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Dev blog: Stay on Target!

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Vincent Athena
Photosynth
#461 - 2012-10-11 12:59:21 UTC
This entire "which is the shields" thing is so odd. I figured it out from the screen shot in seconds (none of the targeted ships have shield damage). If you had released a short video of it in action, most of those repeated questions would have gone away, and the rest could have been answered with a link to the video.

But you do need to consider the consistency of the clockwise vs counterclockwise movements, and starting positions (6 o'clock vs 12 o'clock).

What happens when 2 of these rings overlap, like when you are zoomed out or 2 targets happen to be close? Are they transparent? One blocks the other? Or....?

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Frozen fanfiction
Tippia
Sunshine and Lollipops
#462 - 2012-10-11 13:03:05 UTC  |  Edited by: Tippia
Schmata Bastanold wrote:
Let's be honest, with brackets disabled half of this work won't be noticed and I personally would prefer to see velocity/transversal/angular info below locked target "rectangle" than indicator of target being in locking range. Right now it is basically circles vs rectangles "discussion" as somebody mentioned few pages ago.

The question is, how do you present those visually with any kind of clarity?

For my part, I'm (perhaps too) used to the flightsim version, with various carets and ticks rotating around a lock-on circle to denote things like relative motion and range, but that might clutter things up a bit too much (and, as with so many other things, get drowned out by bright nebulas in the background) —

So how should you do it? Just numerically, in which case it's just duplication from the overview? Perhaps a “traffic light” system: red/yellow/green dots for targets within double-falloff / falloff / optimal range and another for targets moving at twice / roughly equal / half your tracking speed? Should it include actual tracking (i.e. modified by sig radius) or just the base tracking and angular velocity numbers? But then, how do you deal with mixed weapons, which is a reality on many ships?

Vincent Athena wrote:
What happens when 2 of these rings overlap, like when you are zoomed out or 2 targets happen to be close? Are they transparent? One blocks the other? Or....?

It was mentioned in some other thread (that I can't find now) that it will only show up for the currently selected locked target, so you'll only ever see one of them at a time. For other targets, the information is in the lock stack, which obviously won't overlap itself.

e: Here.
Kifette
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#463 - 2012-10-11 13:03:34 UTC
Good stuff Smile

Please consider adding colors to the target UI : green if the target is in corp, purple for fleet, etc...

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DJ P0N-3
Table Flippendeavors
#464 - 2012-10-11 13:03:36 UTC
In your quest to make it a little more readable at a quick glance to those of us with poor eyesight, could you consider returning the thin borders around the health bars? I'd rather be able to see a white outline of nothingness than look for the edges of the red against the black. (If this has been asked before then consider me seconding the request; it's too early in the morning to read 23 pages of forum robbling).
Schmata Bastanold
In Boobiez We Trust
#465 - 2012-10-11 13:06:39 UTC  |  Edited by: Schmata Bastanold
Tippia wrote:
So how should you do it?


I would go with pure numbers because it would be quite compact (but not like it was in case of tooltips at first version).
Duplication with overview - yes, but at least in case of locked targets we could stop jumping with our eyes between space (to observe target maneuvers), overview (to see those numbers), locked target (to see effects of our damage).

About tracking I'm not sure we need any indicator (of course it wouldn't hurt to have but let's stay at "simple" cases) because as far as I know tracking of your guns should be higher number than angular of your target and you are "green". So undock, check tracking of guns with all your bonuses once and than just see: this guy orbits with X, X < my tracking -> I am fine.

Invalid signature format
Vaerah Vahrokha
Vahrokh Consulting
#466 - 2012-10-11 13:11:18 UTC
I have a suggestion.

What about the target stays in a circle and:

- On the upper side (say 220°, that is a bit more than half of the circle) there's the lock countdown, basically a thin red-dish arc (with number at the top of the targetting circle in a little square) that shortens as the lock progresses. The thin red arc is on the perimeter of the target circle.

- On the bottom, 3 other concentric semi-arcs, say 60-80°.

One is shields, the second is armor the third is hull.

It'd keep the "modern circular" theme while also being VERY easy to learn, to glance at and easy to adapt from "old pilots".


Here's is an awful but illustrative picture detailing my idea.

Of course the lower arcs could be better joined with the overall circular shape, be inside it or whatsnot.

