Options that shouldn't be

Development discussions for TMW's official client, alternative clients and client adaptations.


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Ledmitz
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Options that shouldn't be

Post by Ledmitz »

This post is to discuss what shouldn't be possible in the client and obviously I'm just stating my own opinions.

I know we already talked Livio in game, but I'll put it here for record. I think people that know the technical side of the client have an edge. Special diagonal move should be enforced, not an option, There should be no removing sprite layers either. People put their work in the game so that it can be seen, not ignored and it also limits the types of quests that we could have had, like finding a secret path. Then there's the more recent one; F key to heal the most damaged player. So that means I don't even have to pay attention anymore and just hit F randomly and I'll have an edge. I have more of an edge if I use the social tab to see who is most damaged, which again seems a bit of a cheat. A player should be forced to deduce what attributes other players have or at least talk to them to know. There's also things I'm unsure of like "Show beings transparency". Are there machines that can't use transparency? Can this be enforced? It's part of the artwork and I'd think even CPUs can do the work, but IDK. I think not allowing transparency *could* limit quest possibilities too. I imagine something like hiding the Wumpus egg behind a transparent shrub, for instance. We have a kidbook that turns a player into a troll, but but it can only be seen if "Enable reorder sprites" is enabled. I won't mention the video options too much other than it would be nice for them to be simplified and possibly moved to the Video tab. Some of the F keys have been mentioned too. Not all are meant for players. I see the time for JackO spawn was removed. I've used it, but always thought it wasn't meant for players. Undress player I just shrug at. I'm the only one who can see so it always seemed creepy to me, but I guess some people, lord knows who, find it funny. I know a lot of these may/will be made available only with certain GM levels, which is great because GMs and Devs, etc would be the most likely players to use or need them. Show level really bothers me because it made inwilt mostly useless, so again a client feature took away game possibilities. I know the argument is to help noobies find knowledgeable players, but equipment and items already show that and if a player wants to hide their status they should have the choice to do so, inwilt use excluded. Show statuses is another one like that. There are already visual and audible clues that can be observed if they are onscreen at the time of casting, consuming, etc. No need for regular players to know what another player is charged with without it being an in game item, spell, etc and some statuses show for the duration or a certain time anyway. Enable remote commands; Is it just for bots or something? Show and highlight warp portals; If the map maker wants the warp to be seen, it is with a warp particle. how it is intended to be seen is how it should be seen. Attack while moving; Is there ever a time a player would want to not be able to attack? Besides, no one can attack while actually moving anyway. I tried with warrior and bow and both have to stop for a moment to make a successful attack so it seems pointless. Attack and pickup filters are debatable, but I do like them. I could also live without them as I can change targets using my specified keys making the game a bit more technical, but honestly I'd rather keep them. Guildbot; I guess this depends on server or something. Is it required on TMW? IDK anymore.

That's all I see. If you take out my ramblings in between, it's really not that many issues, but a friendlier client is more likely to influence players to stick around. A lot of techies play here. no wonder. Thank you to the client developer/s too. I think it's just Jak1 now, but 4144 too.
Last edited by Ledmitz on 06 May 2020, 23:27, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Options that shouldn't be

Post by jesusalva »

Ledmitz wrote: 06 May 2020, 21:53 Show statuses is another one like that. There are already visual and audible clues that can be observed if they are onscreen at the time of casting, consuming, etc. No need for regular players to know what another player is charged with without it being an in game item, spell, etc and some statuses show for the duration or a certain time anyway.
TMWA is dumb and have only a handful of status effects, but Evol2 has a lot.
They can be configured server-side if the server will disclose them or not.

Same goes for player levels; This is also a server packet stuff. Client should always support everything the server informs it.
Ledmitz wrote: 06 May 2020, 21:53 Enable remote commands; Is it just for bots or something?
Do you know that time when kytty makes you leave her spot and go stare at the wall to stop being annoying?

This is what this setting is for.
Ledmitz wrote: 06 May 2020, 21:53 Show and highlight warp portals; If the map maker wants the warp to be seen, it is with a warp particle. how it is intended to be seen is how it should be seen.
Particle engine has always been faulty. It eats a lot of CPU and Memory, and is frequently disabled entirely by players.

+ The server creates and controls a lot of warps, incl. @addwarp ones.
In fact, the servers even creates collisions on their own if they want.
The tiled map doesn't always expects that.
Ledmitz wrote: 06 May 2020, 21:53 Guildbot; I guess this depends on server or something. Is it required on TMW? IDK anymore.
This is what makes guild bot whispers show in "Guild" tab, and to have your guild mates in Legacy in purple.

It can be safely removed when Legacy support nears its endlife.

