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Is a OSX Dock look ok?
[img]http://i.imgur.com/oLdrFcn.png[/img]
So when you move the mouse Over the powers tray and use the mouse wheel, the scroll effect would animate.
Screencast showing crude animation on mouse wheel Scroll down: http://youtu.be/hX3a85Mnjj0
Yes, No, Other?
I like the idea. Is the idea to have the row in the bottom use 1-0 and the next row use Alt 1-0?
Yea.. but i would use:
1-0 for the Bottom row
Control + 1-0 for the Middle row
Shift + 1-0 for the Top row
Well I think this will take less space on screen too. My only problem with this I was using my mouse to use anything on the second and third trays most of the times (and sometimes anything from 6 to 0) and this may prove a little harder to use third tray but it is hard to say anything before doing testing. Overall look is a plus for this IMHO.
Note: you're presupposing the binding of a Tray Rotation to the mouse wheel. Not all mice have wheels (some are touch gesture now, like [url=http://store.apple.com/us/product/MB829LL/A/apple-magic-mouse?fnode=56]this one[/url]). You might want to be wary of making such assumptions, even if such things can be rebound to other keys.
Logitech also has a touch gesture mouse now, but the URL for it likes to leak out of the forum parsing (as you can see) so a copy/paste of the URL is required to get there.
[code]http://www.logitech.com/en-us/product/ultrathin-touch-mouse-t631?crid=7&WT.ac=ps|11002|t631|hp[/code]
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
It looks ok, but I'm more concerned with how it would function. Personally, I used the mouse for all power activations. On average I also had about 6 power trays out... 3 for primary/secondary/pools/epics, 1 for permanent temp powers, 1 for true temp powers, 1 for emotes and/or other binds. I almost never used the keyboard for power activation aside from the teleport bind (which was half keyboard/half mouse) and occasionally #1-3 for certain buffs that were short duration (like speed boost).
So my first question would be, what affect would this have on those who use the mouse to activate all their powers? I'm really hoping the answer isn't something like "you can use the mouse wheel to scroll to the tray you want and click your power".. because that would be tedious, and bad design, IMO.
3 of the 6 trays I often used were "floating" trays placed in various positions on the screen... So question #2 is, will we still be able to have "floating" power trays... and what shape would they take if there are? would they be standard 2D trays, or 3D rotating trays like this?
More may come to mind, but that's it for now.
Regards,
D. A. Cross
CEO of Phoenix Rising
CoX: @Mystic Cross ; @Pareidolia // CO: @Deadman-X ; @Citymystic // CoT: @Cross ; @D.A.Cross
Hmm. If they have trouble Scrolling in other Applications, im not expecing it to be better here! ;)
Same as always. Still can use the mouse to click on powers in the Bottom / Middle / Top rows. Only difference is, Top row powers are slightly scaled down. Since the round powers dont block as much as a Square power slots do (other MMO's), there almost no overlapping (some though).
Yep. Free Floating power trays would be available, and they can be set to use the Main Powers tray 3 row setup, but can be reduced down to 1 row only. Yes that means it would shrink to 2 rows also, like the Main Powers Tray can. ;)
And i was thinking maybe the Inspirations tray could use the same approach?!? :D
If you're worried you cant scroll through Up and down if you dont have a mouse Wheel, you shouldn't stress... cause i'm going to add a slew of additional buttons to help navigating: (i highlighted the arrows in Yellow, which would be left clicked to navigate throught he power trays)
Ex: Super Quick Mock up... might not look like the final design
[img]http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/8140/atqz.png[/img]
Newer games are turning power-bars up to 12, instead of 10...
Be Well!
Fireheart
And Wildstar is going the *other* way, similar to Guild Wars 2 of where you have a limited number of skills available on your bar at any point in time (although in both games, they make it *stupidly* easy to swap skills in and out.
Why should we have to scroll at all to get at powers? That's so incredibly bad.
Please don't implement this, or if you do, make it incredibly easy to change to a flat power tray like COH and most other MMOs have (Only ever played COH, WoW, EQ, SW:TOR, don't know if anyone else uses this).
That kind of tray LOOKS nice, but functionally, in the middle of combat, a "pretty" interface like that just gets in the way.
Why is it that you're trying to layer stuff like this for the primary in-game interface? Hiding/shrinking/layering powers just makes them harder to get at. Just... no.
