[done]health bars (old topic relaunch!)

[John.d.h]

The main problem with circles, in my opinion, is that its hard to see the hp of units that stand in the middle / behind other units. So its also hard to manage units like retreating with low hp units to allow them to recover and so on

I think hp above units is way better for this. Its default in most games for a reason x)

Interesting.  I do see what you mean, and I think the cause of that is that the rings are much bigger than the unit, making them overlap.  I think the bars are actually much worse at this because it's harder to tell which bar belongs to which unit, especially if you have a tall unit next to a short unit.  With rings, there's no ambiguity about whose health is whose.

I have some ideas for improving this, though.  Making the rings smaller and thinner would probably help alleviate the problem, since they wouldn't overlap as much.  Also, currently the EP ring is much easier to see than the health ring, despite being much less important.  This is because it's larger, it's more vividly colored, and it's outside of the health ring, so less of it is obscured by the units' feet, terrain, etc.

Here's a quick GIMP mockup of how it might be improved for clarity:

You can tell at a glance exactly whose health is whose; smaller ring diameter and thickness leads to very little overlap even in a crowded space; there's more contrast between the EP and health colors without resorting to red and green, which are indistinguishable to a lot of people; the health is featured more prominently than the less-important EP; there's more opacity, which makes it less prone to blending in with terrain and makes the difference between "good to go" and "about to die" bigger.

Maybe there is a way to show selection and health state with circles ??

This confuses me.  Don't the rings already show selection and health?

How about having two circles, an outer one for selection/team color and an inner one for EP/health. Or vice versa.

I'm not sure what advantage there is to showing TC in the ring, but if necessary I guess you could just change the color of the ring.  There was also a feature added to GAE a while back where you could hold down a key that would show a TC outline of all the units on the screen.  It uses the stencil buffer, and Silnarm said it was really easy to do, so that seems like a viable solution here.

[Omega]

The ability to toggle the health bars with a hotkey would be great for usability. The bars are very useful, but they're quite cluttering when you don't need them. Although the modes that Titi mentioned also helps with this (particularly the ability to only show the health bar when the bar is not full.

[titi]

2 little details that came into my mind:

- don't show health bars in photo mode.
- don't show health bars if camera higher than for example 30

[FreshDumbledore]

I think starcraft 2 implemented it in a way where you can identify the unit belonging to the bar pretty well, like here http://i.snag.gy/ySPrE.jpg
jpg

[John.d.h]

I think starcraft 2 implemented it in a way where you can identify the unit belonging to the bar pretty well, like here http://i.snag.gy/ySPrE.jpg
jpg

Yikes!  Does that look good to you?   Things don't have to be completely "in your face" to show you the necessary information, and any claims about graphical quality go out the window when the art is obscured by diagrams.  Aesthetically, it's crap.  I can't even tell what's going on at a glance because the first thing I see is a whole lot of red and blue quadrangles.  In that screenshot, you see the health bars more prominently than the units they're supposed to represent.  For a game like Starcraft that prioritizes competition over fun, maybe that's what they're going for, but having MG degrading into a game of "watch the numbers go down" seems like a tremendous step backward.

How is that preferable to the brighter rings I demonstrated in my last post?

[titi]

There is indeed a lot to think about with those healthbars and he will add many options ;-)

Something I think about as another option is a combination of rings and healthbars. What do you think ?

A partly damaged axe thrower:

(click to show/hide)

UPDATE (more options):

use the whole ring to show the health state in visible color:

(click to show/hide)

Use only a spot in the front to show the health state in obvious color:

(click to show/hide)

selected:


non selected and damaged:

[Coldfusionstorm]

okay, Firsly i would like to add my personal opinion.

GO AWAY WITH RINGS! I HATE RINGS/CIRCLE!, They are Clumsy Feels like you are playing a board games and plain do not WORK!.

<------------> this part was removed by titi

Now, For the Health bars filling up space, we could maek a option for showing only unit health witch is not 100% and we could hold down Alt key to show All unit healthbars. Options like that is nice!

And i really like what ive seen so far, is it in GIT?. Id like to test these changes and see how it feels ingame!

[titi]

@Coldfusionstorm: calm down and edit your post or I remove it !

And for info we will bring health bars for sure and maybe rings as another options.
If you cannot wait to see things my son commits here until he makes a pull request: https://github.com/titison/megaglest-source

[FreshDumbledore]

@John: Im not sure about your idea. Its better than the current circles i think, but all circles do have two problems:
A) they are on the ground so they are earlier blocked by other units in front of them
B) the unit itself blocks sight on the part of.the circle behind the unit

I also think the.concept of dividing the bar or circle into small blocks or parts is something we can learn from other games as it makes it e easier to see hp (percentage or on hundreds) at a glance

[FreshDumbledore]

@Coldfusionstorm: please consider this thread as a general discussion on the gui regarding display of health/ep

[Ishmaru]

UPDATE (more options):

use the whole ring to show the health state in visible color:

(click to show/hide)

Use only a spot in the front to show the health state in obvious color:

(click to show/hide)

selected:


non selected and damaged:

You are on to something with the second option, though i think the green/red colors are an issue.
I personally think that health should be represented by green and the selection should be black. This would look more aesthetically pleasing as well as not be as confusing. The issue with red is that that is usually representative with enemy, so it would be strange to see red on your own units.

