nearing death. This would be easier to distinguish than the ^'s being "filled" according to health status.

[...]
Colour of this thingy might also tell you how good (skilled) is every teammate simply ranging the colour on a band of red~yellow~green~blue.

Best player in the team has a blue marker, the worst has a red one, and all other guys are somewhere more or less in the middle. How about that?

Here is a little concept I've made for this - you can both read player's place in the scoretab (skill?) and health from this thingie. Connect it with varying size and you've got approximate distance aswell. That would be super-functional I'd say

but the markers aren't very big... so you'd only see the color and not the health :S

I like unfa's suggestion minus the noob/pro colors (I'm not sure knowing the top scorer on your team would be all that valuable when you already have the scoreboard ).

Well that would be an alternate way to check who is where.
My point in pro/noob colors were to make an easy and quick way to visualize the team's "firepower" spatial distribution.

In simple words: with this feat. you could see if anybody good is defending you flag, or is anybody attacking, should you rather go defending your flag 'cos there's no one there or just a bunch of noobs or should you go attacking 'cos everybody is camping in your base.

We could instead of "filling" the ^s just put a little bar above it, dunno.

That's just my idea, maybe it would be best to allow players choose how this should act like.

Maybe he just want to know health of teammates or he just wanna know their skill, or maybe just their positions... or maybe everything at once.

Personally I think I'd use the third option

Instead of making the colors based on score, you could change the colors based on health. This is a common practice in other games - a green sprite above your teammate means they are nice and healthy, while red indicates that they are nearing death. This would be easier to distinguish than the ^'s being "filled" according to health status.

Might be. Personaly I think that bars are more accurate (especially when they are rectangular) than colors, so as "skill" is hard to measure - I decided to present the skill with colour and give the bar thing to heath.

Well, we could use color in more informative way, there are hue, saturation and value to settle. My pro/noob concept uses only hue to indicate skill. Value could be used to indicate health. Saturation could be used to indicate firepower:

Code:

carried gun's power * player's hit statistic * ammo left

But I'am not sure if that would be easy to read.

I'd love to see the pro/noob option as i think it is very important to see how skilled teammates are there. We could show all those things with simple bars but that would be a bit ugly and to rpg-like.

Well, TDM and CTF are tactic (CTF for sure) maybe not as tactic as Black & White, but...

maybe the position in the scoreboard could just stand above the pointer

Code:

. . . 8 . . .
\.\ . . ././
.\.\ . ././
. \.\ ././
. \.\/./
. . . . . .

and everything in the same color of the health

I like unfa's idea. Packing the most information into them. Going into HSL specifics could work but would also be easy to mess up.

maybe the position in the scoreboard could just stand above the pointer

Code:

. . . 8 . . .
\.\ . . ././
.\.\ . ././
. \.\ ././
. \.\/./
. . . . . .

and everything in the same color of the health

So:

• color used to indicate health
  
• number on scoretab above the marker - the closer it is to 1 the better the player -this makes sense

Suggested color ramps:

RED - YELLOW - GREEN - BLUE

RED - YELLOW - GREEN

Any other prepositions? I vote for the one with blue!

I agree with this idea of health & skill indication, I love it !
PS : I hate brightskins.

Plus then the location of the team mates would have to be communicated by the server even if you couldn't possibly see them in game. Wouldn't this cause significantly more traffic?

aren't they already?

No, they are not. The server does not send any locations to the clients about objects that the client can't possibly see (to reduce bandwidth and to avoid wall hacks). I just asked from divVerent about the team radar and the team radar apparently uses 2d info that it gets from the server (to reduce traffic). So if you can't see a player, your client doesn't really know where it is, even if you see it on the team radar.

What you apparently could do (divVerent, esteel and morphed took the time to explain this to me) (thx) is to use the existing team mate sprites and remove the culling from them. Then you'd see them through walls - the downside is significantly increased traffic as the 3d locations of all team mates need to be communicated constantly.