[SUGGESTION] Unified icon system to give info about players

Hi!

What happened in this thread inspired me somehow to this idea:

Let's make a set of icons that will give players instantly some information about all (friendly) players around them.

Icons should be acting similiarly to existing teammate marker, but for teammates those could be set to be visible through walls (but that's not so important - it's a separate issue).

Those icons could give you information such as:

• friend or foe (replacemnet for current teammate marker)
  
• he is on rage (something we miss form Quake 3)
  
• he killed you last time (take revenge!)
  
• he is a camper (maybe this one shoudn't exist)
  
• he has some powerups (strength'n'speed'n'shield*)
  
• he has a flag (that would replace the current flag carrier marker)
  
• he is attacking/defending/roaming (read more here)
  
• his health and armor level (numbers or bars inside the icons**)
  
• his index in the scoretab (1 means that he rules the match) - this could be presended also with color instead as I wrote here
  

* invisiblity would have the special ability to make those icons invisible (completely) so player isn't uncovered by those, and can be really invisible (generally I think that invisibility alpha should go down, so players will really have problems seeing someone invisible. Now it's just a slight change, especially in minsta where the green still shines like the sun)
** I see that vertical bars (one red and one green) on black backgroud would easily tell everyone player's health/armor status.

Those are just options, server and client should be able to disable those (but servers should support it by default) to cut down bandwidth usage.

I think those icons could be arranged in a line above player's head:

Code:

[X][Y][Z][Ż]

As some icons can't exist along with others, making several "slots" would be a neat way to keep it clean and readable. [those] indicate that a slot is always present, <those> that it is visible depending on player's state:

Code:

[friend/foe]
[health/armor]
[scoretab index]
[attacking/defending/roaming/flag carrier/dead*]
<rage number (kills in row)>
<strength>
<speed>
<shield>
<camper>
<killed you last time (take revenge!)>

*Ops... dead people shoudn't have markers above their head And if the game type is TDM, this slot is of corse with no use and should disapear.

In DM only [scoretab index], <rage number(kills in a row)>, <camper> and <killed you last time> should be visible. Those are team-unreleated.

[friend/foe] slot might be omitted if [health/armor] and [a/d/r/fc] are only visible for teammates.

Now the minimum icons would be 4, maximum: 10 (but only If a player has three powerups at the same moment which is unlikely.

I think that by default servers should support sending theese information to clients only about their teammates

I think that in HUD menu there should be a panel to control this client-side. Enable or disable specific icons/slots, set the visibility through walls. Maybe even set time resolution for updating those to limit network traffic.

I think this could greatly improve teamplay.

Here are some basic designs I've made for those icons:

  dafff.png (Size: 71.95 KB / Downloads: 181)
In game they'd be much smaller. Like this maybe:

  dafff2.png (Size: 6.86 KB / Downloads: 179)
Or even like that:

  dafff3.png (Size: 2.63 KB / Downloads: 178)
Still easy to read? I hope so.

If this idea is about to be implemented, I'am ready to make all icons needed. However, some of those - like [health/armor] or [scoretab index] - would also need coding.

What do you think, mr. Community?

EDIT:

If someone could give me the Xonotic's Phoenix in SVG (I belive it was made with Inkscape), the I could include it into some icons (like place it on the flag for egz.)

Updated designs:

  update.png (Size: 64.12 KB / Downloads: 170)

friend/foe - well, the team colour would be nice
attacking/defending - but there are those markers you drop with the numpad...?
flag carrier - he's got that great big shiny flag on his back, if the flag matches your team colour - you shoot him anyway.
revenge/rage - this sounds interesting, although maybe as a mutator to non-team games.
health/armour - great, just what I need - more pointless info. If I want to shoot the guy, I shoot him with my best weapon anyway.
speed/shield/strength/quad - you can do overlays, even Quake 3 does that.

So, no. I don't think this will do much good.

I think you misunderstood my idea a bit

friend/foe - well, the team colour would be nice

Yeah, that one is rather useless as players color is enough, and if you can see those markers through walls - then you sure won't see enemies marked in that way.

attacking/defending - but there are those markers you drop with the numpad...?

AFAIK those are just centerprints appearing to all teammates (you see who and what stuff), but without seeing temmates names all the time, it's a bit useless.

flag carrier - he's got that great big shiny flag on his back, if the flag matches your team colour - you shoot him anyway.

That is supposed to show friendly flag carriers through walls.

revenge/rage - this sounds interesting, although maybe as a mutator to non-team games.

I agree that it might be fun in DM

health/armour - great, just what I need - more pointless info. If I want to shoot the guy, I shoot him with my best weapon anyway.

This is suposed to show you info about your teammates so you can cooperate with them in a better way, knowing that someone is short on health makes you go to help him if he's in fight. Witout this -you won't even know about it unless you're right in front of this fight. That's when you see those markers through walls - it gives you some tactical options.

speed/shield/strength/quad - you can do overlays, even Quake 3 does that.

What do you mean by overalys? Do we have anything like this already for reference?

Good idea. Could you add a ticket to the tracker about this? Set it to whatever's-after-0.1beta version.

Only ones I find interesting here or that don't already exist are Revenge and the Kill streak one. The others such as replacing the flag or friend and foe all exist and work well imo.

There's one more

Scoretab index - player's position in the score table. This can give you info of how good is each player.

There's one more

Scoretab index - player's position in the score table. This can give you info of how good is each player.