[titi]

I don't fully get what you mean with black and green. Can you try to fake a peview to show it like I did ?

[FreshDumbledore]

here an example of my point

at top: current circles
middle: lets call it 'starcraft style'
bottom: lets call it 'league of legends style'

i think its hard to tell which units are at which hp for the top picture and easier for the two with bars.

find it here => http://picpaste.de/pics/screen173-9mGLXcfX.1414592659.jpg

edit: the units hp are like in the middle is a very low hp one, then there are some with like 60-80%, some with 80-100% and some with full
i was to lazy to edit the hp bars for the other 2 pictures though

edit2: in defense of starcraft 2, that blue bar you see is NOT ep/mana, its shields of protoss units
edit of edit2: therefore it makes sense to put it above hp, because it will be reduced first. if shields are down, hp goes down.

[titi]

yes the top circles don't work very good thats what all thsi discussion is about
Thats why I suggested other ways of showing it with rings. So you must compare the suggested rings to the health bars, not the current state.

The bottom things look very much like what my son has now ( just a bit less obvious working with a bit transparency and so on )

But the starcraft thing is much too obvious and looks very bad in my opinion.

( and again to calm down everyone, Its very likely that there will be both things available. Healthbars will be available for sure )

[FreshDumbledore]

i gave two reasons why i think bottom circles will not work however they are designed what do you think about them?

edit: post screens of different styles with a group like mine if possible

edit2: circles at top (floating above the unit) would work better than circles at bottom if you want to stay with circles/rings

[titi]

Of course health bars on top are more visible, but thats exactly the point. it makes the game look like a tactical overview, not like something where you see fighting units. In big battles you will nearly only see healthbars if they are too big/obvious.

What we are looking for is a good  balance between optical and tactical needs :-)

[FreshDumbledore]

if it is for selected units by default i would go for tactical view.
its a strategy game, not some roleplaying fairy world, isnt it?

[kagu]

What I would like is to show only damage, so no damage no progress bar.

[FreshDumbledore]

one more idea, i think titi_son proposed to use g3d files for the bars. maybe thats to much but how about an image to define the border of the bar? so people could choose between different looks/skins or modders could provide custom looks with their mods.

so just like a particle image. some border thing-image in the techtree and linked in the factions xml

[John.d.h]

@John: Im not sure about your idea. Its better than the current circles i think, but all circles do have two problems:
A) they are on the ground so they are earlier blocked by other units in front of them
B) the unit itself blocks sight on the part of.the circle behind the unit

You can see the majority of the circle, and you don't need to see the entire thing to tell the opacity.  Here's an example with some crowded units in various states of health with various amounts of EP at the default camera view.  I find them very easy to read.

Feels like you are playing a board game

I would say the opposite.  One of the key differences in a game like MegaGlest and a game like checkers is the visual aspect.  The engagement in checkers come strictly from the mechanics and the competition, because that's all the game has.  When you have games on computers, you can add so many more elements of engagement -- not just the interactivity but the aesthetics as well.  You can let yourself become immersed in the game as a commander, demigod, mind-controlling AI, whatever.  If aesthetics in games didn't matter, there would be no artists working for game studios and each unit would just be an icon.  Every strategy/tactics game would look like checkers.  Checkers is a fine game, but that misses out on the advantages of computerized games.  Putting the health bars in a more prominent position than anything else on the screen, in my opinion, reduces the units to little more than icons or game pieces rather than wizards and robots.

Recommended viewing: Extra Credits: Aesthetics of Play

[titi_son]

Well whatever guys i have finished the hp bars: 

You can set it in unit.xmls (after properties) and general settings in faction.xml (after music) if the pull request is merged.
Syntax:

Code: [Select]

<healthbar>
<height value="1"/>
<thickness value="0.05"/>
<visible value="damaged|selected|always"/>
</healthbar>
You can leave out any of this options.
if you leave out height the game will orientate the height of the bar on the height of the unit.
if you leave out thickness, it will be set to 0.05 (or 0.1 with ep)
if you leave out visible there will be no hp bar

you can set multiple options for visible. You could for example write "damaged|selected". You need to separate the options with |. I may add other options beside damaged,selected and always later if there are ideas. We thought about something like EpSelected which will only render the ep when unit is selected.

no "show-ep" thing until now because titi said it is not necessary

At the moment the hp bar is displayed while photomode...
me or titi need to remove that later.

EDIT: added explanation for visible.... forgot that XD

[FreshDumbledore]

yeah, thats one way to put an end to discussions which could actually have led somewhere too

[titi_son]

We can still add other methods to show hp ... no problem
i think i will also implement a border texture. So you could divide the hp bar into segments for example... or just make a cool border of course XD

EDIT:
A fix for the default height and the photomode will probably come tomorrow or in the next week.

[Omega]

I strongly disagree with the health bars being a mod feature. This should be a PLAYER feature. Players would choose whether or not to display the health bar and its appearance.

This whole thread illustrated that we cannot agree on how to show health! Forcing players to use one system is a bad idea. Let them choose which they prefer.

Being a mod level change is also a major limitation because I suspect many modders won't make the change, and thus nobody can use the feature (since you can't just add it in yourself, as that breaks multiplayer support).

I would put these values in the INI, and the visibility should be in the in-game settings.

[kagu]

I strongly, absolutely agree with Omega.