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Misanth
RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE
#467 - 2012-10-11 13:13:37 UTC
Mark726 wrote:
I love the looks and the breakdowns of the new icons/reticules. The ONLY suggestion I have is to look again at having the arcs around the icons for shield/armor/hull. There is NO reason that I would associate the "upper right arc" to mean "shield" if I were just glancing at an icon. I'm not entirely sure how to fix that given the rest of the design, but even a transparent S/A/H marking would be nice if you're going the circle route.

That said, I liked basically everything else in the dev blog... I look forward to seeing the results!


That transparent S/A/H is also a better option than colours. I have colourblind corpmates who'd approve of this, I'm sure.

AFK-cloaking in a system near you.
Dex Tera
Science and Trade Institute
Caldari State
#468 - 2012-10-11 13:26:43 UTC
CCP Prism X wrote:
So... WHICH ONE IS SHIELD?!!

Seriously, why don't I know this yet!?! Stop ignoring me just because I'm asking the difficult questions nobody else wants to ask!


any 1 who cant figure this out yet and is posting "which 1is dem shieldz DERPDERP???" is clearly not smart enough to play eve and should be banned from eve 4evar! it start at12 o'clock position on the targeted ship circle and ends at the 4 Oclock position also prism i know ur trolling and are smart enough to play eve but srsly why do you let these derps derp all over the fourmsRoll
Inepsa1987
#469 - 2012-10-11 13:27:33 UTC
Vaerah Vahrokha wrote:
I have a suggestion.

What about the target stays in a circle and:

- On the upper side (say 220°, that is a bit more than half of the circle) there's the lock countdown, basically a thin red-dish arc (with number at the top of the targetting circle in a little square) that shortens as the lock progresses. The thin red arc is on the perimeter of the target circle.

- On the bottom, 3 other concentric semi-arcs, say 60-80°.

One is shields, the second is armor the third is hull.

It'd keep the "modern circular" theme while also being VERY easy to learn, to glance at and easy to adapt from "old pilots".


Here's is an awful but illustrative picture detailing my idea.

Of course the lower arcs could be better joined with the overall circular shape, be inside it or whatsnot.


I was thinking this same exact thing. Good idea.

Spaceship Pilot.
Akrasjel Lanate
Immemorial Coalescence Administration
Immemorial Coalescence
#470 - 2012-10-11 13:37:08 UTC
I like it

CEO of Lanate Industries

Citizen of Solitude
Musashi Date
#471 - 2012-10-11 13:40:33 UTC
I have a suggestion about activated modules. Say I mouse over one of my activated module - after a while it will glow and the current target on the Target Tist also glows and maybe even in the Overview. If you mouse over a target in the Target List, the activated modules on it will glow accordingly.

This is going to be useful for mission salvagers and miners that often have multiple targets working with ungrouped modules.
CCP karkur
C C P
C C P Alliance
#472 - 2012-10-11 13:48:00 UTC
Musashi Date wrote:
I have a suggestion about activated modules. Say I mouse over one of my activated module - after a while it will glow and the current target on the Target Tist also glows and maybe even in the Overview. If you mouse over a target in the Target List, the activated modules on it will glow accordingly.

This is going to be useful for mission salvagers and miners that often have multiple targets working with ungrouped modules.

guess what i'm working on right now P

CCP karkur | Programmer | Team Five 0 | @CCP_karkur
Angeliq
Brutor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#473 - 2012-10-11 13:49:41 UTC  |  Edited by: Angeliq
CCP Prism X wrote:


Covered on page one. And multiple other pages. And the DevBlog clearly states this is a work in progress and not a final We're shipping this straight in your FACE! Dev blog.
I'm also on the team, so clearly the team members are aware of this flaw.

I'm probably being a rear-end-hat but it's very annoying to get the same feedback over and over again when you've already acknowledged it. It gives you the feeling that people are not reading the discussion. If they are not reading the discussion, then it's not a discussion but a shouting match.

I just thought I'd clarify why I'm clearly trolling my coworkers rather than invite a misundertanding into the feedback.

But on a lighter, more positive note: There's a lot of good feedback here. And a discussion between BobFromMarketing and Tippia.


What exactly "you've already acknowledged"? The fact that this new circle UI is not useful, or the fact that it could be better if colored (but still not as useful as the current squared one)?

Speaking of usefulness, NOW if I want to see how much hp on shield, armor and structure the targeted ship has, I just move the mouse just a little bit up or down. AFTER I'll have to move it on a circle pattern and travel more distance.

