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Dev blog: Stay on Target!

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Soden Rah
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#741 - 2012-10-15 12:53:19 UTC  |  Edited by: Soden Rah
Rengerel en Distel wrote:
While I agree that colors are the simplest way to indicate things, people need to remember they need to be able to graphically show it for colorblind people as well. That's why you're more likely to get arrows, and sweeping circles vs just color changes.


I fully agree that whatever system is implemented it should work for colour blind people (correct me if I am wrong but working in black and white should be the base test for this?).

However for those not colour blind. Colour is often not just the simplest but the fastest and most robust way way to indicate things.
The red is bad, green is good, system is incredibly useful and powerful.

So my view is that the system should be designed in the first instance to work in black and white.
And then coloured as well (possibly with an optional colour blind friendly colour pallet as well as I believe such things exist) so that everyone gets as much info as easily as possible.


For example I have suggested here that the white areas of the targeting icons could be coloured to show friend or foe status.
So you can more easily tell which of your targets are allies you want to rep and which are enemies you want to shoot.

However you could also do this by altering the shape of the icons.

For example when you look at the overview or ships in space it should distinguish between fleetmates/allies targeting you and hostiles doing the same.

This could be done by making hostiles targeting brackets look like Predator targeting triangles. And allies use the new proposed circles. Colours could be used on top of that.
War Kitten
Panda McLegion
#742 - 2012-10-15 13:05:53 UTC
CCP karkur wrote:
Soden Rah wrote:

Would it (in your view) be giving too much info to colour the angular velocity / transversal/ ect in the overview based on the tracking speed of your turrets as outlined in this post post 679 page 34 so that you can tell at a glance which targets are going too fast for you to track?

To be honest, I don't think I know enough about angular velocity to answer this, but I would be a bit scared of adding to the overview work by doing the calculation that you suggest for everything on the field (although I have not looked into it at all).

We have talked about how cool it could be to let the rotation speed of the arrows that rotate around the active target be based on that, but we first want to get everything else solid.


Oooh, I love that idea on the rotating arrow speed depicting your likelihood of tracking the target.

Angular velocity is already available on the overview. It's just a few short math steps to compare that to your guns' tracking and translate that into a modifier to the speed of rotation of those arrows, and you can only target a handful of ships at a time. It shouldn't hurt the client performance much at all.

The niggling issue is split-weapons - do you do it for missiles too? What about the nubs or extreme fits that require mixed guns? Average the tracking values on each turret?

Make it so!

I don't judge people by their race, religion, color, size, age, gender, or ethnicity. I judge them by their grammar, spelling, syntax, punctuation, clarity of expression, and logical consistency.
Tippia
Sunshine and Lollipops
#743 - 2012-10-15 13:20:21 UTC
Soden Rah wrote:
I fully agree that whatever system is implemented it should work for colour blind people (correct me if I am wrong but working in black and white should be the base test for this?).
Nah. Just employ some kind of simulation.
CCP karkur
C C P
C C P Alliance
#744 - 2012-10-15 13:27:52 UTC
Terrorfrodo wrote:
1. Add a feature to the forums: View only dev posts in thread. Even a dedicated person like me gets tired of 30 or 50 pages of posts, most of them by ranting players (often double- or triple-posting). Most of us are not interested in other players' questions, we are interested in questions that have been answered: What we want to read is what the devs said, and the question they were responding to. If we could filter that out without scrolling through 50 pages to spot the blue badges, it would save us a lot of time and you some trouble!

Did you know that if you click on the blue DEV badge you will jump to the next dev post in the thread?

CCP karkur | Programmer | Team Five 0 | @CCP_karkur
Soden Rah
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#745 - 2012-10-15 13:34:13 UTC
CCP karkur wrote:
Terrorfrodo wrote:
1. Add a feature to the forums: View only dev posts in thread. Even a dedicated person like me gets tired of 30 or 50 pages of posts, most of them by ranting players (often double- or triple-posting). Most of us are not interested in other players' questions, we are interested in questions that have been answered: What we want to read is what the devs said, and the question they were responding to. If we could filter that out without scrolling through 50 pages to spot the blue badges, it would save us a lot of time and you some trouble!

Did you know that if you click on the blue DEV badge you will jump to the next dev post in the thread?


I for one did not know that. Thankyou for this.
Inquisitor Kitchner
The Executives
#746 - 2012-10-15 13:35:52 UTC  |  Edited by: Inquisitor Kitchner
Terrorfrodo wrote:


1. Add a feature to the forums: View only dev posts in thread. Even a dedicated person like me gets tired of 30 or 50 pages of posts, most of them by ranting players (often double- or triple-posting). Most of us are not interested in other players' questions, we are interested in questions that have been answered: What we want to read is what the devs said, and the question they were responding to. If we could filter that out without scrolling through 50 pages to spot the blue badges, it would save us a lot of time and you some trouble!