Ah yes forgot about that could be useful in CTF telling you what players to pay attention to might have downsides but I would like to play with it a bit and see how it effects game play.

I like:
Attacking/Defending
Revenge
Killing streak

Ah yes forgot about that could be useful in CTF telling you what players to pay attention to might have downsides but I would like to play with it a bit and see how it effects game play.

Yeah, I can't know how it will work before we make it real, but I imagine that It could be nice thing to have.

Those things would give you some basic info and let you plan your moves with the team better.

*Ops... dead people shoudn't have markers above their head And if the game type is TDM, this slot is of corse with no use and should disapear.

why not? there could be a cross for about 2 seconds fading out ...and then you know, that you teammate was in danger there!

============================

there could be a hotkey for showing / hiding the markers!

*Ops... dead people shoudn't have markers above their head And if the game type is TDM, this slot is of corse with no use and should disapear.

why not? there could be a cross for about 2 seconds fading out ...and then you know, that you teammate was in danger there!

============================

there could be a hotkey for showing / hiding the markers!

Yeah, why not Fade time of 2 seconds should be cool for that, I also think that the fullbright should fade away with it too, would nicely show you how people "fade away".

A hotkey to show/hide those icons would be cool!

i'm definitely in for something like that. i mean, simple indicators for status/skill would be cool. (Did i mention that in some other thread? i was thinking of indicators on the scoreboard that would show the skill by color.)

i'm definitely in for something like that. i mean, simple indicators for status/skill would be cool. (Did i mention that in some other thread? i was thinking of indicators on the scoreboard that would show the skill by color.)

Could you say why do you think this isn't good?

As for the color used to indicate skill, check this: http://forums.xonotic.org/showthread.php...4#pid14504

How about the existing indicators, and these when you hold down alt; like in savage 2. I find my self constantly holding alt down in other games to get more info, but find none.

i'm definitely in for something like that. i mean, simple indicators for status/skill would be cool. (Did i mention that in some other thread? i was thinking of indicators on the scoreboard that would show the skill by color.)

Could you say why do you think this isn't good?

As for the color used to indicate skill, check this: http://forums.xonotic.org/showthread.php...4#pid14504

Sir, You misled, sir, which infers You mistook me.

To make it clear: i LIKE Your idea!

Sir, You misled, sir, which infers You mistook me.

To make it clear: i LIKE Your idea!

Oh, sorry. My fault, you're right. I should spend much less time at home... Anyway, it's good to know you have positive thoughts

To everyone: thank you for your comments and votes!

About the poll:

There were a point when there was 25% for each one of these four options, which was so funny I took a screenshot of it. Now it looks like more people like this than dislike. Cool, if the dev.xonotic.org will let me in and stop showing "Forbidden" all the time I'll take care of it further

As for rendering those graphics:

I think one texture should go for background of all icons. I have this simple gray rounded square:


  BG.png (Size: 560 bytes / Downloads: 57)

Now every icon can be static or dynamic. Icons like friend, foe, revenge, FC are static - ony an additional symbol (texture) need to be rendered on the background square (called BG later on this post)

The scoretab index needs to draw a neat number on the BG. I think white color is good here, it's quite readable. I was thinnking also of a little # sign in the top-left corner to make people esier know what's this number


  SI.png (Size: 4.03 KB / Downloads: 55)

The health/armor icon needs to render two bars inside the frame, They might use the BG square as a mask:


  HA.png (Size: 664 bytes / Downloads: 55)

The above image is something like 100 health and 100 armor. The problem is that I don't know of any limiting value for armor and health amount, and bars are a bit useless when the is no range for displayed value. If there is any limit - bars should work. We can also connect bars with colour and make bars brighter when they values exceed standard ones. Otherwise, numbers might be a better solution:


  HAnum.png (Size: 6.47 KB / Downloads: 55)

The most interesting are the two rightmost variants. What happens when player has no armor at all (4 e.g when he spawns)? Should we display a green zero, ar maybe it would be much clearer if there were only health number left vertically centerd...

Another thing is rage icon. It should appear when a player has 2 or more kills in a row (without dying between them). To distinct this from scoretab index icon, I've added a simple black skull icon in the background. I've got an idea to draw a red line crossing the number whn player dies. So when his icons are fading, you still see how high did he get before you have defeated him


  rage.png (Size: 6.97 KB / Downloads: 56)

What do you think of those ideas?

i'd prefer circles.... could be themes to choose from.

Well, about health and armor, i think it should just indicate whether you're "in the greens" or "reds", meaning it would be green at 100% and red at 0%. i _think_ the brain recognises colors faster than shapes.

This reminds me of a mutator for UT called UTComp, supposedly geared toward competitive play. It added a lot of features, one of which was a hud element with team mates' names, locations, health, armor and weapons. I don't know whether that or waypoints would be better for most people, nor which one would be more difficult to implement.

The only idea I have to add for waypoints is scaling alpha with distance, both to give an even better idea of where team mates are and to keep the markers from getting too messy in really big games.

As for highlighting targets, I actually prefer adding an element of detection skill by disabling brightskins so naturally I would only like waypoints for friendlies. I also like a bit of fuzziness regarding the status of my target, though I think most here would probably disagree with me on both of the latter points given the ubiquity of brightskins in games of this sort and the emphasis on keeping track of which pickups opponents have. (at least in 1-on-1) If I'm wrong about that, I'd like to be corrected.