How would you do this? - Not code help, I want design suggestions - Page 3

Hudini · 10/26/07, 2:46 PM

Another way to represent the number of charges might be the thickness of the countdown bar.

Please excuse the crapy ascii art:
EEEEEEEEEE     (3 charges, full countdown)
=====          (2 charges, duration half finished)
--             (1 charge left, almost expired)
EE             (3 charges left, almost expired)

Err, nevermind, option 1 in your original post covers this. I think the only difference would be that the bar would be... center-justified.

Rapparee · 10/26/07, 3:45 PM

Aloaya hit on the feature I'd like most from whatever bar you design.

If Water Shield is gone have a red flashing bar.

Now then if the user could somehow be given the following choices in a reasonable manner:

1 *toggle only in combat* Only warn me about Water Shield in combat (i drink water outside of combat and don't want water shield warnings while corpse running or waiting for the lazy mages to cast AI before the pull)

2 *toggle flashing* Water Shield is super important to me (the bar, circles, dots, whatever graphic will flash bright red when I do not have WS buff on me)

3 *toggle dim/bright* Water Shield is only medium importance to me (the bar, circles, dots, whatever are a dim red when gone, not bright, not huge gigantic things)

4 *toggle enable/disable cast from graphic* Let me click on whatever graphic you have chosen to cast water shield.

I'm more of a practical guy so pretty graphics, like those circles with globes of swirling water in them look awesome, but in the end I end up not bothering with them. I prefer a bright flashing bar or square (i guess sometimes the icons next to bars or in squares are also in the realm of pretty graphics, but for some reason feel more functional than intrusive).

Tejs · 10/26/07, 3:48 PM

Maybe it's just me, but the default UI implementation works as well as I can possibly think of.

See buff - with Duration undernearth, and says 3 on the buff. Doesnt seem like this is an incredibly complex thing.

Disquette · 10/26/07, 4:07 PM

Tejs, I used to think that way until I started using a watershield mod in the current game and was floored by how much I was reminded by it. That is, it was off much more than I thought it was.

At the point in the game where you min max, optimizing your timered abilities becomes a way to squeeze out that extra x%, whether x = 100 or 1.

That having been said, some people are much better at using the built in game gui to track this than other people, and it's certainly possible that you happen to be much better at this than I am.

Nemaa · 10/26/07, 4:08 PM

Originally Posted by Tejs

Maybe it's just me, but the default UI implementation works as well as I can possibly think of.

See buff - with Duration undernearth, and says 3 on the buff. Doesnt seem like this is an incredibly complex thing.

In a rad situation I can not check always my buffs. You can easily have 15+ and it's really distracting to look through all the buffs.

My needs are simple: While in combat, tell me if water shield is not on (and keep telling me untill I recast water shield)

Tejs · 10/26/07, 4:09 PM

Consider me an oddity then. I only use Outfitter (from long long ago) just because swapping items manually sucks. Everything else is Default Blizzard UI.

Malan · 10/26/07, 8:15 PM

Originally Posted by Tejs

Maybe it's just me, but the default UI implementation works as well as I can possibly think of.

See buff - with Duration undernearth, and says 3 on the buff. Doesnt seem like this is an incredibly complex thing.

You would be shocked at how often you have used all 3 WS charges and not noticed it without an alert. I've been using Power Auras for almost a year now to do it - people in the Enhance thread always say things like "oh its worthless it never goes off" but I'll have 2,500-4,000 mana returned per fight from it because I keep it refreshed constantly.

Krom[Fenris] · 10/26/07, 9:46 PM

Maybe have the edge of the screen glow blue when the buff isn't up? I know I'd notice that and want it to go away asap! I don't really see a reason for showing how many charges are left. It's either up or down.

GSH · 10/26/07, 10:20 PM

What about three balls/charges to the left of the timer bar? Use the split between bar and charges as the anchor point. Then remove charges as they are used, starting with the leftmost one, while the timer moves in from the right.

C C C | Timer Bar----

After two charges becomes

  C C | Timer Bar-

Then

    C | Timer---

If you don't want to remove the charges entirely, you could grey them out as they are used.

Though, to be honest, since the charges burn up at the end of the spell, do you really care how many charges there are? The shield is either up or it isn't. One timer bar (that maybe changes to "Refresh Water Shield") should be enough for you.