You can already do this.

Either go to the forums and click "Dev Posts" to see all the lovely CCP Employees engaging with (or banning, down with Mods! etc) members of the community.

Likewise you can click the blue "Dev" tab on the topics page and then the Dev tab in the thread to skip through just Dev posts.

It's how I protect myself from morons (though I still have to talk to my Corp so I can't win every battle).

EDIT: Ninja's by CCP.

"If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared." - Niccolo Machiavelli
Col Ostomy
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#747 - 2012-10-15 16:02:08 UTC
The design looks cool, but is lacking what a lot of people want. Please include the capacitor level on targets. Even if it is for friendly targets in fleet or those on watch lists. This would help the Logi bros so much.
GeeShizzle MacCloud
#748 - 2012-10-15 23:20:13 UTC
Col Ostomy wrote:
The design looks cool, but is lacking what a lot of people want. Please include the capacitor level on targets. Even if it is for friendly targets in fleet or those on watch lists. This would help the Logi bros so much.


i think we as players need to talk to the devs about how much information we should be getting of the enemy vs friendlies and fleet members. cause right now its pretty terrible how little 'actual' thought has been put into it.
Atomic Option
NO Tax FAT Stacks
#749 - 2012-10-16 01:58:41 UTC
CCP karkur wrote:
Myriad Blaze wrote:
numerical DPS meter for incoming damage
Outgoing DPS

Instead of using absolute sizes for shield, armor and structure bars in the circular targeting bracket you could use relative sizes (again, if that isn't “too much” information). That way a ship with 1000 points in shield and 500 in armor and structure each would show a shield bar from 12 o'clock to 6 o'clock, armor bar from 6 to 9 o'clock and structure from 9 to 12.

It would be nice to get information about the damage type of incoming damage. In case you think about the above mentioned DPS meter you might preset the value with the icon of the damage type dealt by that target (or in case of mixed damage types the type that represents the biggest portion of the damage).

I personally think that telling you exactly how much the other guy has in shield, armor and structure is giving too much info.

I like the idea of show the damage type, but I don't know, maybe that's giving too much info? (we did actually discuss both these things at our meetings on Friday)


The biggest issue with adjusting the visual size of shield/armor/hull based on raw HP is that the information isn't relevant to the damage you're going to do. For the sizes to be informative they would have to be based on EHP vs the damage type of the ammo(s) you have loaded and that gets complicated very fast.

Also, I agree that it might be too much information as it would effectively tell you the type of tank you're facing before you face it. That's good/important information to have, but currently it can only be acquired before damage starts flying through a ship scan or an educated guess based on velocity+ship type. Making it available earlier would change effectiveness of surprising fits.

Incoming damage types is an interesting idea. Currently we have a visual effect that tells us incoming damage type for missiles and lasers (if you know your crystal colors). We can sorta tell hybrid types based on range/tracking. but I don't think we have any indication for projectiles.
Atomic Option
NO Tax FAT Stacks
#750 - 2012-10-16 02:28:29 UTC  |  Edited by: Atomic Option
CCP karkur wrote:
Soden Rah wrote:

...
Would it (in your view) be giving too much info to colour the angular velocity / transversal/ ect in the overview based on the tracking speed of your turrets as outlined in this post post 679 page 34 so that you can tell at a glance which targets are going too fast for you to track?

To be honest, I don't think I know enough about angular velocity to answer this, but I would be a bit scared of adding to the overview work by doing the calculation that you suggest for everything on the field (although I have not looked into it at all).

We have talked about how cool it could be to let the rotation speed of the arrows that rotate around the active target be based on that, but we first want to get everything else solid.


Can someone add the radial and angular tracking speeds to the tooltip for gun modules please?

I prefer radial, but I know others like angular.

I like the tracking vs radial motion indicators idea though i'm not sure exactly what it should look like. There is no visual indicator of tracking vs radial motion/angular velocity anywhere right now, only raw numbers for them that have to be compared to what the Show Info window for your modules says before the fight.

Also if you're being tracking disrupted or change the scripts in your targeting computers you probably don't have time to show info on your module again to see what your new tracking number is--especially in smaller ships. A tooltip line would make this accessible, and a visual indicator would be even better.

