Spiral Knights - Intuitional "health bar".

Intuitional "health bar".

18 replies [Last post]

Sat, 04/13/2013 - 11:47

Ewbte

Brevity is the soul of wit.

This will show current health by color of shield's bottom circle and only when player got and hit shield is activated.
Also it would be great to see throbbing red circle all the time when player have 25% of health or less, which is good notification that it is time to play more accurate or use a pill.
How it could work (pic)
For now this circle appears at first white, and then it takes color of current shield state.

Mechanics for idea already exists.
This feature will work perfectly with a fully disabled UI.

Thanks OOO for this game, you do a great job being not as overall mmo developers community.

Sat, 04/13/2013 - 11:54

Dagunner

Whew

For a second I thought this be a spam post. I totally agree, and a customizable ui be good, so u could make it how it used to be or any way u want.

Sat, 04/13/2013 - 12:20

Tohlevi

AAAAA, MY EYESSS~

Totally support this. It would make this game more playable, allowing people to customize their UI to fit their gameplay. Also, color indicating your current health under shield's bottom circle would make you feel more cautious about your health, reminding you to use your pills before it's too late.

Sat, 04/13/2013 - 17:44

Klipik

So you want to go from a health bar we have to look away to see, to a health bar we can only see when shielding? are you insane? Might as well make it invisible. Also is that picture from beta?

...Unless you meant that's the shield health bar... in which case still -1 because the shield goes through those color changes anyway.

First thing: +1 but it's essentially this.

Sun, 04/14/2013 - 00:04

Ewbte

@Klipik

I'm about usability expansion, not changing one to another.
Experienced player uses shield all the time and not only for defence (enemy poke, weapon cancelling and etc.)
In most cases player use shield when he got hit , so interrelation is obvious.

Sun, 04/14/2013 - 00:06

Klipik-Forum

Shield canceling, weapon switching, shield bumping, etc all use extremely quick bursts of shield. If done right, you don't even see the shield at all - so you wouldn't be able to see the colors. Plus, it's a bit vague, since it's just a rough color estimate, and it's a problem that's much more easily and better solved by simply putting the health bar back in the middle of the screen, where it should be.

Sun, 04/14/2013 - 00:10

Ewbte

@Noklip

And even with this fast using, color of shield still appears. It's enough to check current HP.

Sun, 04/14/2013 - 08:18

Rogue-Wolf

...

I like the way you're thinking, but this seems to be hiding away your health a bit much.

If I want to know how much health I have, I shouldn't need to press a button.

Sun, 04/14/2013 - 10:00

Ewbte

@Rogue-Wolf

Read thread before post please.

Sun, 04/14/2013 - 20:06

Rogue-Wolf

...

What was it I was meant to have read?

Yes, people use the shield a lot. They use it for it's functionality, not it's pretty colours.

You totally missed my point. I was not saying "no, don't replace the bar with this". I was saying "to see my health, I have to press a button is a bad idea". It's just bad design. HUDs that hide have a button to show them, but they hide to let you see more.. not to just hide it for the sake of hiding it.

I LIKE that you're trying to get HUD functionality to be integral with the game. Dead Space had that, and I loved it.. but it never hid it. You're making information more difficult to get to. That's the bad bit.

You want it? Cool.
Will others want it? Probably.
Is it actually good game design? Not particularly.

Sun, 04/14/2013 - 23:07

#10

Ewbte

@Rogue-Wolf

"This feature will work perfectly with a fully disabled UI." That means, that this feature would be useful for old players or players who love minimalism.
And this suggestion is kinda an addition to other thread (link is in main post).

I understood your point.
If follow your logic, classic intuitional shield bar should be disabled too because it's useless and a bad design.

Close HP system is in Call of Duty line, where you don't have percentage or any "bar". You can check your current HP state only when you take a hit. And I should say that it is the best HP system I ever saw. But we can't have regenerating in SK, it will make game way too easy, for example because there is no enemies which can kill with one or two hits like in CoD.

Also thank you for your opinion! You gave me an idea, I added something to main post

Sun, 04/14/2013 - 23:08

#11

Klipik

You are using Call of Duty, a game where the average time to kill is less than a second, as an example for a game where the exact health you have is critical to your survival and playstyle. Does this make any sense to anyone?

Sun, 04/14/2013 - 23:21

#12

Ewbte

@Klipik

Yes, sure! Thats why CoD have HP regeneration feature. We don't have it and we don't need it. We need to be able to control current health (use pill or play more accurate) only at low HP. Please check first post, I updated it.

Sun, 04/14/2013 - 23:50

#13

Thinslayer

Better intuitional health measurement

You know how Vanaduke displays damage? He gets something like a hacked/shocked aura. Perhaps if the knights had something similar, no buttons would be needed to see your health.

Mon, 04/15/2013 - 04:06

#14

Stelli

I like this idea alot, i mean

I like this idea alot, i mean many games use this type of health display because it makes sense:

The more health you have, the more intact you are displayed,

and the less health you have, the more damaged you look.

for example, gundam games will have the mobile suit looks like it's damaged, and short circuiting electricty.

