Lair Larrikin
Posts: 20
Joined: Sunday, 7th July 2019, 17:17
Monster threat level summary in offline tiles
Nothing like this is currently present in offline tiles. There is the "monsters tab" (the only one of those "tabs" I care about, to be frank, as I hardly if ever use the mouse) which shows you a compacted collection of the monsters in view, but without the approximate threat level. Offline tiles is my favorite way to play the game, and I would really like to have an always-visible summary of the current nearby threats, as is available in console and webtiles. Some players, such as myself, find this monitor extremely helpful as a way to increase efficiency in moving through the game without sacrificing caution, as there is always visible a rough indicator of how careful you need to be. I know that I am not the only player who would like such a feature in offline tiles, as I have found numerous posts floating around the web from other players asking how to get the "monster list" from console and webtiles enabled in offline tiles, only to be told that it isn't present. So I have set about implementing this myself.
A lot of questions arise about the best way to do this. As far as the visual aspect, right now I'm working with little black-outlined "blocks" of (currently) 8x8 pixels (6x6 interior), using the same colors for the interior as the text-based monster list from console and webtiles. I am open to other suggestions in this regard.
The next question is whether the indicators should appear only on the monsters tab, or on the actual monsters in the main view.
A third question is where the blocks should be placed within the monster graphic tile. The three main candidates right now are: upper-right, next to the status icons like sleep/poison/etc; lower-right (would go alongside things like berserk icon, and demon tier indicator, if enabled); and lower-left (where it seems that no other monster-related indicators yet reside).
Finally, I think that this should be fully configurable. I've been batting this around in ##crawl-dev and so far there's a lot of varying opinion about how much of this players would want to see. It is trivial to make it fully configurable, such that you can either have all indicators displayed (default), none at all, or displayed only if they fall into certain threat levels. For example, as I have it right now, you can say:
In this way, only the yellow/red (tough/nasty) indicators will be shown and all trivial/easy indicators will be omitted.
Here are three screenshots showing what I've been experimenting with so far:
Monster tab only, lower-right positioning:
https://i.ibb.co/5KJvVmm/2019-07-05-192 ... -scrot.png
Main view included, lower-left positioning:
https://i.ibb.co/NVz0Wh7/2019-07-06-134 ... -scrot.png
Main view included, upper-right positioning:
https://i.ibb.co/Bfj8xQD/2019-07-06-145 ... -scrot.png
Main view included, upper-right positioning, configured with filtering so that only the red indicator shows and the grey one which would otherwise be present is omitted:
https://i.ibb.co/tBsb2qw/2019-07-07-104 ... -scrot.png
I have a reluctance about using the version where the indicators are visible in the main view, and that is that this requires (I think, though this is my first foray into Crawl code) the addition of a few tile foreground flags, consuming at least three (more elegantly done, all four) of what appear to be, possibly, the last four unused tile foreground flags of the guaranteed 64 bits for the data type (long long) being used for them. I'm only experimenting with including these icons in the main view because at least one user in ##crawl-dev suggested it.
So, I am asking for feedback about all four of these things:
1) The graphic itself, any comments or other ideas about what it could look like instead?
2) Should it go in the main view or only on the monster tab in the lower-right? (IMO, the latter)
3) Upper-right? Lower-right? Lower-left?
4) Does everyone like the idea of having it fully configurable?
Thank you all in advance for all feedback, constructive criticism, and suggestions. I do hope that I haven't been too long-winded.
- For this message the author Psymania has received thanks: 4
- chequers, Implojin, Nekoatl, petercordia