Xelopheris

It would be interesting for an addon to display runes the same way players see them -- in pairs. Two FU pairs and a BB pair.

 

rhea

Going off topic here a bit sorry.

Is there a way to code this rune addon without access to beta or DK? (and see the effects ingame)
Wouldn't like to install 10gigs only because of it.
Would be nice to get to do it now rather than when I'm supposed to level up...

 

Dristig

Doc, you're wrong about the moving rune alone being too complicated. That isn't how you process information or use the UI. All you have to do is look at the space in the middle where runes become available. I think the original Runehero has too much visual noise but that is largely the fault of the sword background not the movement. The reason to use movement is because your peripheral vision sees movement more easily than anything else. No one expects the player to track the rune across the screen the entire time. All you need to know is when it is ready and nearly ready and to quickly see the upcoming pattern. That is where the Guitar Hero style ideas come from.

 

Janraea

The reason a lot of us are proposing systems with moving runes is that we play games like guitar hero, rock band, and ddr, all of which drill the reflex of reading moving lists of objects into you. I have a VERY easy time reading that runehero output, even though the background is distracting, the edges are hard to find, and the runes are too big. I do prefer the ones where the runes are moving in the same direction (or very close to it), for the reasons you list.

 

Nephthys

I think having three visibility states might be enough information for me: Is it ready? Will it be ready within the next GCD? Is it more than 1 GCD away from being ready? Anything more than that might easily be lost in all the activity of raid/party combat. As long as I can easily tell if a rune is a death rune at all states. I was working on a prettier/more flexible successor to SimpleRune but having trouble with point 3 in the OP. Perhaps this would be a solution.

Dristig's looks like it was done on a DK, but I thought beta was over? Or have the realms not gone down yet?

I think a 3rd preference would be something with no moving parts, like what level12wizard, Aeryn, and SimpleRune suggest. The parallel here might be to a rogue combo point bar, only DK combo points are regenerating resource mechanic instead of energy/runic power.

 

Nephthys

This is an important point -- experience and expectations play a big role in processing information. That style might be more difficult for me because I haven't played those games so much. And when I did, I got frustrated that it didn't feel like playing a real guitar.

It'd be fun to make a rune addon that basically WAS guitar hero. Basically bring to life the interface from Blizzard's april fool's joke that bards were the new hero class.

 

Kjallstrom

It's interesting to see game UIs converge on "standard" interfaces. Interface innovation is really risky - if you come up with a cool new concept, you win, but if not, you'll get a lot of users complaining about how it's not like Game X. FPS UIs have become relatively standard (although more minimalist recently), as have the default UIs of MMOs (minimap upper right, abilities bottom bar, character upper left, party on the left, etc.).

The fact that The Blizz supports the level of UI customization in WoW is great... and you can tell they consider the addon developer community an experimental base for ideas. Consider how they've integrated a form of Scrolling Combat Text into the default UI, or support for a guild calendar.

I don't have the art skills to mockup my description above, but I wanted to reiterate my agreement with the "runehero" paradigm mentioned in several posts.

Radial is nifty looking, but I think in actual usage estimating the relative distance along radials is harder than comparing things falling in straight lines.

 

Dristig

New animations: WoW Stuff
I'm going to code "6-pack" in game tonight.

I added some more movies to the blog page I posted.

I was able to log into Northrend beta realm last night fyi.

 

Kameril

I was going to make a quick prototype of the radial idea to see how it really performs, but no realms are up. None are even listed now. I guess we'll have to fake it on live.

 

madpeon

One suggestion I'd make is to have the rune display order be customizable.

For instance, your typical Unholy rotation is PS -> IT -> SS -> BS -> BS -> RP then SS -> SS -> SS -> RP.

It makes sense to me that you'd want to display runes so they match your rotation. That way not only are you viewing when rune cooldowns are up, but also an indicator of where you are in your rotation.

So, using the above rotation, we'd want to see runes displayed as U -> F -> U -> F -> B -> B, regardless of whether its in a circle, columns, or rows.

The easiest way would be to just make this option totally customizable, that way you the user can alter the order to match whatever rotation they prefer.

 

lichdawg

guys, your design are nice looking but might need some tweaking. Remember few principles of UI design.

. Keep it simple:
In one quick glance one need to be able to see how many runes of each type are avaible and how long before any used ones will be available.
The design of rune hero with colored circles is simple and effective because:
there is a are with 6 circles and one can see which ones are ready, and which ones are racing to be ready.
showing the time before they are ready is unecessary: it is easier to see visually how long before the circle is going to cross the line that it is to read a 4-5 seconds countdown.

Any design that uses changing colors/transparency wont be effective because the mind will not be able to determine more easily how long before a rune is available and this design will fail under some light/resolution screens.

1: Runes can be circle or squares

2: there should be an easy to see "race" type of this runes to display time before availability of the actual rune. The mind can easily spot in a straight line the winner of a race, it is easier to determine than in a bend (this is why horce races etc finish in a straight line and not a bend).

