New skill: Medic Awareness

A while back, I developed a Medic Awareness skill. Basically, the level 2 MA displays the normal awareness up to 100% health (increasing, of course, in this case) and a blue bar that's just a sliver big at 100%+1 and full size at 100% + 150.

Thoughts?

The data should be there in some form (I think) for this to work. However, it really does depend; the server might provide the client only other players' current health, and not their max ... which means that you'd have to replicate that info. You'd think it would be a big deal, but Dru's tracking something down now that he was thinking might be replication related ...

But if you can find it properly replicated, then it just comes down to the graphics, which you should be able to steal from the current awareness skill.

Sounds good.

I remember it being discussed in one of the forums recently, and there was a suggestion that the bars should be the other way around - so it empties as the person gets healthier. Then the medic just has to look for the big bright bars to see who to heal, rather than looking for the absense of a bar.

Just a thought.

BotFodder wrote:

The data should be there in some form (I think) for this to work. However, it really does depend; the server might provide the client only other players' current health, and not their max ... which means that you'd have to replicate that info. You'd think it would be a big deal, but Dru's tracking something down now that he was thinking might be replication related ...

But if you can find it properly replicated, then it just comes down to the graphics, which you should be able to steal from the current awareness skill.

To answer your questions, this works 100% on a listen server and is realy just a modified Awareness skill, which seems to have access to target max health on dedicated servers. So, I think we're okay. But! We can test

The only major questions are how exactly it should work, like the up-vs-down Szlat mentions below.

Hey if you post the class or any changes to other classes here so that I can drop it in to my local copy of the CVS, I can test it on my test server that I have.

Looks good - just one thing:

Do what you can to remove any explicit references to the mod, IE:

"DruidsRPG200."

In one case (when it's single quoted) you don't need it. In another case, I don't know how you do it but I think there's a substitution thing you can put in to avoid the explicit reference. Szlat? You ran into that ... how'd you get rid of it?

In general, you don't need to put the package name in, but it depends on the exact code. I can't seem to find the Medic Awareness class anywhere to have a closer look - Moof have you put it in cvs yet?

Yeah I think you could commit it now if Dru approves.

Sure. Dru?

He's got a line:
Code:

 I = MedicAwarenessInteraction(PC.Player.InteractionMaster.AddInteraction("DruidsRPGcvs.MedicAwarenessInteraction", PC.Player));

That didn't work without the DruidsRPGcvs. reference.

Aaahhh, Interactions.
Look at the way Druid did it for MonsterMasterInteraction, in the MonsterPointsInv class. It's more long winded, but gets rid of the package reference.

I'll get that this evening after work

I hate static functions with every ounce of my soul.

Final question to resolve: how it works. Red-yellow-green-blue? Or Szlat's suggestion of just the opposite, start with the bar capped out and empty it as the player gets healthier. That way, we could also avoid the "Medic Awareness looks too much like regular Awareness" problem by using just a blue bar.

Also I was thinking of turning the bar a fourth color (or, in the case of a solid blue bar, a second color) when the patient's health is totally totally capped out. Something totally unrelated to any of the others, like turquoise or pink. When I was testing this ability, I found myself staring at the bars instead of the players' health numbers, and I almost wondered why the bars stopped going up.

Barring that question, I'm ready to commit with the new awareness adding code included.

I like the idea of changing the bar when the health is fully capped out - it gives a good visual indication to the medic that it is time to stop.

As a possibility, you could have the bar working the same way as the awareness bar (getting bigger with more health), then when bar is full, make it invisible. Thus any bar on the screen needs attention.

However, the problem I have with the normal awareness bar is that it is very difficult to see the bar when it is nearly empty - and those are the most critical bars - especially for medics! I suggested earlier about the bar working the other way (getting smaller with more health). As an alternative, if there was a way of drawing a box around the bar that was always there and full size, then you would still be able to see it. (Perhaps color coded, so the red boxes are the crucial ones?) That might work better.

Yeah I think you guys are having issues with two different things - the two different levels.

I can tell you that a lot of higher level players prefer to stick with Awareness 1 and not use Awareness 2.

Using that logic, the colors (low health = red, high health = green/blue) is cool but Szlat refers to strictly MA2 to have the bars go in reverse I think - not so much in reference to color. Basically, at MA2, a fully healed player shouldn't have a bar at all.

The next thing to do would be to play with some math (both for a change to regular awareness and MA) such that there's a color progression. I might have to poke at regular awareness (I haven't played with any code in a while) so that we have a smoother progression (it's like based on fourths I think). So the red changes as the monster gets more damaged or the green is brighter for healthier monsters. Basically, throw health percentages at the RGB values and see what happens ... or percentages of their math values ...

Hmmmm ... I think what I will do for regular awareness is set it up so that at 100% health, the bar is 255 green, at 50% it's 255 green, 255 red, and then at close to 0% health, it's 255 red. Between 100% and 50% we add red, between 50% and 0% we subtract green. Now just to figure out and do the math!

EDIT 10/8: NM. If you look at my Awareness thread, you'll note that the only quibble I have with Mysterial's design right now is exactly when he does the color switching (and the colors he chooses when), not so much how/why he does it (the way he has the ability defined, Awareness 1 should not see a transition - only 3 colors, and Awareness 2 sees a smoother progression - however in both cases until the opponent is less than 50% healthy, they're always green, and I would smooth that out a bit were it my choice).