Awareness - DOH!

In the Medic Awareness (MA) thread, I spewed

an opinion about colors for both awareness skills. Thing is, I was all ready to start editing the Awareness ability class when I discovered that it isn't in DruidsRPG - it's in the core RPG.

Further it looks like there might be some color smoothing stuff in the AwarenessInteraction that Mysterial wrote - I dunno; I'm not familliar with one of the functions he's using yet.

So this may not be worth going into. Both the ability and interaction class would have to be extended (the ability mainly to point at the right interaction). But I know I'm not the only one that's been slightly annoyed by the color progression (or the lack thereof) in Awareness. It just appears to me that a monster is green until it hits 50% health - then suddenly it's yellow stepping down to red (which is kinda what I'd do).

I was thinking of something more along the lines of:

%G = %H * 2 (not to exceed 100% obviously)
%R = (100 - %H) * 2 (again, not to exceed 100%)

This way you'd have a smoother progression - no "notable" color from green to yellow, really (which is why Mysterial may have gone the route he did), just shades of the two, but then you'd see some orange between yellow and red ...

Dru: do you think it's worth playing around with?

I'm gonna have to play one of my aware characters later today to see if I really think it's worth doin' ...

Look what I did with the colors in MedicAwarenessInteraction (as it stands now). I really changed around the color %ages (33% 66%) AND I cleaned up the utterly wonky way in which Mysterial did the color fading (which was also rather ineffective).

Also, you're correct on the "green 'til 50%" thing

Old code for 100% - 50% health (green):
Code:

 Canvas.DrawColor.R = Clamp(255 * (1.f - (Enemy.HealthMax - (Enemy.HealthMax - Enemy.Health) * 2)/Enemy.HealthMax), 0, 255);
 Canvas.DrawColor.G = 255;
 Canvas.DrawColor.B = 0;
 Canvas.DrawColor.A = 255;

My code for 66% to 100% health (green):
Code:

 HealthScale = Enemy.Health / Enemy.HealthMax;
 //...
 Canvas.DrawColor.R = 0;
 Canvas.DrawColor.G = 128 + 127 * HealthScale;
 Canvas.DrawColor.B = 0;
 Canvas.DrawColor.A = 255;

The Canvas.DrawTile line is changed in MedicAwarenessInteraction solely to accomodate the "above 100%" condition.

Yeah I noticed you smoothed it out a little ... didn't notice the color progression so much (I'm too good at keeping my bots in the blue I guess).

I think what I'm looking for though is something a bit more ... pronounced than what Mysterial both attempted to do as well as the result.

My "is it worth it" part though refers to the concept of extending Mysterial's code ... would it really be worth it?

I can guess what "Clamp" is supposed to do. Thing is, it doesn't look like it does what it's supposed to do.

If I'm up for it later I might just go ahead and give it a go and we'll see what it looks like. To be honest, I should just be able to extend Mysterial's code and change only two functions in both of his Awareness classes.

And in the end, I think it would be worth it to figure out the color independent of the level of awareness the player has. *Then* worry about bar size. It looks like Mysterial went a slightly different route ...

Heh.

My vote is that we (at long last) create DruidsUT2004RPG, based on UT2004RPG by Mysterial.

The inefficiency and other nastiness we're continually introducing by extending code when we should be replacing it is causing unnecessary complexities aside from the massive toll all the duplicated code is likely taking on the server.

Moof wrote:

Heh.

My vote is that we (at long last) create DruidsUT2004RPG, based on UT2004RPG by Mysterial.

The inefficiency and other nastiness we're continually introducing by extending code when we should be replacing it is causing unnecessary complexities aside from the massive toll all the duplicated code is likely taking on the server.

Not so sure Dru would go for that. It's a little off topic and there are areas where we've debated redoing core rules (IE, the whole Death sequence thing). Dru likely would prefer to avoid doing that at all costs. But then, IAND, so he might just pipe up and say the opposite of what I think he'd say.

Back on topic, I was reading Mysterial's code wrong a little - partially brought on by the fact that I've never had Awarness 2. He *does* (and I'd guess successfully) smooth the color transition for Awareness > 1 people a little (though not at all to the degree I would). It's those of us with only 1 that only get 3 colors. And since this is by design, unless we want to get nit picky and either provide a color transition for Awareness 1 or smooth out the color transitions for all levels, there's no need to redo this.

Really, if I had mod priveleges here at this point I'd kill this thread as an embarassment to myself.

Well, the thing is, you're correct regardless. The way he chose to do the color fading for Awareness 2 was...strange. It's supposed to be a little color blending and a little brightness changing, but what ends up happening is that it just looks a little dull. The reason for the approach I took with MA was that you got 1) a smoother and more meaningful transition between the colors, and 2) the change in brightness within the colors is much more dramatic - 100% to 50% as opposed to something muddledish. (I didn't go below 50% because it starts looking too black.)