[Suggestion] EC design team should do a cast bar.

[A Thought Elemental]

After using your EC client for about a month, I suggest that the EC developers implement a cast bar for the player's channeled spells.

If you wanted some inspiration regarding cast bars in LUA, I recommend looking at Quartz, a very popular cast bar mod for World of Warcraft. I don't think that the base EC client cast bar would necessarily need to be as full-featured as Quartz, but taking a look at it could be interesting anyway. Quartz - Addons - Curse . All it would take is a basic one in the EC client, and I think the modders would take it from there.

I feel sure this is the right thing to do, and the EC client being in active development makes this seem like the right time.

 

[Gilmour]

am fine without a cast bar, tho it would be nice to have one!

also i would like a global cooldown indicator on hotbars.

 

[A Thought Elemental]

also i would like a global cooldown indicator on hotbars.

Several things come to mind on this.

Some abilities in this game have no global cooldown from the player perspective - - animal taming for instance. I can spam that as fast as my keyboard can send it and unless the tame actually begins, I never see a cooldown.

But on the other hand, certain other client actions performed one after another will cause a message like "you must wait to perform another action" or similar. I remember when that message was first put into the game, it was around 1999, and at the time it made the client feel slow and clunky. I felt sure at the time that it was a temporary thing, until they could repair some underlying problem which made it necessary. It never went away, though...

As far as cooldowns on the hotbar (A.K.A OmniCC - Addons - Curse), I do see some cooldown timers on my hotbar. Specifically, when I use discord, I see a little countdown timer appear on my hotbar skill abilities (all of them) which counts down to when I should be able to use another skill again. I seem locked out of all of my skills for a short period of time after using either discord or hiding. I'm using Pincho's UI and I don't know if it's a function of that or of the EC client itself.

 

[A Thought Elemental]

Look at this in high-ish resolution if you like (1080HD available). YouTube .

The cast bar not only allows me to see my casts starting and ending, but the bar allows me to see if my cast was completed or was interrupted, and it goes so far as to let me see my apparent live latency so that I can pre-cast intelligently. And, I have configured the bar to show the total cast time + casting time in progress numerically. (I've deliberately left out the spell name on the cast bar btw). It will also show "pushback" when it occurs, but, I don't believe UO has that.

For UO with its many spells and variable timings on them to have no cast bar at all is one of those things that shouldn't be. In this EC client here, all I have to go on is (a) the change of shape of my targeting cursor, or (b) if I get no targeting cursor (self-cast EC spells), the graphic/sound effect of the spell itself.

 

[Pinco]

This has already been requested, and it's not that hard to do for magery/mysticism/necro spells. Chivalry and Spellweaving spells uses another system. So actually can't be done unless devs don't add a fizzle message on those 2 spell systems

 

[A Thought Elemental]

This has already been requested, and it's not that hard to do for magery/mysticism/necro spells. Chivalry and Spellweaving spells uses another system. So actually can't be done unless devs don't add a fizzle message on those 2 spell systems

I feel like the unmodded EC client should have a castbar of its own, but if you were to make the move and do one first, I couldn't complain about that. What you made would be like the Quartz for UO, and that would be all win, you know? It doesn't matter if chiv/spellweaving has a problem right now, you'd do it for what works today, and update as necessary (Quartz has seen several updates in response to game patches).

As for whether it would be worth your while to take your time to make it, obviously I'm saying yes, but also, the value of it may not be recognized by players until you're done and they have it in their hands for a while. Once people come to expect the precise kind of feedback a good cast bar can provide, they cannot leave it behind. I think you'd pretty much have a captive audience.

 

[Gilmour]

am with elemental here, should be something in the game unmodded.

and about the global cooldown, are some exceptions, but generelly any item you can use have a 1s global cooldown. some skills bypass this but for most parts you got one.

a global cooldown indicator would ofc have to be flexible enough to know when one is triggered and when not.

 

[Roland']

a global cooldaow would be great. as would a cast timer. im not sure if my second countdown on my bars is a uosa feature or a skin i have but it is often inacurate by as much as 2 seconds. on my dexxer im newer to play a good gcd timer for items would be godly as i try to use bandaids often and am gettin used to how long it takes after anotehr item or ability before i can do so.

 

[Pinco]

Casting time is for 90% tied to the lag factor, so i can't do it...

 

[A Thought Elemental]

Casting time is for 90% tied to the lag factor, so i can't do it...

How do you mean?

btw don't forget to check Quartz for ideas if you think there's a chance it'll be helpful. It's LUA so, it shouldn't be greek to you (even though its accessing a different game's functions and such). Quartz - Addons - Curse .

 

[Pinco]

How do you mean?

btw don't forget to check Quartz for ideas if you think there's a chance it'll be helpful. It's LUA so, it shouldn't be greek to you (even though its accessing a different game's functions and such). Quartz - Addons - Curse .

UO works differently, is much more limited than wow on script side...

However a 1st circle spell could take from 0.5 to 1.5 seconds based on your ping with the server and there is no way to determine it.

 

[Roland']

UO works differently, is much more limited than wow on script side...

However a 1st circle spell could take from 0.5 to 1.5 seconds based on your ping with the server and there is no way to determine it.

1st circle spells cast at .3 seconds mate. Also on wow they have the same server lag issue but they designed more of the spells to have longer casts and due to ping your modded bar on wow will havea red area at the end for latency. although they implement basicaly a 1 second cast cap minimum due to global cool down which UO does not have.

 

[Pinco]

1st circle spells cast at .3 seconds mate. Also on wow they have the same server lag issue but they designed more of the spells to have longer casts and due to ping your modded bar on wow will havea red area at the end for latency. although they implement basicaly a 1 second cast cap minimum due to global cool down which UO does not have.

I saw the quartz mod, wow has lots more events that communicate to the client if the spell fizzle or what's going on. Here I have to check the overhead message/sysmessage and this will burn few more time.

However I've never casted a 1st circle spell at 0.3... the minimum time I ever got is 0.5, on japanese shards I reach 1.5...

 

[A Thought Elemental]

I saw the quartz mod, wow has lots more events that communicate to the client if the spell fizzle or what's going on. Here I have to check the overhead message/sysmessage and this will burn few more time.

However I've never casted a 1st circle spell at 0.3... the minimum time I ever got is 0.5, on japanese shards I reach 1.5...

hmm, I think I see what you're saying.

So it sounds like, based upon your description: The long cast time you're seeing on the Japanese servers could be a combination like this. How long it takes for the server to note that the client has begun casting a spell, + how long it takes for the server to communicate to the client that a cast has completed succesfully. And then with both of those things stacked together, maybe you end up seeing that long 1.5 second cast time client-side. But from the server's perspective, we can presume that it allocated the correct 0.3 seconds in the case of a 1st circle spell.

If there really is not enough info coming from the server to do the job, maybe the EC team does in fact need to make their own first, and then with that addition, there will come some new events to help you along in your own cast bar (assuming you still wanted to make it at that point). But even so, if you wanted to try something anyway, something that is maybe not perfect but is still representative, it's hard to discourage that!

 

[Roland']

Not great with sizing hope you can read this.

the cast times are .31 .44 .34 .28 after a hundred or so casts it comes out to .30

 

[Roland']

this might work

 

[Pinco]

this is only shows that you have a good ping

 

[Roland']

this is only shows that you have a good ping

incorrect sir. i ping 120 to atl as i am on the west coast of the good ol US of A

 

[A Thought Elemental]

From Europe to the Atlantic server, I cast In Mani 2x and looked at the reported cast times. It said .74 and .66. My ping time according to the login screen varies from 133 to 160 or so.