Since we're talking about silly ways to manage power trays, I decided to crank out a "scroll to your powers" UI of my own. Scroll by clicking the arrows on the left. Probably doesn't look any good on IE 8 and before (they don't support the "opacity" CSS property).
The design concept here is that the powers are attached to a cylinder or drum, which rotates to what you need.
(I don't know if JSFiddle lets me grab scroll wheel events, so it ignores the mouse scroll wheel right now.)
Now imagine having to scroll through that in the middle of combat. Yuck, right?
Now there is one way it would work cool: if the power tray was always centered on the powers that correspond to the 1...0 keys, and holding down a modifier key (shift, ctrl, alt, whatever) scrolled it to the row that corresponded to that key. But that's about it.
(Also please note that I designed it to guarantee a minimum spacing between buttons to avoid misclicks. The "dock" layout can't do that.)
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
Good work. ;) I know about the other browsers and CSS Woes as i started work on my mainly CSS themed site at: http://mybigdeal.com/
No No... stop! If you didnt change power tray rows (any 3 of them) during combat when you played in CoH/CoV then you wouldnt do that here eather. Well Kheldians were a different matter, but there were macros and such that did the powers row switching. :) And yes... maybe on the right hand of each powers row, you will see left and right arrows with the powers row number that you can swap out the curret row for... no mouse scrolling required.... just like the old CoH/CoV did.
ex:
[img]http://i.imgur.com/COtrgFE.png[/img]
The mouse scrolling is the cherry on top... not Required. ;) Just think of it a Promotional thing. 1st few times users see it and say WOW! Tell all their friends, Check this MMO Out! After a few levels, they dont even bother with scrolling. Sneaky Skeaky. ;)
I think this was confusing everyone. My bad. :/
The last time I standardized my tray layouts for City of Heroes I wound up needing [b]8[/b] trays for my Warshade and Peacebringer, and I needed all 8 of those trays to be visible full time, in parallel. And on my Kheldians, those trays were in danger of being overloaded and needing to have a 9th tray visible all the time, just because I had so many Powers to stuff into them.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Great, have 2 more of these Main power trays Free Floating! ;) Use macros (or whatever) to swap out the rows you want to show up in each. ;)
Well, I'd be willing to test it... just because some things behave differently 'in practice' than you'd expect, but my initial thoughts lead to the assumption that it will be susceptible to mis-clicks, over-scrolling and just general frustration.
Then again, power trays in CoH were able to scroll Horizontally, Hiding everything but the main 3 trays... and you were able to have additional single floating trays as well. this is basically the same thing, but with Vertical scrolling. The biggest differences here are how it looks, the icon sizing and how close they are together, IMO.
I still like the look. Functionally I think it might be better used elsewhere... maybe for inventory management windows, so we could flip through different 'pages' of stuff instead of having multiple windows open. you could make right/left scrolling for different inventory types (boosts, crafting materials etc), and up/down scrolling for pages within the same inventory type (boost tray 1, tray 2 etc)... or something like that. Still, it's worth saying again that actual testing would be needed to see how it functions in practice.. can't judge a book by its cover and all that.
Regards,
D. A. Cross
CEO of Phoenix Rising
CoX: @Mystic Cross ; @Pareidolia // CO: @Deadman-X ; @Citymystic // CoT: @Cross ; @D.A.Cross
You're right about this sort of 3D dock look being perhaps a better option for an Inspirations Tray, particularly if the Inspirations were (somehow) self-sorting. And I agree that there is potential for using this sort of structural design motif for something akin to inventory (Enhancements Trays?), but I don't think it'll work that well for Powers Trays.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
I had all the trays out at the same time. If you don't have 80 buttons to choose from, urdoinitrong! :P
Former Online Community Manager & Forum Moderator
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
Moral: don't propose anything that doesn't allow having all the trays out.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
Izzy, I had 6 out routinely. Some characters had 7. And of the people I teamed with, that was on the low end.
And why did they do that? Because their trays didn't switch out with their modes. IMHO, that was a huge dumb thing.
The main point I'm getting at is that if you want something useful, you have to ask "how are people going to want to use it?" and build from there, instead of "This looks cool, how can we shoehorn functionality into it to justify the artsiness?"
So let's step back and ask ourselves what we really want power trays to [b]do.[/b] And I don't mean "make the hockey pucks dance the macarena", I mean "what does the player want to do that needs the powers in trays?"
We want powers to be displayed as icons that:
1) activate when clicked,
2) clearly display status of those powers (active, autofire, disabled, whatever)
3) provide some visual cues as to which powers map to which keys.