Third party programs like EFT are currently the only way to see graphs of what tracking vs radial velocity does to your DPS output and that's not very practical during a fight. Is this too much info or making EVE easy? The info is already there it's just very hard to see and use. Show this info to the player in an easier to read way just makes the game more about flying.
Tippia
Sunshine and Lollipops
#751 - 2012-10-16 07:07:51 UTC
Atomic Option wrote:
I prefer radial, but I know others like angular.
That's because radial velocity has no bearing on anything in the game (other than the question of whether the other guy is getting away or not) whereas angular velocity is the key figure in tracking… Blink
Atomic Option
NO Tax FAT Stacks
#752 - 2012-10-16 08:37:49 UTC
Tippia wrote:
Atomic Option wrote:
I prefer radial, but I know others like angular.
That's because radial velocity has no bearing on anything in the game (other than the question of whether the other guy is getting away or not) whereas angular velocity is the key figure in tracking… Blink


...I just looked this up because I always thought radial velocity == angular velocity only in radians per second instead of m/s. Turns out that is called Radial Motion so you are correct and I should have known not to make assumptions in English based on latin roots. Thanks.

Point being I prefer to see rad/s rather than m/s since I'm used to it from Pyfa and the number of digits displayed is more consistent so I can set a less forgiving width for that column in the overview. But others may prefer m/s. Add both. There's room.
Tippia
Sunshine and Lollipops
#753 - 2012-10-16 08:49:32 UTC
Atomic Option wrote:
Point being I prefer to see rad/s rather than m/s since I'm used to it from Pyfa and the number of digits displayed is more consistent so I can set a less forgiving width for that column in the overview. But others may prefer m/s. Add both. There's room.
Yes, I'll agree with you there: rad/s is generally a better measurement since it's the same unit as the towers themselves use to measure their tracking ability. Transversal (usually measured in m/s) doesn't tell the full story and uses a completely different unit as well, so it's not nearly as handy for evaluating your turrets' chance to hit.
Nyla Skin
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#754 - 2012-10-16 09:01:20 UTC  |  Edited by: Nyla Skin
CCP karkur wrote:

Did you know that if you click on the blue DEV badge you will jump to the next dev post in the thread?


I for one would want it to jump to the last dev post as opposed to first..

In after the lock :P   - CCP Falcon www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies
Steve Ronuken
Fuzzwork Enterprises
Vote Steve Ronuken for CSM
#755 - 2012-10-16 09:07:02 UTC
Tippia wrote:
Atomic Option wrote:
Point being I prefer to see rad/s rather than m/s since I'm used to it from Pyfa and the number of digits displayed is more consistent so I can set a less forgiving width for that column in the overview. But others may prefer m/s. Add both. There's room.
Yes, I'll agree with you there: rad/s is generally a better measurement since it's the same unit as the towers themselves use to measure their tracking ability. Transversal (usually measured in m/s) doesn't tell the full story and uses a completely different unit as well, so it's not nearly as handy for evaluating your turrets' chance to hit.



Oh, you're traversing at 1000 m/s. How nice for you.

Pity you're 80km away.

*Boom go the 1400s*

Blink

Woo! CSM XI!

Fuzzwork Enterprises

Twitter: @fuzzysteve on Twitter
War Kitten
Panda McLegion
#756 - 2012-10-16 11:22:33 UTC
Yeah, what Tippia said.

Transversal is what you were thinking of, and its nearly useless by itself. Angular velocity is the one measured in radians per second, and is directly comparable to your guns' tracking value.

To get angular velocity, you divide Transversal speed by your distance to the target.

Let's pretend to be a frigate tackling a cruiser (very generic and rough calcs, but it illustrates the point.)

2000 m/s transversal at 20km range is only 0.100 rad/s angular velocity. Medium Autocannons with barrage can hit that.
2000 m/s transversal at 10km range is 0.200 rad/s. Medium autocannons with tracking ammo will have trouble with that but still hit.
1000 m/s transversal at 2km range (assume you got webbed) is 0.500 rad/s. Medium autocannons will not hit this much if at all.

I don't judge people by their race, religion, color, size, age, gender, or ethnicity. I judge them by their grammar, spelling, syntax, punctuation, clarity of expression, and logical consistency.
Hideo Jones
Cheeseburger operations
#757 - 2012-10-16 11:28:12 UTC
Apologies if this has been posted already...(I rely on TGL3 to do my reading). Anyways, i kinda like having to watch my o/view and know my ship capabilities to know who is in targetting range. Rather than having it pointed out to me. Is EvE becoming console easy?
Terrorfrodo
Interbus Universal
#758 - 2012-10-16 11:33:41 UTC
CCP karkur wrote:
Terrorfrodo wrote:
1. Add a feature to the forums: View only dev posts in thread. Even a dedicated person like me gets tired of 30 or 50 pages of posts, most of them by ranting players (often double- or triple-posting). Most of us are not interested in other players' questions, we are interested in questions that have been answered: What we want to read is what the devs said, and the question they were responding to. If we could filter that out without scrolling through 50 pages to spot the blue badges, it would save us a lot of time and you some trouble!

