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Dev blog: Stay on Target!

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A8ina
Pator Tech School
Minmatar Republic
#321 - 2012-10-11 05:55:52 UTC
very nice change I also would like to see the brackets that are rotating around the main bracket to have a purpose like indicating the targets status for example

rotating brackets spinning fast is high transversal velocity or low when spinning slowly

rotating brackets have tight rotation around main bracket is good tracking a lose rotation is but tracking

rotating brackets have a different color or shape to indicate when in falloff off or optimal

also have the ship that is selected in bracket to be an instant live depiction of the target so we can see it's orientation


also have all this optional for those that prefer performers if effected.


any other suggestions regarding brackets are welcome
Gilbaron
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#322 - 2012-10-11 05:59:18 UTC
i have slept a night about this and i have come to the following conclusion

giving hp bars on the brackets themselves might be to much clutter for my screen

how about connecting a locked target with its bracket via a line on the screen ? not sure if it is a good idea, but it might reduce clutter, which is a good thing
Dex Tera
Science and Trade Institute
Caldari State
#323 - 2012-10-11 06:01:22 UTC
CCP Sisyphus wrote:
Bloodpetal wrote:


Here's a couple dream ideas ::

-- Draw a line between my ship and the enemy target (This already happens in Tactical Overview mode I believe), put "ticks" on the line that represent my various weapon ranges along that line. (So optimal will be green, falloff will be yellow, red will be out of range.

-- Show what EWAR affects are being applied to the target ship already (from friendlies or otherwise) - so I can see if he's being tracking disrupted so I know I can tracking disrupt other targets out there. I know this information is already sent to my client because the VISUAL effects from friendlies are projected to targets, so it's just a matter of showing me in a clear visual format that they're being applied.


Some nice thoughts there!


i too would like to know what effects my friends are applying to other ships im sure every one would like to know this an icon next to the target window would be great but it would need to be differnt from my efects on a ship so it could say have a green tint to the icon or somthing else
Gorn Arming
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#324 - 2012-10-11 06:01:37 UTC
The "targeting" and "aggressing" brackets (i.e. the part providing the same basic functionality we now have) need to be brighter or otherwise higher in contrast. Judging by your side-by-side comparison, the old ones have better visibility.

Also, for the love of god test these changes in some large fleet fights before they go live. I don't want to get knocked right off the Internet when that little animation tries to play in a thousand different spots on my screen simultaneously.
Tau Cabalander
Retirement Retreat
Working Stiffs
#325 - 2012-10-11 06:03:41 UTC
1. How does TiDi affect the UI changes? [I do hope somebody thought of addressing modules that cycle very slowly.]

2. Anything for drones? I'd really like to know what my drones are doing.
Dex Tera
Science and Trade Institute
Caldari State
#326 - 2012-10-11 06:11:22 UTC
Chaos Transcension wrote:
I love and adore this development, I was JUST saying on my alliance voice chat about the targeting system and how it is needing a serious overhaul. Here are my proposals / suggestions:

Color Coordinating and Coding is DIRE!

Blue for shields and give the option to have it a solid bar or a detailed bar that glows like shields do.
A Rusty Gold for Armor. extra detail could be that is is shiny as it is a full bar but becomes broken and damaged as it degrades.
Hull would be Silver I'd think.

Another idea for them is to keep them a solid color as you have them, but as damage is dealt the bar will pulse very subtly with small hits or give a big visual pulse on big hits.

Scrolling Combat Text: Something that is beyond popular and almost standard in so many games can be easily worked to have that EVE online feel; You keep the same font size, but instead of that little box in the middle (which you can choose to have it or not) you instead have the damage dealt to your target bounce off of that ship in clear text (with options for standard EVE Online font, or two or three other simple fonts to move with a player's personality choice)

The damage you receive will be a small font number bouncing off of your own ship status overlay.

Modules that inflict damage will have their damage dealt to the target also appear coming just off of the module icon.

Shield boosting modules, Nosferatu, shield rep, etc. will also have small bits of text bouncing gently off of those modules.

All damage types will be color-coded, combinations of damages will have their color schemes split on the bouncing text, if you do more Heat (red) than EM (dark blue) then you would have the numbers appear where more of the text is dominated by red OR you could simply keep the text as you desire but put the slightest underlining that is color-coded.