4) don't make things impossible for the accessibility folks.
That's it, right?
Know what's not on that list? Numbered power trays. Funny, huh? Because the numbering is just another level of confusion. Maybe we should ditch it? After all, maybe someone will need more than 100 powers available (love those temporaries and costumes). And maybe the "ten powers per tray" thing just gets in the way. After all, how many keys on the numeric keypad? 17. What if someone wanted a tray that was only 6 spots wide for the ins/del/etc. cluster? What if someone wanted 5 trays that were only mouse accessible? Or one 5x10 tray?
Anyway, this all gave me more ideas, this time for something that doesn't suck. I'll get back to y'all.
That's a bad habit of ours.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
Just me.. but i hated having so many powers available and much prefer the "build" system where my tray has a reasonable amount of powers (5-10) and I can swap out.. then again I'm still advocating for less turn based combat (shorter cool downs) so the two kind of come hand in hand.
*runs and hides in the "That's not CoX" protection bunker*
Crowd Control Enthusiast
I only needed 6 on my Warshade. But then, I had a keybind that automagically swapped the main tray for the Dwarf (or Nova) specific tray when shape shifted. Also, a keybind that switched it back to tray 1 when in human form.
Just remember...CoT won't have Kheldians :p
Maybe not, but my Kheldians only used 1 extra tray (4 Nova Powers, 6 Dwarf Powers). Everyone else needed 7, and in a lot of cases, I wound up using the "Kheldian Tray" on my non-Kheldians for Temp Powers and macros.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Speaking of, let's hope for less temp powers.
The number of trays I used varied a bit from character to character, but the biggest improvement for me was when I could display them all simultaneously and not have to swap between trays.
Just so we understand better, what are the goals/advantages to your original design suggestion over the traditional display, Izzy? Is it just aesthetics, or something more?
Spurn all ye kindle.
Eye Candy. A Shiny Wrapper. ;)
Seriously though, I just wanted to try it out. Theres no guarantee anyone will want this. Many 3D interfaces have failed, but we still keep trying to find ways to make use of 3D Space to make navigating much more fun. Call it a luxury Item. Thats all it is. And like all luxury things, it attracts allot of attention. Free Promotion... Promotion in game without having to pay to promote outside. Let new players spread the gospel. ;)
Side note:
After much pondering, I came up with the idea to try and see how it would look if the whole Dock could be Tilted forward so that none of the powers would overlap and be VERY close to the original Scale like the Bottom rows powers. Still working on this.
I'm hopefull that I'll be able to alleviate most of the concerns (not all at once though), and eventually provide a Standalone 32 bit EXE for interested parties to try the powers tray themselves. I guess there's no way around that. :P
To be honest though, i really would have liked to start work on my version of the Avatar Builder with 3D menus, and try and have users click directly on a body part and 3D menu items jump to the contextually relavant costume pieces. Also, find a way to provide the user with a larger array of colors... because Unreal right now doesnt provide a GetColor at X, Y position from a material / texture. Games that run on Unreal, like DCUO, use Sliders to make colors: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69-D5fxfvcU
And if you've watched my GUI Button progress, i just created a GUI Slider, and might want to play with this soon.
It looks great, imo. But tbh, I personally rarely swap out bars like that unless I'm switching from pvp to pve, otherwise it's not something I do in the heat of the moment.
Sounds like someone needs to create a swatch palette similar to what City of Heroes offered which contains preset colors. That way you can have both ... a quickie color selector AND the versatility of using a slider system to make tweaks with.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Its not just you, I like that setup as well. Of course, having been following Wildstar Online, and I do play GW2 occasionally, something like this is *at the moment* my favourite setup.
As long as its quick and easy to swap your ability loadout (like the 2 games I have already listed), I have no problems with it.
So I've got another "powers tray" concept that might even be usable. The basic ideas are:
[list][*]columns are keys
[*]rows are modifier keys, with the default row being no modifiers
[*]everything is clickable and legible
[*]rotates to row corresponding to current modifier keys; this could easily be static buttons with a moving highlight instead
[*]no overlaps
[*]no arbitrary 10-power limit
[*]no "tray number" nonsense
[*]can easily be mirrored for the other side of the screen, or flipped over to be on the top edge, or rotated 90 degrees and stuck to the side
[*]can be turned into a "3D" version relatively easily
[/list]
This doesn't preclude one or more mouse-only power trays placed wherever you want, of course.
