The Mana World Forums

Since most items are being redesigned to use color dyeing, what if an item that belongs to a player or is free to all players appears in color and an item belonging to someone else remains undyed (on the client side) and then when an item is about to become free for all it flashes between color/undyed a couple of times. Just a thought so you know what's yours and what's not.

Tech guys, is this trivially implementable on the long run?

Blinking effects are indeed a powerful tool when it comes to GUI design. But as with all powerful tools, things can also easily go wrong. I'd still like to have it in the arsenal, though.

The problem is that not all item graphics are gray in the undyed form. Some use 100% saturated color gradients for dyeable palettes. Leaving them undyed would give the wrong message for these items. I also doubt that we will convert ALL item icons to use the dyeing system. For a lot of items differently colored versions simply don't make sense.

But there are other options.
-We could send them through a grayscale filter (a trivial operation compared with the dyeing system)
-We could visualize pickup rights with a particle effect (when it's sparkling you can pick it up)

I'd prefer the second option myself. Grayscale can send the wrong message (as Crush put it). Altering the image isn't a good option. This will also probably have to go into 0.1, since eAthena doesn't have this functionality, and I seriously doubt that 0.0.25/.26 got it unintentionally.

Grayscale / undyed items also have the disadvantage that you can't tell items apart which use the same graphic with different dyeing.

I did mention blinking instead of a static color change, didn't I?

So a particle effect for "you can pick this up" and blinking / additional particle effects for "your period of exclusive pickup time is about to end"?

I really don't care the way we mark item drops, just that we do mark drops in someway. I like rotoden's idea but what about an even simpler one: what about using a targeting cursor (like when you target a mob) or an arrow that bounces overtop of the item.

Crush wrote:Grayscale / undyed items also have the disadvantage that you can't tell items apart which use the same graphic with different dyeing.

But it only affects people who are standing around waiting for the drops from some else's kill.