Would also be awesome to know the Shield Boost Per Second, Remote Armor Repair Per Second, Capacitor Transfer Amount Per Second, Nosferatu Drain Per Second, etc. in the ship fitting. But that is an optional semi-unrelated suggestion perhaps for other things you folks are working on.

Thank you for reading my ideas, If you'd like a Gimp2 artist creation of what my ideal overview would look like, I could also submit a file in a week, as I now work quite a lot in demolition. But I am proficient with art programs and I could always whip together some jpeg images of my suggestions in this post.

Alright, time to mine.


hmm good post sir +1 but i must inform you that gold does not rust
Iam Widdershins
Project Nemesis
#327 - 2012-10-11 06:12:40 UTC
This looks good, but I have a word of caution CCP:

The blink animation on hit with variable opacity is really cool and all, but I feel like it should be at least partially based on damage you've received over a reasonable time period -- like 2-3 seconds -- rather than simply on-hit. If it is only on-hit, there is motivation to split up weapon groups to make every hit as unobtrusive and difficult to notice as possible, letting everyone else get the big hits and light themselves up as a target. This naturally increases server load, and anything that's a reason to increase server load can't be good.

Lobbying for your right to delete your signature
Sinigr Shadowsong
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#328 - 2012-10-11 06:17:32 UTC
I like those new features. UI will become more clear and informative with those, however I'd like post some feedback here:

1) Please add time left in seconds to locking target bracket as mentioned before. We like to know exact numbers here. It could be placed inside the round bracket and be disabable in options.
2) Bracket that show that you are allowed to lock target based on distance is great. Could you consider making it disappear or change if you cannot lock target due to other reasons?
- Target is under force field (will make it clearer for new players).
- Target has just undocked (will stop us from derpherp-style CTRL+Clicking wating target to become lockable).
- Target has just finished warping and is still in seemingly bugged_laggy_unlockable mode (same reason as above).
- You have just finished warping and is still in seemingly bugged_laggy_unlockable mode so you can't lock on anything.
- You are being jammed (good additional visual indication).
3) Those flashing indicators are interesting. I would like to see then not only when I'm being damaged but also when enemies use EWAR on me. It could be another color, shape or size.
4) How about allies that target you? You could add green flashing signs when your friendly logistic ship repairs you. Brackets for fleet members locking you can be green/blue or some variations of this. They could turn red/yellow if your ally start attacking you instead of assisting.
5) Make some indication when my attacks hit the target, so we could see we hit someone not only by yellow text table that appears for split second. In large fleet battles I can't see whos hit got to enemy Abaddon based only on bars on locked target.
6) A bit unrelated but please consider reworking module damage indication. It's very counter-intuitive when red line goes under green overheat button.
Sinooko
Tharumec
Gespenster Kompanie
#329 - 2012-10-11 06:43:13 UTC
I would like to see UI enhancements kinda like what is shown,

Here at 1:07

I would also really like to take advantage of my second screen so I could use my main screen for all the juicy graphics that I barely see behind my many, many windows.

Example 1

Example 2
Peter Powers
Terrorists of Dimensions
#330 - 2012-10-11 06:46:57 UTC
the new brackets? seems quite cool idea, however, since a lot of players play with brackets turned off (blobfights anyone?) i wonder if it is worth the effort.

the new circular targetting things (forgive me not knowing the name this early in the morning) that you usually have at the top of your screen, while they look cooler, the way the shield/armor/structure is arranged around it makes it harder to see on the first view whats going on.
Obviously you could argue that changes with getting used to it, but having 3 bars below each other is much easier to read than the circular part (because its aligned in a way that we humans are used to read stuff, and because the eye-path is much shorter on it), so could you please reconsider it? form should always follow function.

3rdPartyEve.net - your catalogue for 3rd party applications
Nyla Skin
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#331 - 2012-10-11 06:48:04 UTC  |  Edited by: Nyla Skin
CCP Phantom wrote:

CCP karkur introduces in her latest devblog our ideas how to improve tactical awareness in general the visual aspects of targeting in special. You can find the devblog here.

Please use this thread for all your constructive feedback.


I get error 500 - internal server error from the link.