EDIT: In case of Kheldians or otherwise, it wouldn't be hard to make one or more rows, or even the whole tray, swap out during transformation.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
Hmm. I like it, actually.
Could the system be adapted for UI windows in general? For example, to "stack" identically-sized windows behind each other, and clicking on one would bring it to the front?
A tabbed tray or window would do that nicely.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
One minor issue with the typical Tabbed window is that one cannot see any of the action on the non-focus tabs. Something I did in CoH was to have 3 chat windows. My main window had 'ambient' chatter and tabs to switch to combat spam and other such stuff. Docked to that, I had a 'social' window that picked up /tells and /group and /supergroup stuff. Finally, I had a slim window to one side, which showed all of my global chat-channel traffic. I haven't been able to layout that many windows in most of the games I'm playing now, so I've repeatedly been accused of not paying attention, due to losing some messages in the torrent.
If there was some system of 'ranked' extra chat windows, with an 'alert to traffic' setting, such that we could partially see the traffic and/or get a flashing alert when there's a change in content, that might work well. Hmm, perhaps when we choose channels for a custom window, we can set which channels trigger an alert?
My trouble with a 'Tabbed Power Tray' is that I would need some keyboard commands to switch them and/or access them. Otherwise, I certainly wouldn't be using them in combat. I rarely use the mouse for combat.
Be Well!
Fireheart
Actually, i was thinking of making it look like the user could pick from ALL the colors, but its limited by what the Sliders value is though. ;)
Ex:
[img]http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/8874/vbxh.png[/img]
So the Crosshair could be the GUI Button thats Draggable, and has a Constraint Area matching the color pallet texture.
I would read in the Vertical and Horizontal Offsets and plug in those values into a Material (Instance's).
Ex:
[img]http://i.imgur.com/me9bqpa.png[/img]
That's a bit more than "minor" IMHO, especially for a powers tray.
Several games "alert" this condition by highlighting the tab in question.
That would rock.
You'd probably like the kind of setup I have in my last example, and wouldn't use any mouse-only trays. IMHO, the best use for a tabbed mouse-only tray is for all those random temp powers you don't use in combat anyway, like Halloween costumes and non-combat pet summons. This would retain access to all those powers for you while minimizing their footprint and minimizing screen space.
Another thing that can be done with tabbed windows is to make them hide along screen edges, where only the tabs are visible until you click on them, revealing the tray or window.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
I'm not really a big fan of that picker; sure it gives you full authority on H and V but S is either 0% or 100%; nothing in between. Also, some kind of alpha blending would be nice; some of the CoH costume creator colors would blend the color with your character's skin color.
One huge advantage with discrete palette systems is that it's easier to get colors to match. It's easier to remember "color H12" than "#a425c2".
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
Well, I'll be honest, i always thought the CoH/CoV Colors swatch took up allot of screen real estate. If it was me, i would reclaim some of that screen space for more costume related tools/etc... I was going to have a vertical Swatch that stored the colors that were USED in other places. I havent thought about categorizing used colors. Not that much though was put in it yet.
But you bring up a good point. Perhaps i should just do a Mouse wheel effect using the old color swatch like this one:
[img]http://i.imgur.com/oIB5MTt.png[/img]
I have zero previous knowledge of color spectrums, but out of curiosity isnt the Top Half the Saturation, the Middle line the Hue, and the Bottom half the Value?
ex:
[img]http://i.imgur.com/IEkqxuN.png[/img]
Alpha Transparency? Ohhh, i have no idea. Doesnt the Material have to work differently if you use Alpha Transparency? I just dont know. I though it was allot of work. Why did CoH/CoV have a separate section for skinned costume pieces? How would we prevent players from applying alpha to costume ares that cover nipples? :/
It did! But that gave you lots of variety. Still not enough for people like me.
You might want to keep accessibility in mind, too: those big CoH color swatch buttons were easier to use for those folks who have shaky hands. The one-pixel-per-color choosers are really easy to mess up, even for those of us with average levels of mouse control.
Whoa! False economy. We can reclaim that real estate by having the color palette only appear when needed. So, click on a color and get the palette as a popup window. When done messing with the colors, close it.
Oh, definitely. But that's a short list and wouldn't be a problem. Maybe a small palette window you can drag around.
Well, you'd want to have one hue per row, but that could work. Personally, I'd like to reserve the scroll wheel for a third dimension, such as saturation or brightness.