3: for available runic power any design that shows a simple figure filling up is the easier one to see with a quick glance. instead of a complicated design such as a runic sword.

 

Xephos

I think that some of the ideas in this thread are absolutely beautiful.

One thing I'd agree that would be really great is having three boxes linked to the cooldowns on diseases on your current target. Maybe they could simply be above the specific runes associated with them - i.e. frost fever above the cooldown on frost runes. Or perhaps someone way cleverer than me can find some way to integrate that into the visual rune countdown.

 

level12wizard

Although the 'stoplight' and 'six-pack' designs are basically the same, spacing them out just a bit with 'six-pack' seems more effective. Your design is more effective than RuneHero because it provides a better point of reference for when it will be up, and indicating that it will be up next GCD.



The DisqoDice/ShockAndAwe bars that Doc has seem pretty effective too, they follow the same "horse race" principle. In his original post he had the runes sorting based on how close they were to being up. I thought that was very cool. Was it too difficult to properly implement, or did you decide that it was too confusing?



And out of curiosity, about how much KiB and cpu are we looking at with these designs? I like keeping things lightweight, and I certainly wouldn't want to have to install a bunch of extra Ace libs just to run my rune addon, though thankfully that doesn't seem to be the case.

 

Oke

Personally I think just a simple filling/depleting type setup for the runes would be the clearest. With a clear point at 1.5s (or 2 to be nice to people with higher lat) and an attached power bar with a clear 40, 50, 60rp marker.

Something like...

(please forgive the crappy MSPaint image )

 

tayedaen

I really like this idea. It makes it easier to follow the rotation, which is always good.

 

Kjallstrom

Since the current latency is available to the UI, you could even adjust the line out a bit dynamically, to help people with a slower connection. That said, if your latency is high enough to have a noticeable effect here (when you're not having a lagspike, just normal usage), that kind of cooldown optimization might not help all that much?

 

diospadre

I really like this sort of thing. Combining Runes, RP, and the 2 disease timers into the same area is what made me really like RuneWatch (shame it seems to have been abandoned. It let me put 3 buttons to show when I was in melee/20y/30y range. These three things combined gave me basically all the information about my cooldowns and positioning that I could want.

 

Fearlezz

This gave me an idea.

How about making a smaller version of such a "guitar" (space between 2 frets = 1 GCD) and make it have two modes:


1. Default rune cooldowns: unspent runes graphicaly below the "hit/refresh" area, when they are used they go to the top and come down just like on the picture

2. Rotation mode: you define a rotation(s?) in the configuration and the mod makes a song that "follows" your perfect DPS rotation (ie. single target rotation, aoe rotation etc) and you can time the strikes by "playing" the rotation.

Runes order should also be customizable in options, so if somebody wants the "strings" to correspond to BBFFUU or UFUFBB, both can be done. One other thing, mod could be programed to show upcomming skill graphic instead of rune graphic on the "guitar" because the rotation is set in the config and it would visualy help what's the next ability to use in a rotation.



Or did I just not get enough sleep o_O

 

Duilliath

I completely agree - you get a really quick overview, though I am not sure I'd enjoy it flickering the entire GCD. 0.5s would probably do the trick already. It has everything at a really quick glance.

One thing I am not sure about (having only glanced through the Death Knight thread, but the wording on Heart Strike & Scourge Strike prompted this - especially when compared to the wording on Death Strike) is that it might be useful to have other diseases show up as well (Infected Wounds, Devouring Plague).

An thenn tehy wuz al ded. Srsly. (Exodus 1)

 

rhea

Obviously those would be mostly all configurable.

 

Duilliath

Rhea, in your current layout, how would you show which runes are Death Runes ?
Simply turn the bar pure black or replace the rune graphic or ... ?
That's one thing I didn't find in your idea so far - how to discern at a glance the number of Death Runes available.

An thenn tehy wuz al ded. Srsly. (Exodus 1)

 

rhea

The bar will simply turn purple (or the color of your choice). I could probably make some "rearrangement" when a death rune activates but have to see first, might be confusing. And I usually design things from the most customizable point of view so no worries about that.

 

Gere

Those abilities are only affected by your diseases.

 

Hidden

I really like that design, reminds me of Disqodice. You could also add two (smaller?) bars to show the disease duration remaining.

 

• neotron

This might be a good place to post about Magic Runes. It's my attempt in making essentially a "rune bar". The actual layout that can be used is already rather flexible:



Although I don't have any radial display options the sizing and directions (and sorting) is very flexible. You can have moving runes, or not, depending on preference. Unfortunately I had very limited time for actually developing this on my beta DK so I'm emulating runes while developing on line. My goal is to get a stable functional addon done before next week - it should already be very useful but it's lacking in features. Customizable fading options, GCD indicator etc. I also haven't gotten a runic power display in yet. Mind you I feel that runic power is much easier to track in general.

I also plan to add in indicators/notification of ability procs (so you can easier know when to throw out those free death coils for example).

Anyhow, any input and feedback would be welcome. Please comment here in this thread or in this thread @ WoWAce.