NOW I can see at a glance if the target is deeper into shields, armor or structure (the bars being stacked makes comparison extremely easy), AFTER it will not be so intuitive.

Tell you what. Why don't you (I was going to say give us the option, but I remembered that for some reason you guys don't like to give players the option to customize anything, so I'll just say) make the target's location on screen organized on rows according to ship types, T1 frigates being on the lowest row and titans on the highest?
Let me explain this.
It's like having the targets aligned vertical (like you can do now) but instead of having only 1 column, you would also have a row for each ship type you target. If you target 4 different ship types, you'll have 1 column and 4 row. If you target 4 ships of the same type you'll have 4 columns and 1 row. This is also applicable if the targets are aligned horizontal, in this case you'll just swap the column-row numbers.
This way you have all targeted logistic ships in the same place (on the same column or row), all tacklers on one place, all bs's on one place, etc. You could even make it so targeted fleet members are positioned on a different part of the screen so you won't friendly fire on them by accident.

This image should make it even more clear:

http://oi45.tinypic.com/a2rvc.jpg Excuse my paint skills, I only trained them to lvl 1.
(By "enemy" I mean anyone who's not in your fleet and/or corporation.)

wow much space very ship such pvp many pew
Misanth
RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE
#474 - 2012-10-11 13:53:22 UTC
Vincent Athena wrote:
CCP karkur wrote:
The client has all the information we need already... if anything you should be worried about client performance. But we are keeping a close eye on that, and if the client is not performing well enough, we are ready to react to that and cut stuff if needed.

Be sure to test it in a mission with clouds, zoomed in, on an Apple laptop, all at the same time.


Mission clouds is a major issue altogether tbfh.

I can easily run 8 accounts same time no problem, doing PvP with max setting on some and bit lower setting gfx clients doing PvE simultaneously. No problem. Now ONE of them hits a cloud.. if I just dare to zoom in a little bit, rather than being max zoomed out, that client stutters like mad and it affects the other clients as well. Single client with max setting vs single cloud works, usually two as well but around there it starts to complain.

TL;DR even with good PCs the cloud is an issue. It's a separate issue tho, but still, has to be considered when doing changes to other potentially-client-worsening-performance-changes. EVE has always been very friendly to lower performing hardware, and we also traditionally have alot of people multiboxing. It would be really bad for CCP if they start to balance all game around a single PC (IBM clone) with top of the line specifications.

AFK-cloaking in a system near you.
Musashi Date
#475 - 2012-10-11 13:55:56 UTC
CCP karkur wrote:
Musashi Date wrote:
I have a suggestion about activated modules. Say I mouse over one of my activated module - after a while it will glow and the current target on the Target Tist also glows and maybe even in the Overview. If you mouse over a target in the Target List, the activated modules on it will glow accordingly.

This is going to be useful for mission salvagers and miners that often have multiple targets working with ungrouped modules.

guess what i'm working on right now P


Thank you, i'll be looking forward to it :D
GeeShizzle MacCloud
#476 - 2012-10-11 13:56:26 UTC  |  Edited by: GeeShizzle MacCloud
CCP Prism X wrote:


Constructive feedback, such as making the triangles spin wildly out of control if your tracking is too **** for the traversal velocity, gets lost. Everybody loses and goes home a bit angrier than they had to.

That being said, I'm no saint. That should be obvious by the fact that I troll my own coworkers. But I cant do that if I start creating problems by doing that. Which is why I'm now making a long winded attempt to re-rail the discussion that I feel I may have de-railed somewhat.


well also allow me to help re-rail the discussion by offering an idea with a few mock up pictures....

http://i.imgur.com/8h0e9.jpg - red
http://i.imgur.com/CoehQ.jpg - orange
http://i.imgur.com/oTOEx.gif - green

Introduce a traffic light system for giving pilots indications of gun/ missile range and tracking. How it would work is as follows and is listed in order of priority, where a higher priority colour overrides a lesser one:

  • Red: out of falloff range and/or out of tracking speed
  • Orange: In falloff range and/or within +/- 10% of tracking speed
  • Green: In optimal range and/or within tracking speed

This traffic light system would only appear on the selected object and only when either a pilot has moused over a weapon group or has a weapon group activated on a target.



This may seem a bit of a big helping hand for noobs but when you consider how people fight within weapon systems this could serve as a guide but not a full proof way of knowing you're going to hit a target effectively in a given situation. for example...

