Most important defences

Sarapis

So I'm working on a release for the client that'll come after an upcoming client release, and I want to graphically show some of the most common defenses/states. What I'm working with right now is the below (there's also a female version). What I want to know is if you guys think I'm prioritizing the list of defences I can show here, as I definitely can't show them all. By design, they're all defences that are available to everyone rather than being class-specific (maybe in the future).

Here are the ones I've got here:

Man: Green, yellow, red for different stages of limb damage.
Lightning bolt: Metawake
Lines coming off head: Insomnia
Cloud : Softfocus
Little circle in forehead: Mindseye
Black line across face: Blind
Little curves next to ears: Can hear (would be gone if deaf)
Star on chest: Kola
Trapezoid in belly: Mass
Curves alongside legs: Sileris
Curve under feet: Levitation (not that important I know but so easy to show). Man is also moved up a bit when levitating.
Light-blue (inner) curves around the man: Shield
Purple-blue outer curves: Rebounding
(Moving to the upper right)
Skull: Deathsight
Eye: Thirdeye
Boar: boar tattoo
Moon = moon tattoo
Cloaked figure = Cloaked

So, are there common defenses I'm missing that should be prioritized above one of these? 



 

Amranu

Consider adding tree tattoo and fading it out if off balance?

Looks pretty good though!

Dalran

Would this be added in for the html client only? Or would you be adding all of these things to GMCP for everyone to use.

Eld

Maybe curseward. If you're going for things that are important to know about at any given moment for combat and such, I can't imagine much that would be significantly lower priority than deathsight.

Having an icon that shows up when hearing and disappears when deaf seems a bit confusing, since it's reversed from the rest (even blind) where the indicator is present when the defense is active.

Sarapis

@Dalran Well, the graphics (such as they are) won't be gmcp'd but the affliction and defences status will be. I'm mandating it for all the IRE games. The few potential downsides are outweighed by making life easier for people new to our games.

Aquil

Curiously, how would this work with blackout?
I think this so awesome, honestly. Being able to see limb damage.  

Merador

I'm interested in what the colours mean for limb damage. Specifically, is yellow any limb damage at all, or past some threshold (e.g. 50% limb damage +)? Will there be additional information to distinguish between a normal restoration break and a mangle? 

Eld

Aquil said:

Curiously, how would this work with blackout?
I think this so awesome, honestly. Being able to see limb damage.  

Presumably, the limb damage here is of the "is the limb broken variety", á la DIAGNOSE, not the "how soon will the limb break" variety, in case that's what you were thinking.

Edit: Though looking back at the OP, green/yellow/red would be weird for that, unless red means either broken or mangled.

Penwize

I really like where you're headed with this, but I feel the need to give some constructive criticism.

It's entirely too cluttered right now to really glean any usable information from at a glance.  Buff/debuff icons are pretty standard faire, so gamers are used to seeing them.  Use that convention to avoid crowding the display.  This just provides too much information in too little space that isn't entirely pertinent, and shouldn't be shown just because it's easy to see (eg, levitation). 

The art style is an awkward juxtaposition next to a text game, and might clash very, very badly.  A coloured text-based output would be vastly more thematic and appropriate, and look a whole lot better next to a wholly text game.  If you absolutely MUST use images, I would highly recommend switching to a heavily pixel-art style instead.  That has a bit more of a retro feel to it and would be more appropriate placed beside a game whose interface is largely text.

Klendathu

Question: is generally fuckedupness a venom affliction?

Looks good, v excited about gmcp affs / defs.

WRT to deafness, can I suggest that for most classes, being deaf is a defence, not an affliction?

Dalran

@Sarapis you know I've always loved you.

Oh also, out of curiosity, is there an ETA on when gmcp will be available?

Sarapis

Yep. When we're ready to release it. 

Nim

There are plenty of generic defenses, but there are also plenty of class defenses that you'd want to be able to track.

For an early example, serpent's various stealth abilities.

As an aside, what reduced the clutter for me was showing defenses I didn't have as opposed to defenses I did have. It might be confusing to a new player to do it that way, but perhaps leaving it as a config option would be cool.