Yessia · 10/27/07, 1:33 AM

Sort of curious being a shaman myself, why do you(OP) care how long/how many charges your water shield has left? I myself just use Avion to know when WS fades and to then reapply it. Forgive me if the answer is real obvious but I couldn't think of any reason

.

Disquette · 10/27/07, 1:59 AM

A couple reasons I want to know how many are left...

1) If I have 2 or 3 left and a short timer bar or am in an encounter that will be proc'ing the shield a lot, I can hold off on using a mana pot if shamanistic rage will be up soon.

2) If we are moving from mob 1 to mob 2 in a fight (think karathess), I can either flame shock to use my gcd as i run towards mob 2, or I can recast watershield.
- If I have 2 or 3 charges left, I don't want to renew it, and would rather start damage.
- If I have 1 charge left, I'll probably renew the shield with my first gcd

and, probably the most common useage...
3) In the middle of combat, if my shock and stormstrike are both going to need to be renewed soon, I'd like to know ahead of time if watershield is going to run out while that's happening. I just want to know that it's an issue I'm going to have to deal with, instead of it popping up as a surprise.

In general, I think I play a lot better when I have a decent expectation of what's going to happen, as opposed to having to process the information on the fly.

I've noticed that most recently while farming Blood Elves in SMV. Even solo farming, I am startled (for lack of a better word) when the "recast watershield" text pops up. Now I have to make decisions about do I stormstrike, recast it now, shock, etc etc.

But, I think the way I'm going with this should accomodate everyone. I'm simply going to make it modular so you can turn on/off the charges, turn on/off the timer bar, and turn on/off the warning. Hopefully that will be useful and minimal enough for anyone's particular preferences.

beetlejuice · 10/27/07, 4:04 AM

I just had this idea , i will post it and you decide if its doable.

3 Black Outlined, kinda stretched Circles (so you notice the timer easier, read more) in a straight line and same size, being empty or transparent inside
If u have buffed watershield, these 3 circles fill with a light blue colour. As the time passes, the lightblue colour empties slowly (in 1 minute) from the 3 circles equaly.
If one shield buff is used, then from the one circle the light blue colour dissapears, but it still keeps slowly emptying from the other 2 remaining circles.
When All circles get empty from timer or hits, the 3 circles can flash red/yellow inside so that you rebuff your water shield.

So a fast drawing is like this

You can have the mod in idle mode (so it doesnt break your ##$% when you dont need to be buffed with water shield) with lets say these 3 bubbles in white or transparent background inside them, and u can activate them (flashing) with right click or automaticaly when you enter in combat. It can work for Lightning shield too, lets say you can put a Lightning zig zag line and darkest blue color inside the 3 of them

Yessia · 10/27/07, 4:08 AM

I guess I can see that making sense as enhancement. I think personally as resto though the only thing I might also need to worry about is the duration for knowing to recast before or after doing X based on it's duration.

beetlejuice · 10/27/07, 4:10 AM

Originally Posted by Yessia

Sort of curious being a shaman myself, why do you(OP) care how long/how many charges your water shield has left? I myself just use Avion to know when WS fades and to then reapply it. Forgive me if the answer is real obvious but I couldn't think of any reason

.

Ah i totally agree with you, thats why i think the most important part of this mod should be the "flashing when no water shields up" thingie

Disquette · 10/27/07, 4:34 AM

I like it Beetlejuice. While I'm not going to do exactly that, I've been thinking about how to incorporate a couple of those ideas.

Incidentally, you never really see vertical timer bars it seems. Huds come close, and I'm sure a mod or two does some custom graphics to make them happen, but you traditionally see the timer bars go horizontal. I'm guessing that's because Blizzard has a built in API for doing that (statusbar).

What you suggested differently than I'd thought of is the placement of the three charge globs running perpendicular to the direction of the count down. In retrospect, that's sort of a "duh, of course you would do it that way" thing. That having been said, I didn't think of it myself

At this point, I'm pretty fixed in terms of what I'm going to be trying. It will take me a couple days since I have a bunch of other stuff going on, but various people here will see their suggestions enacted.

Thanks all very much, and while I'm planning on going with my current direction, it's always interesting to hear other ideas, like beetlejuice's, which as far as I can tell is new to the thread when he posted it (because of the perpendicularity).