Check out the Wikipedia article; it's pretty detailed. I can't tell exactly what that picker was trying to do, but it looked like it was simply Hue on the horizontal axis and Value on the vertical. Saturation is 100% everywhere except for the grayscale strip on the right where it is 0%.
Nah, you cheat and simply take the material color and the skin color and alpha-blend them together. Basically:
[i]R[/i] = [i]R[/i][sub]MATERIAL[/sub] * [i]a[/i] + [i]R[/i][sub]SKIN[/sub] * (1 - [i]a[/i])
[i]G[/i] = [i]G[/i][sub]MATERIAL[/sub] * [i]a[/i] + [i]G[/i][sub]SKIN[/sub] * (1 - [i]a[/i])
[i]B[/i] = [i]B[/i][sub]MATERIAL[/sub] * [i]a[/i] + [i]B[/i][sub]SKIN[/sub] * (1 - [i]a[/i])
where [i]a[/i] is the opacity of the material (0 (transparent) to 1 (opaque)) and [i]R[/i], [i]G[/i], and [i]B[/i] are obvious.
Probably because the "skin" part was using the skin color as one of the texture colors in those.
IIRC, columns 1-6 were 100% saturation, with increasing value from 0 to 50%, columns 7-9 held value at 50% and decreased saturation, and column 10 was the "partly transparent" set of colors, where the actual color was that plus some skin color.
Here's another color chooser used for base lighting:
Note how hue is horizontal, saturation is vertical, and brightness is its own bar. Also note how you still have a huge amount of color authority even though there are only a limited number of steps on each axis. This is probably the most flexible color picker I ever saw in CoH, and it didn't take much room!
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
HAHA.. i finally got it to look right... i build a HSL material from scratch. :D
just trying to Learn more about the Unreal Materials editor.
[img]http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/5038/z98z.png[/img]
and the resulting material:
[img]http://i.imgur.com/VRKIsGK.png[/img]
Ahhh.. i finally got the alpha mask generated procedurally as well. Now i dont need Any Texture Samples at all. Fully Procedural. :D
Tricky part was getting the 1st Mask (just repeat for Green and Blue, with the right X offset applied to each)
ex: (for red: offset is -0.25, 0)
[img]http://i.imgur.com/G3RC5ih.png[/img]
reduced that into material functions and now it looks like this:
[img]http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/2270/2yix.png[/img]
I tried to reduce the number of available colors using the HSL:
[img]http://i.imgur.com/joNl3rf.png[/img]
... but it didnt come out very nice. :/
I wanted to procedurally create the CoH CoV color pallet ;) I Failed! :(
You're using some kind of thresholding. Don't.
You need to downsample, then upsample: First, make a palette with much reduced X and Y dimensions so that there are larger steps between adjacent pixels. Then take that and scale it up by 4 or 8, turning off any interpolsation filters (or at most using a "use nearest input pixel" interpolation). No bilinear, no bicubic, no sinc, no nothing. That will create your grid.
IMHO, your original palette still has issues: there are a lot of regions of exactly the same color, and tight transition bands between them. For example, there's an area of blue that is the same blue, and a larger area of green like that. Please tell me you're not putting this through some kind of limited-number-of-colors filter.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
Yep... i was interpolating. :(
I removed it and now have this:
[img]http://i.imgur.com/ouh8NBH.png[/img]
looks cleaner now.
The CoH palette was fiddled about with to avoid nude models. So, unless you create an AI that scans for "umm... that'd probably be too close to an actual skin color", you'll always fail. :)
Former Online Community Manager & Forum Moderator
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
Is that still a 10 out of 10 on the What's Appropriate list? I think it would have dropped dow a notch or two. You should see some other MMO's. ;D Skin Mods and some silly things out there. I know, that doesnt mean we should let it slide. More so, since this MMO has allot of Parents playing alongside their kids. Hehe... we wouldnt want any kind out awquardness. ;D
To be honest, i've teamed once or twice with players that had the colors creamy enough, wasnt quite skin color, but made me feel very uncomfortable still. And who's skin color are we tryiing to Block? :/ Wait i didnt mean to say Block, I'm not being prejudice.
- Making sure avatar doesnt look Naked!
7 out of 10 on the What's Appropriate list.
- Making sure youre not being Prejudice!
10 out of 10 on the What's Appropriate list
Awwww Crap. Now we gona hav'ta allow all the skin colors. Oh well, less work for me. :D
I'd say worry less about it than CoH did. Seriously, those who want to do such things, worked around it anyways by choosing different colors for skin tone.