On topic:
Quote:
That is; the opacity of the hit icon will indicate the impact to YOUR ship. If the hit takes a big chunk of your hitpoints (HP), you will see the attacker's hit icon flash strongly even if it was a pretty lousy shot for their equipment.


I don't think opacity should have anything to do with information about my ship. Opacity is one of those things I would rather adjust myself to my personal tastes.

I also don't like the circular shield/armor/structure display. Its not intuitive which part of the circle is shield and so on, while with the current bar display its obvious that the defenses are attacked in top-to-bottom order. Also the eye has to move around to compare the shield to armor etc, as opposed to the current display.

I would really really really wish that you drop that shield/armor display idea completely. Its more cumbersome than the current one.

Circular targeting icons are fine though.

In after the lock :P   - CCP Falcon www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies
mechtech
Ice Liberation Army
#332 - 2012-10-11 06:55:46 UTC
A8ina wrote:
very nice change I also would like to see the brackets that are rotating around the main bracket to have a purpose like indicating the targets status for example

rotating brackets spinning fast is high transversal velocity or low when spinning slowly

rotating brackets have tight rotation around main bracket is good tracking a lose rotation is but tracking

rotating brackets have a different color or shape to indicate when in falloff off or optimal

also have the ship that is selected in bracket to be an instant live depiction of the target so we can see it's orientation


also have all this optional for those that prefer performers if effected.


any other suggestions regarding brackets are welcome


Great suggestions!
Sinooko
Tharumec
Gespenster Kompanie
#333 - 2012-10-11 06:58:41 UTC
CCP karkur wrote:
Resilan Bearcat wrote:
I like the concept shown for the additional information shown on the brackets. The dev blog shows a targeting icon based on targeting range. This is mostly useless information for me. I live and fight in wormholes where most encounters occur at very close range. What I care about is the weapon range for my weapons and selected ammo. From a personal perspective, I would prefer to see the targeting icon when a target is inside my optimal + falloff instead of the targeting range of my ship.

We are actually working on something like that... but we haven't started implementing it so I can't comment much more than that we are looking into that P


How about 'chance to hit' indicators.

Blue, "You could hit this with 1400's at 5m"
Green "Pretty good chance of hitting, you will likely do decent damage"
Yellow "This will be a challenge but it's doable."
Red "You would have an easier time shooting off a squirrel's nut with a BAR with no scope at one KM."
D4mane
Wazan Tme Inc.
Corelum Syndicate
#334 - 2012-10-11 07:04:45 UTC
CCP Punkturis wrote:
this stuff is soooooo nice, was playing with it all day on my computer!


Get back to work.
Sturmwolke
#335 - 2012-10-11 07:09:40 UTC
Please allow turning off the drone dmg message flashes. It's a lot of spam when it's not your focus.
I'd welcome filter enhancements to the Log to make it easier for a player to filter specific messages.

- As for those dmg bars, they need colors. Subtle/neutral colors, not gaudy.

- I'd also welcome some sort of compact target icons so that all 10 targets (typical max without assist) won't stretch all the way across the screen (either horizontal or vertical). Ideally they should occupy less than a quarter screen, half screen at most.

- Since you're playing with opacity indicators, will these be propagated to allow logis to see who's taking a lot of pounding in their RR lock list? Does this apply to the watchlist as well?
Nyla Skin
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#336 - 2012-10-11 07:17:19 UTC
Sinooko wrote:

How about 'chance to hit' indicators.

Blue, "You could hit this with 1400's at 5m"
Green "Pretty good chance of hitting, you will likely do decent damage"
Yellow "This will be a challenge but it's doable."
Red "You would have an easier time shooting off a squirrel's nut with a BAR with no scope at one KM."


While that looks like a good idea at first glance, it would propably cause lot of stress to the servers which would have to do all those calculations for hundreds of players on grid in real time..

In after the lock :P   - CCP Falcon www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies
DerArt1st
Doomheim
#337 - 2012-10-11 07:38:36 UTC
CCP Phantom wrote:
As our new Winter expansion, EVE Online: Retribution, draws closer we would like to present you another of its many exciting features.

CCP karkur introduces in her latest devblog our ideas how to improve tactical awareness in general the visual aspects of targeting in special. You can find the devblog here.