Autocannon PvP ships generally fight at half falloff so being in a AC cynabal for example you'd not want to get within 10km of a target typically so you wouldnt fight when your reticle hits green flashy.

Missiles use an explosion radius vs sig radius calculations that shouldnt be used to indicate tracking on this system, adding some requirement of further study and knowledge of ur target and your weapon system.

FYI the green flashy is so that the 3 colours are easily distinguishable by all forms of colour blindness.
Misanth
RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE
#477 - 2012-10-11 13:57:28 UTC
Dersen Lowery wrote:
I'm not sure I understand why color-coding the bars is so important. Shield is the one that turns red first; armor is the one that turns red second; hull is the one that turns red last. The important summary is "how red is the circle?" If the bars were proportional to the size of the defense type (so shield tanked ships would have a long first bar, etc.) that would be cool.

It would be even more intuitive if the ship's own HUD worked that way, so that the presentation of information was absolutely consistent, right down to the HUD pulsing brightly when you land a wrecking strike, and dimly when you just graze your target.


My hull-tanked bait ships would hate this. So would my bait-Tengu that has ten times the shield of the average PvE-Tengus. I kill plenty of people that mistakenly believes I'm PvE. Why'd they get free information, not cool.. P

AFK-cloaking in a system near you.
Marcel Devereux
Aideron Robotics
Aideron Robotics.
#478 - 2012-10-11 14:02:25 UTC  |  Edited by: Marcel Devereux
CCP Explorer wrote:
Bagrat Skalski wrote:
The red damaged stripes.. why they are not progressing counter clockwise? I think it's more intuitive. All damage is counterclockwise. This new circle indicators are different.
Heat buildup (on the HUD) is like a pressure gauge and builds up clock-wise. Module damage (due to heat) is clock-wise. The new targeting/damage system is clock-wise. The odd one out will be the HUD itself, there damage is counter-clock-wise. Are there any other damage indicators?


I agree that it is the odd one out, but it makes the most sense. Using your example, as heat builds up it is "filling up". Shields, armor, and hull do not "fill up" as they take damage, they deplete. To put it another way. Your modules take heat damage and it is usually represented as X% of heat damage. This starts at 0% and increases until it hits 100%. Shields, armor, and hull start at 100% and deplete to 0%. It is a bit confusing to count up and count down rotate the same way just for the sake of "that is what everything else does but this odd ball". Increasing should be clockwise and decreasing should be counter clockwise.
Rixx Javix
Stay Frosty.
A Band Apart.
#479 - 2012-10-11 14:05:58 UTC
I fully support this effort. Anything that adds a level of elegance and simplicity to the UI is a good thing in my opinion.

I suspect that all of us will immediately get used to the Shield/Armor/Hull configuration in about two minutes of actual play.

I won't re-hash some of the suggested changes or modifications, since I am loathe to read all the entries, but from what I've seen there are some good modifications suggested within this thread.

I haven't seen a suggestion to allow players to CHOOSE the targeting range they want, ie; do I want it based on guns, point, ecm, repping, or other ranges? I think that choice would be extremely helpful and mean more than simply targeting range. This could be done by simply assigning hot-keys, or yet another rick-click menu I suppose.

http://eveoganda.blogspot.com
Tippia
Sunshine and Lollipops
#480 - 2012-10-11 14:07:07 UTC
GeeShizzle MacCloud wrote:
well also allow me to help re-rail the discussion by offering an idea with a few mock up pictures....

http://i.imgur.com/8h0e9.jpg - red
http://i.imgur.com/CoehQ.jpg - orange
http://i.imgur.com/oTOEx.gif - green

Introduce a traffic light system for giving pilots indications of gun/ missile range and tracking. How it would work is as follows:

  • Red: out of falloff range and/or out of tracking speed
  • Orange: In falloff range and/or within +/- 10% of tracking speed
  • Green: In optimal range and/or within tracking speed

This traffic light system would only appear on the selected object and only when either a pilot has moused over a weapon group or has a weapon group activated on a target.
Nice. The colours might need some tweaking for all the usual accessibility and stand-out-against-the-Amarr-nebula reasons, but it's simple and direct.

As you point out, though, the actual “correct” combination might vary with the weapon system so it's important to teach what you want for different weapons — being within optimal with ACs is often, ironically enough, suboptimal. P

Perhaps some of that could be solved by having two of them — one for range and one for tracking — but ugh, clutter. It would certainly be much neater if it could be done like you showed it.