But in our case a color change, or you look weaker, and in ewbte's idea, she wants it to display a more alerting color. possibly from Green -> Orange -> Red.

One more thing to add is that, there should be a choice weather the health bar can be visible or hidden. or one quick hotkey to disable all UI icons.

Mon, 04/15/2013 - 13:39

#15

Klipik

I personally hate that kind of system, because it has no numbers. You can't see exactly how much damage, or how many hits you can take before you die. The best system for this is Halo's shields, where you know that once your shield goes down, one more hit from pretty much anything will kill you. But, with the number of high-damage attacks that can take you from 1/3 health to dead, it doesn't translate all that well. There's a reason this system is only used for games with either regenerating health, or games where survival is not the main focus, like racing games: you can't tell when you're just above the threshhold. In a regenerating-health game that isn't a problem, since you can assume once the blood on the sides of the screen goes away you have full health. That doesn't work in SK.

This no-HP-bar, throbbing-screen thing was invented by developers of casual console games who were aiming at a playerbase who wanted regenerating health and quick kills, so they didn't have to play tactically. SK is not that kind of game. As I have said with the UI change, there's no reason to take features out.

As for your Gundam example I haven't exactly played the game so I don't know exactly how it works, but it seems like it would involve a lot of guesswork. SK has enough of that.

Physical damage indicators would be a nice supplement to a health bar, but anything without numbers is a no-go. People already got mad when they made it harder to count HP quickly, imagine what would happen if you did this.

Mon, 04/15/2013 - 23:39

#16

Ewbte

@Klipik

I can't find out the reason for you to type all of this. If you don't like anything, and you know that this "anything" wouldn't disturb you, why should you say something negative about it?
For example: I don't like pop culture, but I don't go on their forums and pull out negative posts. Nobody force me to listen pop music, and if I hear it at radio, I can just turn it off or select another station.
It's all about the choice. For now we, minimalists, forced to use UI.

Nobody asks to remove percentage or classic bar, because people who like to see number like you, will be unhappy.
I'm suggesting this feature as advanced choice for another type of people, players who don't need UI at all.

Everyone has the right to chose.

Tue, 04/16/2013 - 08:01

#17

Stelli

@Klipik

"As for your Gundam example I haven't exactly played the game so I don't know exactly how it works, but it seems like it would involve a lot of guesswork. SK has enough of that."

As for my Gundam example, If you don't know, I can explain, Gundam is a series of animation dated back to more than 20 years ago, but that's not important right now.

Why I use this as an example, is because it resembles Knights in SK, as we are mechanical and so are Gundams, no guess works needed, not about the mechanics or damage display, it is just a visual display, digits or not I'll let you guys argue about that.

They are Robots, when robots are damaged, they have short circuit animation, sorta like the guy ontop was saying about how Vana gets his Hacked Aura'ish thing when he's damaged. (link here)

Quoting Klipik "I personally hate that kind of system, because it has no numbers. You can't see exactly how much damage, or how many hits you can take before you die. "

- I understand that you do not like it, however, when a suggestion is made, it is to be thought of for the general population, and not just what you like.

In general, I agree with Ewbte, some people prefers visible HP while others do not according to different situations:

For example,

Some players can finish JK or FSC with their eyes closed without taking too much damage throughout the run.. in this case the HP bar will be a total nuisance for them.

But when they are playing Lockdown, they might need to be constantly aware of how much HP/shield Health they have, in this case, turning back on the HP bar from an option before playing Lockdown will be preferable.

Tue, 04/16/2013 - 08:29

#18

Retequizzle

All I'm getting from the

All I'm getting from the negative feedback is that there's no numbers and a giant %*(%ing neon sign that tells you to sit the #$*( down and not run headfirst into a mob of enemies.

Which you shouldn't even be doing anyway if you're arguing tactics, unless your idea of a "tactic" is run in and get killed by everything.

A lot of people forget that some of the UI layouts have toggle-friendly notifications that you can access from the Options panel and then clicking the Prompts tab. All they have to do is code a bit more and make it so you can toggle different aspects of the UI entirely based off of those checkboxes.

Meaning, point blank, if you want to have a giant flashing %*(#ing neon sign that points to your health bar and says "Slow the *(#$ down, Leroy, we don't need you dying yet" then you can do that, all the while still having players who can toggle that sort of information off because they're seasoned veterans - if you want to call it that - who don't need giant displays up in each corner of their screen adding onto the painfully obvious fact that they just took a bunch of damage for something.

At the end of the day, it's not taking information away from people at that point if they opt not to receive it to begin with, which is the only argument I've seen in regards to this kind of "layout" (or lack thereof) in this case to begin with.

So instead of just saying "no it r bad ideaaaaaaa11!!!!!1!9801*(!!", how about suggesting something to refine it so that it's geared more towards a larger playerbase instead of just saying it's a bad idea? The Suggestions forum is designed to foster growth of new ideas through collaborative effort, not stunt it because you can't agree over something that's not 100% your style.

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Intuitional "health bar".