Author Topic: Damage icons  (Read 4668 times)

Offline Almyra

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Damage icons
« on: July 28, 2013, 01:49:30 am »
I've seen a couple of posts asking about having static damage indicators on your ship, and the general consensus seems to be that the current setup is preferable.  I agree.  I like having these things moving around and letting me know which things are damaged where.

The thing is, a lot of the time, in the thick of the battle, I'm moving too fast to slow down and see which icons are up for which components.  There's been plenty of times that I've been moving around as main engineer fixing things, and simply not noticed that the hull was coming down simply because it was just one out of many moving icons, which to my (admittedly not perfect) vision were just somewhat motion blurred circles.

Would it be possible to implement something where damaged components had icons that appeared as different colors depending on which component was damaged? 

Taking it one step farther, could people be able to customize which components were which colors depending on their priorities?  For example, an engineer on one side of a mobula could set components which they're not responsible for as a low priority so if they're gunning and an engine takes damage, they can easily determine whether or not they need to hop off the gun yet, because they can, by color, identify that it's the engine on the other side of the ship?


Offline Mattisamo

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Re: Damage icons
« Reply #1 on: July 28, 2013, 09:09:50 am »
I like the idea, esp. the part about choice of what components to show, because showing them all would just clutter up one side of the screen completely.

About different colors do you mean like left turning engine is red, right is green and main engine is blue and so on?

Offline Almyra

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Re: Damage icons
« Reply #2 on: July 28, 2013, 09:51:42 am »
I'm not asking for a choice of which components you want to be shown in a static display or anything like that.

I'm suggesting, at the basic level, something where the icon hull for example would have a slight blue glow, whereas the balloon icon would have a slight green one, and so on and so forth for each component type.  So if i'm running around, say at the back of a pyramidion, I can immediately note that it's the balloon that's taken damage without needing to pause for a split second so the icons will be clear enough to identify. 

I say a slight glow because I like how the icons can be unobtrusive if things simply need a repair.  People who aren't going to be focusing on repairs don't necessarily want to see a lime green or neon pink thing at the corner of their screen.  That's just going to distract them.

On an advanced level, there could be a set of priorities, with a different color for each priority.  Somebody could then go into perhaps the ship customization screen and set whichever components to whichever priority, and those would be the colors involved.  For example, the main engineer of a galleon would set hull, balloon, and  the main engine as higher priorities than the turning engines and lower guns, because a gungineer at the bottom ought to be able to handle those.  The main engineer of a pyramidion would prioritize hull and engines, and lower the priority of the balloon and top guns.  This would be especially useful on a mobula--an engineer on one side of the ship would prioritize things on their side of the ship, and lower the priority of the other side.

Offline Jawjee

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Re: Damage icons
« Reply #3 on: July 28, 2013, 05:15:52 pm »
This deserves a thumbs up, really, I dig the idea, And it's only going to help us.