I've only seen it done a couple of times in games such as CO and CoH and trying to block it would seem like a more work less option deal.
That said *shrug* not like it really bothers me to try and block it, never tried to go that route in either game.
Wow...I go away for a day and look what happens lol!
I like the idea of the rotating drum thing but as a person who also had LOTS of buttons out I'd like the option of having things on the screen all the time. My MMs had tons of controls slaved to all manner of things and when we see Commanders hit CoT players will likely be wanting the same thing.
Oh, and the 'less temp powers' thing? I dumped most of mine into trays 8-0 and hid those trays. Like the trunk you keep in the closet until your uncle visits. However dealing with those during a respec was still a PITA
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
[i]* quickly hides "Comicsluvr is OUT: Get to work!" sign.[/i]
No problem. Just have more than one tray out (like you were anyway). And you can still have regular trays, with optional tabs, hide-until-mouse-over, and no limit on powers per tray.
The "rotating drum" tray is just there to be a better visual cue for keyboard mapping. It's also there to remove those huge "map keys to powers" tables in the key mapping window.
So if I had an Operator, I'd have one drum tray in the bottom-left corner with my number row powers (where I put inherent powers), and another tray in the bottom-right corner with the keypad powers (which I used for pet control). Then I'd have a tabbed tray wherever else with all my non-combat stuff.
[quote=Comicsluvr]Oh, and the 'less temp powers' thing? I dumped most of mine into trays 8-0 and hid those trays. Like the trunk you keep in the closet until your uncle visits. However dealing with those during a respec was still a PITA
IMHO the respec code was simply retarded in how it blindly reset everything in your trays. It should have gone through your trays and put all the powers you kept in the same places, [i]then[/i] assigned new powers to open spots.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
What's all the multiply/floor/divide stuff for? The "Lerp" step output looks like what you need. Are there no resampling (zoom) tools?
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
In all fairness, I think you're not going to be able to avoid choosing the hues for the palette by hand, even if there were no "avoid nude colors" rule.
if you look at the standard spread, there are a lot of colors that tend to get squashed by the others. For example, if you go 20 degrees away from green (120 degrees) it'll still look pretty much green, but if you go 20 degrees away from purple (270 degrees) you'll get thistle (towards magenta) or indigo (towards blue).
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
Well, i was looking how hard it would be to reduce the colors down so it would be something like this:
[img]http://i.imgur.com/0chOrJW.png[/img]
I've tried allot of diferent approaches but I haven't the slightes idea how to do it just procedurally. :(
BTW, if you're trying to mimic the CoH base lighting palette, the vertical axis should be saturation, not value.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
At 1st i was trying to make it look like the CoH/CoV color pallet, but i gave up.
But i did get it to look like the Pallet above. ;D
Yep... just using procedural functions. The grayscale might be in a separate Material of its own. ;)
[img]http://i.imgur.com/bYsSPbm.png[/img]
As long as there's a way to use the same color again, I'll be happy! Hate it when it's a hassle to repeat the colors.
[b]THIS[/b]
If we're going to be confronted with a color wheel or some sort of color array, being able to identify and [i]reliably repeat[/i] color selections is absolutely vital. Even with the color swatch system of City of Heroes (and Star Trek Online), it just helps way too much to be able to identify which color swatch you're using. Star Trek Online uses a Letter/Number combination to identify row/column for colors in their arrays. So you'd pick a color like E10 (for example). Makes it really easy to transcribe settings so that they can be shared with other people via forum posts.
If you're going totally freeform with a color wheel, being able to enter number values for settings from the keyboard or via up/down UI clickies as absolutely vital when it comes to being able to select colors repeatably.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Agreed.
Google truned this up aftert i did a search:
[img]http://img703.imageshack.us/img703/8603/u6ts.png[/img]
On a separate note, one reason why its taking me longer to get there is because im learning as i go. I just got into UDK as the Kickstarter was dying down. :/
As Robert noted (LiveStream), Star Treck Online uses a color pallet just like the one you see a few posts above.
I'm not sure, but i think all thats left is to add one gradient column for Grayscale's.
And one (maybe 2) column(s) for the skintones gradient(s), next to the Grayscale column.
ex:
[img]http://i.imgur.com/tEmFKmC.png[/img]
This should work. :) I think. ;D
I like the overall idea, one thought I have is would it be possible (or even preferable) to have the ability to adjust the overlap of the icons by narrowing the space between rows and possibly adjust the degree of shift from one row to the next? It might allow us to tighten up the amount of space and still make out and click icons; just looking at the graphic as it stands it seems like a lot of extra space taken up with each row fully visible and the icons spread apart. Other than that I definitely like the idea of giving it depth!
