Copper Enhanced Status Bars tweak presented for feedback...

[Dermott of LS]

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Did some playing with the status bars (StatusWindow, TargetWindow, MobileHealthBar).

First, the current version:

I never really liked the shading of these, so I decided to tweak them a bit and have the following:

The logic of course being the less HP/Mana/Stam you have, the darker the bar gets.

Secondly, I made the target and mobile bars bigger and separated them in the texture file so they could be independent sizes. They still work the same, I made two new bars in the texture files and called them accordingly.

Still a work in progress so feedback is welcomed.

 

[Clog|Mordain]

Re: Copper Enhanced Status Bars tweak fpresented for feedback...

Looks good to me Good job. Keep it up

 

[Merion]

Re: Copper Enhanced Status Bars tweak fpresented for feedback...

It looks good here, but I'm sceptical how it'll work during play - won't it be too dark to make out on a quick glance during fights?

 

[Frarc]

Is it possible to add a small line in the status bar (Black or White) at 75% 50% and 25% of health,mana and dex?

 

[Dermott of LS]

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If this comes out looking funky, it's because I'm posting from my phone.

That aside... both ideas are good ones I'm going to look in to tonight... I did the change relatively late last night so haven't tried it in real action yet.

I actually thought this morning to put in the quartile lines, so that will be first, then I'll test out the bars for the brightness and tweak accordingly. Results will of course be posted.

 

[Dermott of LS]

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Update: Took the listed advise and worked with it. New design elements are as follows:

- Lighter fade
- Quartile separators

So we go from:

to:

There is one more set of bars I need to work with and that is the player status bars on the expanded mobile health bar. They are a little wonky at the moment, but I think I can fix that.

 

[Storm]

i like it with the separators!

 

[Cloak&Dagger]

I do like the newest model, with the separators but I am slightly dipleased with the "flatness" the current bars have a definition to them, while the proposed ones are flat. Not a game breaker for me, and the new concept is very nice.

 

[Dermott of LS]

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This a little better? I tried to keep it subtle and still have to do the targetwindow and mobile health bars, but this should give a little subtle definition to the bars.

 

[Merion]

Personally, I liked it better it better without the quartile seperators, but I guess you can't please everyone

Another things that bugging me for a while now, is that on the mobile bar and the current target bar, the bars don't fill the space completely to the end. The stop a few pixels before, leaving a small black area, giving the impression of the character or monster being slightly injured.

 

[Frarc]

I like the last ones.

 

[Cloak&Dagger]

Yes that newest one looks great.

 

[eekamouse]

I also like these tweaks

 

[Dermott of LS]

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Looking into a few further tweaks, according to the "fits/doesn;t fit in the space" feedback.

As of now I have the StatusWindow and TargetWindow I believe finalized.

Status Window:

- Tweaked the size of the bars by lengthening by 2 pixels
- Tweaked the look of the statuswindow texture slightly to fit better on the right hand side
- Tweaked the height of the bar section for Stamina to fit the Stamia bar better (it was too small)
- Tweaked the bar sections to let the bars fit better visually (literally 12 1-pixel additions)
- Tweaked the XML code to better center the bars in the slots in the texture

Target Window:

- Tweaked the bar section by making the area smaller on each side to better fit the current health bar (there is a 1 pixel border between the bar and the texture for visibility)
- Added in the hue brightness tweak I put in the StatusWindow bars to give the health bar "depth"
- Lowered the Name text by a few pixels as NPC names were too high and bleeding into the texture at the top

Left to do: Mobile Health Bars

 

[Frarc]

I like it.

 

[Dermott of LS]

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And here is what SHOULD be the rest of the status bars... Mobile Health Bars, Pet Bars, and Party Bars:

I created a secondary set of bars for the expanded party/self mobile health bars and hued them accordingly, then altered the XML appropriately.

Next I tweaked the Mobile Health Bar to fit the bar inside accordingly (1 pixel border between the bar and the texture for visibility).

Finally I resized the pet bar to take advantage of the new health bar.

Thoughts?

Edit: I should add that it LOOKS like there might be a little bit of repositioning of the health bar in the mobile health bar texture (usually 1 pixel difference up or down), this seems to happen if you have the UI scaled down below 1.0, but is mainly due to the scaling feature and shouldn't be an issue.

I still want to get the spell buttons to play nice at some point so that they appear in the same order in the same place on the pet mobile health bar and the party mobile health bar, but that may be a bit... more difficult.

Oh and I sized down the text label for the name on the mobile health bar so it doesn;t run into the HP% as much.

 

[eekamouse]

Looking good. Can you add the spell buttons to all hot bars. I know that a few times when there are like 3+ dragons doing a boss, it would be nice to have their hotbars pulled and be able to cycle In Vas Mani on all of them.

 

[Merion]

Looks great *thumbs up*

 

[Tukaram]

It is early so I am a bit confused. You say the bar gets darker the less HP/Mana/Stam you have. But the bar will still go away as you get less right? I think it is the separator that is confusing me. If the bar goes away, like normal, then you don't really need the separators. And if it doesn't go away then I can't see at a quick glance where my health etc is.

 

[Dermott of LS]

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Yes, the bar still goes away. The effect though is that as more of the bar goes away the darker it becomes.

The seprators just give you a quick glance at 25%, 50% and 75% of the given stat accordingly. So if you have in your mind "If I'm below 50% health I need to back off and heal or start a bandage or whatever", you can see at a very quick glance the 50% spot, for example.