Latest posts for the topic "New skill: Medic Awareness"

New skill: Medic Awareness

Moof — GMT

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?

Re:New skill: Medic Awareness

BotFodder — GMT

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.

Re:New skill: Medic Awareness

Szlat — GMT

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. :)

Re:New skill: Medic Awareness

Moof — GMT

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.

Re:New skill: Medic Awareness

BotFodder — GMT

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.

Re:New skill: Medic Awareness

BotFodder — GMT

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?

Re:New skill: Medic Awareness

Szlat — GMT

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?

Re:New skill: Medic Awareness

BotFodder — GMT

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

Re:New skill: Medic Awareness

Moof — GMT

Sure. Dru?

Re:New skill: Medic Awareness

BotFodder — GMT

He's got a line: Code:

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

That didn't work without the DruidsRPGcvs. reference.

Re:New skill: Medic Awareness

Szlat — GMT

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.

Re:New skill: Medic Awareness

Moof — GMT

I'll get that this evening after work :)

Re:New skill: Medic Awareness

Moof — GMT

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.

Re:New skill: Medic Awareness

Szlat — GMT

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.

Re:New skill: Medic Awareness

BotFodder — GMT

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).

Re:New skill: Medic Awareness

Szlat — GMT

BotFodder wrote:

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.

Agreed. Awareness 1 is soo much more useful. Rather than actually look for the monsters, you just look for the big bright awareness bars. With Awareness 2, as you say, you can't see the very small bars, so you have to change tactic and slowly scan through the undergrowth looking for the crawling krall. (As an aside, I suggested earlier about putting a box around the medic awareness bar which would always be full size. If Moof goes down that route, it would be worth changing Awareness 2 to match) On the Awareness side, especially with awareness 1, it is good to have the red band relatively small - so you know they are nearly dead. It means it is probably worth trying to finish the titan off, rather than running. If you split into 3 equal thirds, you don't get quite the same 'nearly dead' information. 4 bands at 25% each?

Re:New skill: Medic Awareness

BotFodder — GMT

Dru are you going to approve this skill? Or not? I mainly ask because as far as I can tell it works but hasn't been committed yet (before I look at anything I always do an "update" ;) ).

Re:New skill: Medic Awareness

BotFodder — GMT

Moof - you got a bit of work to do ... MedicAwarenessEnemyList.uc There was a small bug for Dedicated Server situations that cropped up - Level.Game info apparently isn't replicated, so I couldn't see the bars. This much I fixed while I was mucking about - it would seem that if there aren't any "teams", then the team is set to 255. Mysterial uses the reference somewhere as well ... Also in a dedicated server, if you have MedAware but not Aware, your pets don't have the bar. There's ... an idea ... that would make it worthwhile to do what you can to get this working. Unfortunately you might have to add a couple of loops/changes/additional variable(s) to EnemyList and the Interaction and key on FriendlyMonsterEffect (like the radar). MedicAwarenessInteraction.uc Near as I can tell it's just blue and white right now ... where did the colors go? AbilityMedicAwareness.uc I'm guessing you'll want to make the costs for this identical to the costs for regular Awareness. Dru may be thinking otherwise ... I'm not sure.

Re:New skill: Medic Awareness

Moof — GMT

In short, it ain't gonna happen tonight. Or maybe for a chunk of this week. Work just got absolutely insane. In answer to your concerns: Thanks for fixing the team thingy in a dedicated server. That was one of the three things I changed in the ability to make it work. On a nondedicated server, in any game that is not an xTeamGame (ie, DM, Mutant, etc), all players have the same team number. That's why I put the patch in to enable it when there are healable people around only. I'll take a look at getting it to work on pets on a dedicated server. Szlat and I discussed the colors at length, and after testing it myself as a medic in games and talking it over I decided to use 1) colors that were not used in regular awareness and 2) diffferentiate only between "healable and not healable" at level 1, and require level 2 for players to see who could most use healing in a crowd by the size of the bar. Else, there is no incentive to buy level 2 - much the same as it is with Awareness currently. I intentionally lowered the costs. My view of this is a base tool for the medic class, and I wanted it to be inexpensive. That's absolutely Dru's call, though.

Re:New skill: Medic Awareness

BotFodder — GMT

Actually I'm playing with pets on dedicated server, and I'm finding (GAH!) that there's a lot of useful information that's just plain not replicated. In fact, for the Monster subclass of Pawns, I'm thinking there's less that's replicated when compared to other Pawn objects ... As for the color thing ... I'll have to think about it because I can see your point. However, Dru and I have discussed (*gasp*) taking regular Awareness away from Medics and leaving them with Medic Awareness only. Hence the suggested changes. However, there's issues with getting pet info working right ...I'm still looking at the different ways of getting the right info in the right place ...

Re:New skill: Medic Awareness

BotFodder — GMT

Got the "monsters we own" thing figure out. They get bars now. :) Do you think you'll get the colors and costs done by Thursday evening? If not I'll go ahead and do it (I have a copy of the original classes floating around my C: drive).

Re:New skill: Medic Awareness

BotFodder — GMT

Moof since you're busy I'll make a go at this this afternoon - I'm also working on the "upgrade" thing ... So far I've changed it so on non-team games, you should still see the health bar over your own monsters. For team games, you should see the health bar over all friendly pawns (took a little magic but I think I got "friendly monsters that aren't yours" covered too - couldn't actually test it, so only time will tell for sure). Cost has been upped by 5 pts - 10 pts for level 1, 15 for level 2 (compared to regular awareness which is 20/25). Once we get the upgrading thing worked out, some medics will get points back (woo!). Colors: This is what I'm thinking: BLUE = Greater than SuperHealthMax (usually Start + 99). GREEN = 66% of Start or greater YELLOW = 33% of Start or greater RED = less than 33% of Start I'll do color progression for MedAware level 2, and have the bar grow smaller as people get healthier (probably have the bar size related to Start+150, or the "medic max"). I'll have to do something about pets because this scheme I've come up with will have pets always being at most green, and near as I know you can't heal them past start. I'll find out eventually, and if they don't get anything past their start, I'll set it up so that they're blue when they're perfectly healthy; otherwise Start-1 through 66%, they're green. The medics should be happy about that because they'll have a clear indicator of when their pet is at 100%. I think the BLUE/WHITE that you have now shows blue for >= Start - never seen a bot/pet with anything else yet. ;) I know you and Szlat had a convo about colors but to reiterate, Dru's decided that Medics will get no regular Awareness (I think it should be fairly easy to change them from reg.Aware to MedAware - worst case we'll come up with a way to change it and then bump them off the game so that the change replicates to the clients). Engineers won't get it either. So the colors for Medic Awareness can safely be similar to "regular" awareness without too much confusion.

Re:New skill: Medic Awareness

TheDruidXpawX — GMT

Anyway the short answer is, yes, I'd like to put this in for this coming weekend. :)

Re:New skill: Medic Awareness

BotFodder — GMT

I should have it (and upgrades) done this evening. Tomorrow latest.

Re:New skill: Medic Awareness

BotFodder — GMT

Pets can be healed to HealthMax + 150, but they don't have a "SuperHealthMax" - I assign them one for math reasons in MedicAwarenessInteraction. I've also fixed the lack of a level change fix in AbilityMedicAwareness. For Medic Awareness 1, bar height is 25%, colors are muted (blue is very muted at like 100, green a little less at 125, yellow a little less at 150, and the red bar got a value of 200). All committed.

Re:New skill: Medic Awareness

Moof — GMT

Thanks for the backup, Bot.