Just remember - CoT is in the spirit of CoH, it is not CoH!
I ran with a 2 rows along the bottom and another down the right side most of the time.
I kamehameha'd your mom
With a total freeform option, something that would be useful would be a tool like the 'eyedropper' tool in a graphics editor -- show the chosen color(s) for a costume part in boxes next to the part, like CoH did for power customization, and be able to use the eyedropper to 'pick up' the color from one of those boxes, so you didn't have to remember the precise shade you'd used on another piece, just pick up the color from that piece.
Check out what I did in my second proposal back up in post #32. I got a "wrapped around a cylinder" look without having the icons overlap by carefully adjusting the geometry.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
I ran a lot of trays and the one thing I mainly wanted was a way to dock them into groups.
You could doc trays 1, 2 and 3 but that was more of extending the tray rather than docking them. I always had a 4th tray directly above the 3rd but it wasnt docked.
I also had other smaller trays nearby for things like Temps/Incarnate/etc but they were always free-floating.
I also used my mouse wheel for zooming in and out based on the map. In tunnels I often had to zoom in to change my viewing angle.
I dont mind the idea, I think its good but there should be maybe a few options for the player to choose from:
- Basic (standard CoH ish) - with docking :)
- Rotate (as per the suggestions in this thread - whichever works best)
- Combo - let me select which power tray can rotate and which trays to rotate. - Example Trays 1-3 I used for my most common powers. I decide to allocate Tray 7 as my Temps tray. I then put Icons in trays 6 and 8 and want 6 & 8 rotatable with each other (spin scroll wheel = 6-8-6-8-6-8) ignoring Tray 7.
Another thing Id love to see is for the UI layout to be stored in an INI file or something on my pc. I played COH primarily on my desktop 22" but when I LANed at a mates place with my laptop if I jumped onto CoH my desktop layout went to hell and I had to readjust everything. Then when I got home and fired up CoH on the desktop - again I had to reorganise everything.
The Phoenix Rising Initiative Rules Lawyer
What if you could just make the tray as big as you wanted?
Or at least some smarts in the game where it figures out which corner or side each tray is anchored to, so stuff I put in the lower right stays in the lower right.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
I wanted to test the Powers tray barel roll animation i made in Matinee and added a Kismet Event for mouse wheel up and down, and Kismet detect the mouse wheel scrolling.
But i'm getting a a bit anxious trying to get the right settings for Matinee to swap out the Objects used in the animations and having the New Objects reuse the Matinee animation that the previous object had. Not Working! >:[
Now... i'm considering the use of SplineActors. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4H-RyZhzztY)
The plus side of these actors is that they are visually Placeable in the 3D world and can visually adjust the Tangent vector of the curve it creates, like most 2D vector drawing apps do.
ex: [url=http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/UsingSplineActors.html][img]http://i.imgur.com/JKpb3zQ.png[/img][/url]
With this I might be able to create new Kismet events when the Button (or other object) gets to the end of the specified number of SplineActor nodes, (i might have it use more than one SplineNode for a complex path animation, make it flexible enough for future use, besides using it just for a barel roll)
But for now, about 10 Spline Nodes all connected to form an elipse will work. And if it turns out that players will want to expand the number of currently visible trays from 3 to 4 (or more), the code and the Spline Nodes will be able to handle that, in case. :)
And, we can have a very vertically Squashed Elipse spline nodes for the visible rows (i dont know, the 1st 6 to 8 rows), and last node jumps back to the starting node... So that the power trays look like they arent fading into the background, just Scrolling Vertically. I think it should be simple to swap one set of Spline nodes for another. Will need to check though, but i'm fairly certain its easy from first impressions.
[b]WARNING[/b]
Constantly present UI elements such as powers trays that animate movements WILL BE a distracting element. The human eye is evolved for and trained to detect and be drawn to ... movement. I'm concerned that use of any kind of "rolling" movement action for anything getting used as frequently as Power Trays will create a visual distraction that Players will need to [i]train themselves to ignore[/i] so as to be able to focus on the "action" happening more towards the center of the screen.
Again, this kind of behavior would be fine for things like Inventory, where the only time you're paying attention to it is when you're focusing on it. But having parts of the UI animate themselves and move when they are NOT intended to be the focus of attention is a UI Design issue that I would recommend should be avoided ... especially for something that will occupy as much "screen real estate" as a set of Powers Trays would (need to).