Did you know that if you click on the blue DEV badge you will jump to the next dev post in the thread?


No I didn't, thanks :)

I actually tried once to interact with the dev badge, but nothing happened. It must have been because it was the last dev post in the thread.

.
addelee
KarmaFleet
Goonswarm Federation
#759 - 2012-10-16 11:45:35 UTC
This may have been mentioned but personally, I'd like to see a change which makes any form of electronic warfare obvious.
Knowing who is scambling you is key to some decisions when in combat (whether this be PVE or PVP) and right now, it just doesn't work.

I dunno, perhaps put a pulsating blue ring around things that are scrambling and what not. Even an extra column on the overview (with a tick box) would be better than the current system.

Or even better, make it customizable so in theory you could have different setups for PVE and PVP as in reality, you do want to see different information.

However, this wasn't me criticising as I like the new designs, just adding feedback Big smile
Soden Rah
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#760 - 2012-10-16 12:29:18 UTC  |  Edited by: Soden Rah
Tippia wrote:
Atomic Option wrote:
Point being I prefer to see rad/s rather than m/s since I'm used to it from Pyfa and the number of digits displayed is more consistent so I can set a less forgiving width for that column in the overview. But others may prefer m/s. Add both. There's room.
Yes, I'll agree with you there: rad/s is generally a better measurement since it's the same unit as the towers themselves use to measure their tracking ability. Transversal (usually measured in m/s) doesn't tell the full story and uses a completely different unit as well, so it's not nearly as handy for evaluating your turrets' chance to hit.



As it is currently set up Rad/s is indeed the key number to look at... which is why I had it in my overview (even before I spent time in E-Uni.)

However as there are only 2*Pi ~ 6.28 radians in a circle and tracking speeds are (especially for larger turrets where, lets face it, tracking is a bigger issue) very slow what you get is a number that looks like this 0.00234 or 0.000157 ect.

The number is very often heavily front loaded with zeros.

However if we got the tracking in Deg/s we are now looking at having 360 degrees for the full circle or ~57 times larger numbers.
so an angular velocity of 0.00234 rad/s becomes 0.134 deg/s.. it's still decimal but I get useful info with only 3 or 4 dp rather than 5 or 6 which means the column in my overview can be narrower while giving me the same information.

Obviously having the angular velocity as a percentage of your turrets current tracking speed (assuming you have turrets fitted, otherwise angular velocity is irrelevant anyway) would be best yet because it shows you the information you actually want which is "can I actually track this target given the current status of tracking computers/enhancers/loaded scripts/skills and whether and how many tracking disruptor's your being hit with?"

EDIT: in the case of fail fits with multiple types of turrets I would opt for using the tracking speed of the slowest tracking turret as that tells you where you are with respect to your worst tracking speed and everything else will be better. I don't think that there is a nice solution for this but then you shouldn't be flying a fail fit anyway.

with a percentage readout you could get away with showing no decimal places making the column locked at 3 digits perfectly acceptable.

Colour coding the readout to make it stand out even more would be even better.

At the moment the overview is a real space hog and anything that allows it to be made smaller while giving the same info has to be a good thing.

That's what my other suggestion of using abbreviations for condensing the information was really about.
So you have for example a HAC instead of "Heavy Assault Cruiser" and APOC instead of Apocalypse and STN for station ect.
The amount of useless redundant info in the overview is staggering.
It has to be better to have

MIN-STN-Pator Tech School
or even
MIN-STN-PTS
rather than
Minmatar Research Station - Aldrat IX Pator Tech School

As long as every in space item has it's abbreviation in its show info and there was an in and out of game complete list of all abbreviations (which would be created with player consultation so we can use as much as possible already used abbreviations)
then it should make reading the overview easier and faster while at the same time making it smaller.
With the option for those with the screen size to then have essentially multiple instances so that they could for example show hostiles in one and friends in another, or have one set for combat and the other for looting ect.

EDIT: This is a perfect case in point community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=28603

Have a look at the image of the overview at the top of the blog.
It's chock full of 'names' and 'types' way way too long to fit in the overview (an overview that doesn't include vital info such as target velocity and angular velocity and tag) and are mostly meaningless fluff. NPC's are notorious for this.
They all need short names/types that give you the information you actually need/want that fit in an overview smaller than half the screen.