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Unit display for attack skills like thrown weapons

Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2006 4:30 pm
by Implode
One thing I hate in the original MoM is that, especially with heroes, you might have a unit with 10 'swords' and you cannot tell how it calculated that figure. How much was the units base attack? How much is a bonus from experience? Was it built with Adamantium weapons? Does it have Giant Strength cast on it? Is it getting a bonus from a node aura? Hero special items? etc. etc.

I've altered the unit display in MoM IME to colour code the unit attributes better, so 'swords' etc. from the base stats are one colour, experience in another colour, hero skills (Might etc.) in another colour, and so on. I change the way + to hit shows, so you could see where all the various + to hit bonuses were coming from, and I think this all this works great.

I've been doing a lot of work for 0.8.9 to get skill stats calculated correctly, e.g. so Barbarians get experience, adamantium, etc. bonuses to their Thrown attacks, and Draconians get bonuses to their Fire Breath. Now I'm finding the same problem with these.

e.g. a unit of Chaos Channeled Barbarian Spearmen built with Adamantium weapons in a city with a Fighter's guild when attacking a Chaos Node have Thrown weapon strength 6. Why?
1 from basic unit stats
1 from experience
2 from having Adamantium weapons
2 for being a Chaos Channeled unit under the effect of a Chaos Node Aura

and it really bugs me that I can't see where the '6' is coming from. I'm considering changing how the unit info screen shows these kinds of skills - should I show them similar to Attributes (like regular bow attacks), with little axe icons? And do the same for Draconian Fire Breath?

Any thoughts anyone?

Thanks,

Implode.

nice

Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2006 4:45 pm
by Lupinedreams
sounds like an excellent idea! there's going to be mouse-over or right click information screens to let a new player know what the different color codings mean?

Re: nice

Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2006 6:56 pm
by Implode
Lupinedreams wrote:sounds like an excellent idea! there's going to be mouse-over or right click information screens to let a new player know what the different color codings mean?
I was going to draw a key/legend above the dismiss/OK buttons... once I've finalized all the colours :)

Implode.

on colors

Posted: Fri Aug 11, 2006 5:41 pm
by Lupinedreams
speaking of colors, I noticed that in the last version (8.8?) that most of the player colors were shades of brown or tan or beige....maybe that's just the random colors they were given in the games I played with, but it made distinguishing between them annoying *shrugs* nothing that actually impedes gameplay, just an aesthetic thing

Posted: Fri Aug 11, 2006 9:08 pm
by Implode
I've tried to make all the standard wizards standard colours, so after you've been playing for a while you'll always recognize that particular shade of red to be Tlaloc. However yeah, I realise a lot of them are very similar and could probably use some revising.

However I've never changed them since I first put wizards in (0.2???), not sure if you meant you thought they'd changed in 0.8.8?

Implode.

Posted: Mon Aug 14, 2006 12:30 pm
by Lupinedreams
I've only seen one version, I came a bit late onto the scene. Although...there will eventually be room for...how many players were you planning on? 14 people and a handful of CPUs? So invariably somebody is going to have a color similar to someone else's *shrugs*

Posted: Wed Oct 11, 2006 12:59 pm
by VM
i think it would be best if you left it the way it is and if you click on it, have a list, just like with resources in a city.

Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2007 5:38 pm
by elliott20
Yeah, I think you should reserve the nitty gritty details for the people who would actually bother clicking on the stat and reading it one by one.

Giving the break down right there on the normal screen is going to crowd the screen too much.