Please use this thread for all your constructive feedback.


I really hope you are thinking about movement indicators aswell. Its a real shame that u have to "lock at" your target to get a clue where it is flying to and that there are no visual indicators about flying directions at all.
Daedra Blue
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#338 - 2012-10-11 07:43:21 UTC  |  Edited by: Daedra Blue
CCP karkur wrote:
Niko Lorenzio wrote:

Well, I'm not going to complain as this is something you're adding that wasn't there before, not something you're changing around, however I agree with Karl, that seeing the kind of hit would be much more useful. Maybe you need to stop nubing missions and try pvping as this is where that information will be truly critical, not in PVE. But, like I said, better than nothing.

Unless.... you're planning to remove damage notifications and rely solely on this new mechanism, then you better get ready for a rage storm.

Also, I don't really understand, can't you already see all the HP notifications on all locked targets???

P.S. Great work, I like that you're going back to the round target icons, and I think starting clockwise with shields at 12 is just friggen awesome :)

I'm actually doing more PVP now than PVE... but I'm such a noob that I usually just die when people start shooting P

But we are not planning on removing the damage notification... we will (most likely) be improving them, I'm not really sure though how (I just don't know right now).

And thank you Big smile


Here's an idea that might not solve that problem but can really help the awareness for people.

make space near the HUD bottom-center for 2 numbers;

NR1 Incoming dps : SUM(Select ALL DMG from enemy ships) / timer
NR2 Outgoing dps: SUM(Select ALL DMG to enemy ships) / timer

Right click on number and have ability to select timer (1s-5s-10s-manual(max30s[or slowest weapon cycle time]-min1s))

this will show the average dps for the duration your set up. And it will refresh once every second and include all log notifications of the past seconds set in the time.

You can then clearly see if the dps you are doing increases with your maneuvers or decreases. As well as if you mitigate the incoming dmg or not. And hey maybe you can even make a FPS(meter) like small chart to see trends of the past w/e seconds to help with data understanding like hey i dealt most dmg last 5 seconds let me get back to that position.

Having both meters can instantly correlate if the piloting you do decreases incoming dps and increases outgoing dps or maybe outgoing dps goes too much down and incoming dps is still holding maybe that maneuver is not worth it.
Daedra Blue
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#339 - 2012-10-11 07:47:43 UTC  |  Edited by: Daedra Blue
Trebor Daehdoow wrote:
I have the photoshop skills of a stoned rabid wombat, but after reading the thread and seeing some of the mockups people have come up with, I cribbed one of them to add a couple of features that address some of the major concerns:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/yczdff38xs99gff/TreborMockup.png

I took the circular, multicolored arrowed indicators (excellent cues) and added two additional features while maintaining a very compact layout:

1) Internal numeric blisters that appear when the ship takes shields/armor/hull damage and indicate the % remaining. This compensates for the smaller size of the bars and gives a more precise "at a glance" reading than the current setup.

2) External blisters in the 4 corners that contain green/yellow/red stoplight icons that can be used to indicate various states, like range, tracking, relative velocity, etc.

The numeric blister idea can, of course, be extended to do things like indicate lock times, etc.

Note that this kind of layout could be used to revamp the HUD itself.

Lots of good ideas in the thread, hope this stimulates even more.


Yeah like take the formulas from my previous post and place under the target the dps he's doing to you for the preset timer, that WILL 100% of the time tell you the EXACT amount of threat he does to you.
Sinooko
Tharumec
Gespenster Kompanie
#340 - 2012-10-11 07:48:48 UTC
Nyla Skin wrote:
Sinooko wrote:

How about 'chance to hit' indicators.

Blue, "You could hit this with 1400's at 5m"
Green "Pretty good chance of hitting, you will likely do decent damage"
Yellow "This will be a challenge but it's doable."
Red "You would have an easier time shooting off a squirrel's nut with a BAR with no scope at one KM."


While that looks like a good idea at first glance, it would propably cause lot of stress to the servers which would have to do all those calculations for hundreds of players on grid in real time..


The data is all available in the client. Guage together optimal range, transversal, and tracking Info. I do it in my head all the time. This little bit of help will more easily convince new players that the battleship is not the end all solution to combat, and will allow me to take transversal off my overview freeing up a little space on my screen.