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Also, for my version of the Avatar Builder, the Muscle Tone section, i'm strongly considering adding 3D grab handles right next to the body parts that the user zoom's in on.
ex: [img]http://i.imgur.com/0LCjBx3.png[/img]
So for instance, if the player clicks on the head, they might see 2 of those sliders in 3D space positioned close to the head (not sure if they will be always facing the camera like a partice effect might), one to set the Width of the head, other one to set the Height (rotated to point up/down).
If things get really complex, maybe allow the player to click on the Nose, Ears, etc... and have those grab handles allow the player to slide and morph the Length of the Nose, or the Width of the Nose, or some other silly things. ;)
Still in brainstorming mode. Nothing is set in stone and can be improved anytime down the road. ;)
Go back a few posts, you'll see that i mention that the player doesnt need to Scroll through the power trays during combat. Its Eye Candy for the most part. ;)
Don't try to put the handles right on the element being adjusted; that will require the mouse to obscure it. Place the controls (with labels, please) nearby, with a line (of some form; doesn't need to be straight) connecting the control to the part being edited.
You're going to need some way to orient these things normal to the camera, otherwise you'll get the case where one arrow is pointed right at the camera and the other is pointed away. Further, in some cases the arrows would be counterintuitive: clicking the left arrow might make the head bigger when viewed from the front, but if you're viewing from the back, the left arrow is now the right arrow!
IMHO this is the kind of thing that would probably best be a 2D overlay.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
But will the power trays be moving on their own? You speak of a "barrel roll power tray animation".... sure sounds like you're trying to get the trays to move in response to whether that be the player needing to scroll, or just happening. Either way, BAD idea.
The only tray movement in my proposal is when the player presses a modifier key, and that just moves the power row corresponding to that modifier key into the "active row" position. This is intended to show the player the selected row, nothing more. No animation on the click-only trays.
And that animation isn't even necessary: it could easily be replaced with a highlight or selection bar. And you should be able to turn it off. All this stuff happens entirely client-side anyway, so the server doesn't care beyond managing the account settings. It may well only be used to snazz things up for demos.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
I like the idea of eye candy!
Your idea is no different than what CoH had, except it puts in an animation that will look pretty! And I like pretty!
One of my RO SG/guild mates pointed me to this thread and my old named color palette for COH...It's tickles me to see it floating around. You can find a more updated version (well 2010 updated) for the different palettes here. It seems like you figured out how to recreate the palettes already, but if you need references
Standard Colors - http://repeat-offenders.net/colors/Standard_Palette_2010.png
Skin Color - http://repeat-offenders.net/colors/Skin_Color_Palette.png
The images are also on Paragon Wiki:
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Costume_Colors
Thank you. :)
Having the power trays respond to a modifier key-click would be just fine. If the player is taking action to modify the behavior in some way, having the power tray reflect that modification in some manner makes sense.
I was more directing this toward Izzy, where it sounded from his description that the power trays would sort of roll into focus as you moused-over and/or scrolled them somehow, which I would find an horrendous UI design for the main powers. Might work very well in the Character/Mission creator where details are much more important than a second here or there to respond to something, but in the UI during combat, a half second delay to mentally process the change of your power tray due to exact mouse positioning... /em SHUDDER
Sounds more like you think it would be easy to spin the tray when I highly doubt that's what happen.
If I read it all correctly, the idea is to have something like CoH's tray, but instead of clicking the arrow key and the next tray just appears, this will have a nice eye candy spin.
If that's what we're talking about, I'd be ok with that, as long as the "unused" trays aren't showing normally.
Didnt read the rest so this is a post on the early chatter.
I had mostly 3 trays and a forth on my hami tank for macros. Even my badger had only 3 trays. If i needed one of the temp powers i would drag and drop it into my 3rd tray. My 4th tray on all of my characters were where all my toggles were and my toggles we bound to 1 button that would turn them all on by multi pressing. 7 tray! Holy crap! Where the battle? I cant see!
-AlienMafia (Justice Server)
Main: Thorns 13xx Badges
Quick update:
Added Kismet events for Mouse Wheel - Scroll Down and - Scroll Up ...
[img]http://i.imgur.com/hAFOIk4.png[/img]
... and added the Roll effect to each. See video for the roll effect in motion.
video: http://youtu.be/ee55hfqtpMc