Skye

Klendathu said:

Question: is generally fuckedupness a venom affliction?

yeah I want general fuckedupness to show when you get locked.

Achimrst

                                

Blujixapug

starburst (should defs make it r a i n b o w)

Tahquil

I know it is a rough but that does look atrocious... Wait till I get home to play with it!

Sarapis

@Tahquil play away! Just be sure to save your work in case I like it!

Tahquil

For shiz @Sarabrah, I love making dummy GUIs that look pretty but I haven no coding knowledge to make it so.

Theris

Penwize said:

I really like where you're headed with this, but I feel the need to give some constructive criticism.

It's entirely too cluttered right now to really glean any usable information from at a glance.  Buff/debuff icons are pretty standard faire, so gamers are used to seeing them.  Use that convention to avoid crowding the display.  This just provides too much information in too little space that isn't entirely pertinent, and shouldn't be shown just because it's easy to see (eg, levitation). 

The art style is an awkward juxtaposition next to a text game, and might clash very, very badly.  A coloured text-based output would be vastly more thematic and appropriate, and look a whole lot better next to a wholly text game.  If you absolutely MUST use images, I would highly recommend switching to a heavily pixel-art style instead.  That has a bit more of a retro feel to it and would be more appropriate placed beside a game whose interface is largely text.

I agree that the current form is a little too cluttered, and that its art style seems inappropriate. I think both of these problems could be at least partially addressed by making the art style more minimalist. For example, the character outline could be closer to a stick-figure (with no hands/feet), and some of the icons could be simplified (for example, the thirdeye icon doesn't really need the pupil, and the moon tattoo icon doesn't need the stars). The indicators for mass, blindness, and mindseye are good examples of minimalist icons. This could make the display seem less cluttered because attention wouldn't be drawn to distracting features (such as hands on the character or the stars on the moon). I think it would also be more appropriate for Achaea's aesthetic, since the map window is already minimalist; also, it would make the character outline seem more like a symbolic representation and less like a graphical representation of the actual character, allowing people to have more imaginative flexibility about what their character looks like. Plus, if you make the character outline less detailed, you can have it be gender-neutral, removing the need to differentiate between male and female characters, or characters of different races.

Of course, moving Achaea's graphical aesthetic away from a minimalist look and toward a more detailed look might be a better way to attract new players (who are more comfortable with an interface that is less symbolic and more realistic), but that's probably a discussion for another thread.

One more thing I'd recommend is changing the indicator for deafness. Details are added to the figure for all other defences, but deafness is indicated by the absence of a detail that is present in the character's default state. It would be a little neater if defences only ever added details to the window, and didn't take them away. Maybe deafness could be X's over the ears. 

EDIT (so that this post actually addresses the question in the topic): What about starburst? Also, moss tattoo might be nice, since I think that's pretty universally useful.

Trilliana

While I don't use the HTML client, I have to ask this for... those that may not browse the forums or those that do that may not see this thread before the changes happen, but what about those that are colorblind? As an example, my husband is slightly colorblind so I watch for things like this, but the two large bars around the man would be hard for him to differentiate because he can't really tell two different shades of things (As an example, he has a navy blue button up that he swears is black)

Avto

Is yellow red on body part damage breaks based on gmcp?

If that, there can be a significant issues with it, first of all unable to hide any torso damage, that is indirect nerf to knights and sylvans.

Defences tracked by gmcp is nice, and I'm all for more visualization to help newbies understand the game easier.

Jacen

Presumably hidden afflictions would still remain hidden until you diagnose. Just like serverside doesn't try to cure them now.

Adet

Sarapis said:

So, are there common defenses I'm missing that should be prioritized above one of these? 

Selfishness, perhaps?  Unless you're deliberately not showing it, to avoid serpent tears.

Klendathu

Jacen said:

Presumably hidden afflictions would still remain hidden until you diagnose. Just like serverside doesn't try to cure them now.

And defences stripped by cleansing would still appear active...