HP bars & unit display. Vote topic.

[Terminator]

I have been talking with EvilGuru concerning types of HP bars & displaying current unit picture in MP statistics window.

currently: wz have a few HP bars which can be toggled by pressing F9. so:

1) Should devs to remove all types except default one, or leave as is ?

2) Should devs to remove (replace with something other) displaying unit picture in MP statistice window ?

This questions comes because this two thing is a little cheating staff in some cases.
So what you (wz fans & players) think about it ?

[psychopompos]

i would say no one if your going to do anything, i like to be able to see which units have full health at a glance.

though, why change it?

[EvilGuru]

i would say no one if your going to do anything, i like to be able to see which units have full health at a glance.

though, why change it?

Seldom used features often clutter up the code and hurt readability in addition to creating an inconsistent appearance of the game to new-comers (if one screenshot has one style of bar and a different screenshot has a different bar it may be confusing). The key-binding is also useful (they are only so many 'nice' key combos available).

So if the feature is seldom used (say by less than 1%) it is probably better if it is removed. If a fair few people use and like it then it should probably stay.

Regards, Freddie.

[kage]

i vote that we strip out such features that tend to be unused, or don't work quite as advertised (like formation speed limiting), and if they are demanded back, we reimplement them from scratch in a more user-definable (moddable) way.

[psychopompos]

Seldom used features often clutter up the code

point taken, those lil coloured squares arent really useful.
if you had a "display health bars" option under game options it would free up the keys also.

i vote that we strip out such features that tend to be unused, or don't work quite as advertised (like formation speed limiting), and if they are demanded back, we reimplement them from scratch in a more user-definable (moddable) way.

whats wrong with the formation speed thing?
i like to be able to tell the units to stick together for strength, or just get to the destination asap.
although, i dont think it should be a global setting, should ba able to set on on or off for differnt groups.

[Deus Siddis]

i vote that we strip out such features that tend to be unused, or don't work quite as advertised (like formation speed limiting)

Personally, I have found this feature to be very useful. Everything arrives at the same time, the lighter units don't run up ahead and get slaughtered.

How is does it not work as advertised, ooc?

[Chojun]

Feature removal, no matter how little they are used, has never made any sense to me.

[kage]

point taken, those lil coloured squares arent really useful.
whats wrong with the formation speed thing?
i like to be able to tell the units to stick together for strength, or just get to the destination asap.
although, i dont think it should be a global setting, should ba able to set on on or off for differnt groups.

perhaps it's been fixed since the code release, but iirc, it never worked very well -- some units would still drift behind, while some sped on ahead, even if they all started in one coherent group.

[EvilGuru]

Formation speed limiting in my experience usually works as advertised. It is in no way a formation, but they all do go at the same speed.

Feature removal, no matter how little they are used, has never made any sense to me.

Removal of the software, DX and Glide back-ends for example. That makes a lot of sense. As without their removal any work on the renderer to enhance it in a meaningful way requires 3 possibly 4 code changes. These back ends then need to be tested to ensure the change did not break anything. Having a single renderer makes life a lot easier and the code easier to maintain.

Regards, Freddie.

[Deathguise]

1) Should devs to remove all types except default one, or leave as is ?

I occasionally use the little square health bar when i have tons of units selected and the no health bars is useful for screenshots, but it's not a crucial feature.

2) Should devs to remove (replace with something other) displaying unit picture in MP statistice window ?

Personally i think this should be changed, it's difficult to surprise an opponent when they can see what units your producing, so removing this would not bother me or perhaps making it a feature of the satelite uplink.

[kage]

Removal of the software, DX and Glide back-ends for example. That makes a lot of sense. As without their removal any work on the renderer to enhance it in a meaningful way requires 3 possibly 4 code changes. These back ends then need to be tested to ensure the change did not break anything. Having a single renderer makes life a lot easier and the code easier to maintain.

I could see the use of a software renderer, since the performance I remember at 800x600 on a p2 233 mz machine was completely playable and smooth, while people with much more modern machines complain of 2-4 fps when opengl uses the software fallback.  however, glide is more or less dead, and for at least the last 5 years, opengl has been interchangable with directx wherever the two are available, not to mention is supported on most platforms, thus there's no point to keeping the dx renderer, or re-adding it.

if we did decide to use more than one renderer, they should be very isolated from each other, and if you change a non-rendering related piece of code, and it breaks one of the renderers, then the code isn't granular enough.

[Chojun]

opengl has been interchangable with directx wherever the two are available, not to mention is supported on most platforms, thus there's no point to keeping the dx renderer, or re-adding it.

Yes but that in-and-of-itself is/was not a good enough reason to remove DirectX from Warzone in its entirety.  I've written programs that used DirectX as well as OpenGL and they are about as interchangeable as Honda and Ford parts.  But alas I see that certain things favor portability so...

if we did decide to use more than one renderer, they should be very isolated from each other, and if you change a non-rendering related piece of code, and it breaks one of the renderers, then the code isn't granular enough.

Agree on this point.

[DevUrandom]

I could see the use of a software renderer, since the performance I remember at 800x600 on a p2 233 mz machine was completely playable and smooth, while people with much more modern machines complain of 2-4 fps when opengl uses the software fallback.

if we did decide to use more than one renderer, they should be very isolated from each other, and if you change a non-rendering related piece of code, and it breaks one of the renderers, then the code isn't granular enough.

We tried that long ago...

Code: Select all

//FIXME Direct iVis implementation include

is a remainder of that. Apparently it didn't work out very well...

[Edemit]

Yes. Devs should to remove (replace with something other) displaying unit picture in MP statistic window.

[EvilGuru]

Okay, the general consensus seems to be that the MP unit picture should be axed (which is good, as it is a form of cheating IMO).

What would you like to see in its place? The teams flag (coloured)?

Regards, Freddie.