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Re: Options that shouldn't be

Post by Livio »

Ledmitz wrote: 06 May 2020, 21:53 I know we already talked Livio in game, but I'll put it here for record. I think people that know the technical side of the client have an edge.
Techies always have edge on something (they aren't techies if not). They have edge even at making things incomprehensible and even at making mess. Talking about a context where we should all be the same I believe that techies must not have edges at all.
Ledmitz wrote: 06 May 2020, 21:53 Special diagonal move should be enforced, not an option.
Sure. This will ease speed skill quest a bit.
Ledmitz wrote: 06 May 2020, 21:53 Then there's the more recent one; F key to heal the most damaged player. So that means I don't even have to pay attention anymore and just hit F randomly and I'll have an edge. I have more of an edge if I use the social tab to see who is most damaged, which again seems a bit of a cheat. A player should be forced to deduce what attributes other players have or at least talk to them to know.
I have that mapped on L2 but the problem is that Legacy server doesn't give you the correct info about it so happens to heal who is not the most injured at all.
Ledmitz wrote: 06 May 2020, 21:53 Undress player I just shrug at. I'm the only one who can see so it always seemed creepy to me, but I guess some people, lord knows who, find it funny.
It's not the case of Legacy server but in case of race/gender features that changes game a bit that helps on identifying players capabilities as well.
jesusalva wrote: 07 May 2020, 04:38 It can be safely removed when Legacy support nears its endlife.
Hmm... A bot isn't part of a game server so I prefer to let bots to manage such things in order to fail in case of attacks without crashing server itself. And eventually to spread system load between different machines.
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Re: Options that shouldn't be

Post by Ledmitz »

Livio wrote: 07 May 2020, 06:34 Ledmitz wrote: ↑
Wed May 06, 2020 9:53 pm
I know we already talked Livio in game, but I'll put it here for record. I think people that know the technical side of the client have an edge.
Livio wrote: 07 May 2020, 06:34 Ledmitz wrote: ↑
Wed May 06, 2020 9:53 pm
Special diagonal move should be enforced, not an option.

Sure. This will ease speed skill quest a bit.
I guess they'll need more agility to do it or just have more vit/luck, but actually after speaking to Rill, she said the 'special' movement isn't as smooth when enabled, like maybe choppy for her. If it's buggy then maybe it shouldn't be an option at all but, the point is having a setting to make you move at a different speed diagonally is a bit silly. No one will willingly make themselves slower and all new players have it enabled by default from what I'm told.
Livio wrote: 07 May 2020, 06:34 Legacy server doesn't give you the correct info about it so happens to heal who is not the most injured at all.
That's a partial truth, yeah, but it can tell roughly who is taking the most damage based on the social tab though it doesn't take into account (thankfully) people hurting themselves (banshee, scissors, poison). So the point is to know who is hurt most in a game should require paying attention to the particles and not staring at a status screen that shows info that is never explained how we know it. If it were a mech or sim game, I'd say it's just the system reporting what damages have been picked up by the other black boxes on the network, but we can't give that explanation because mana people don't have circuits, just blood and flesh.
jesusalva wrote: 07 May 2020, 04:38 Same goes for player levels; This is also a server packet stuff. Client should always support everything the server informs it.
Why? These aren't unused variables. They are variables that can be called on when they need to be used. It's techno-babble really because inwilt worked fine before and if the problem has to do with unused variables giving errors somewhere, then they either need not get logged or just sent to null to avoid such issues or make it a conditional variable as in, if this, do that so that it doesn't get reported otherwise.
jesusalva wrote: 07 May 2020, 04:38 TMWA is dumb and have only a handful of status effects, but Evol2 has a lot.
They can be configured server-side if the server will disclose them or not.
My previous comment explains my train of thought, but understandably, some things like PVP should show so everyone can see it.
jesusalva wrote: 07 May 2020, 04:38 Ledmitz wrote: ↑
Wed May 06, 2020 9:53 pm
Enable remote commands; Is it just for bots or something?

Do you know that time when kytty makes you leave her spot and go stare at the wall to stop being annoying?

This is what this setting is for.
Thanks, I always wondered. So it should be only available to certain staff since it only confuses regular players.
jesusalva wrote: 07 May 2020, 04:38 Ledmitz wrote: ↑
Wed May 06, 2020 9:53 pm
Show and highlight warp portals; If the map maker wants the warp to be seen, it is with a warp particle. How it is intended to be seen is how it should be seen.

Particle engine has always been faulty. It eats a lot of CPU and Memory, and is frequently disabled entirely by players.
There are a lot of particle options. IDK anyone that disables all of them, but if only relating to warp particles, which is what I meant, then warps like @addwarp just need a particle to go with the command. There already is a particle for it that was used in Hurnscald many times to go to Easter island and it was used in the Illia quest too. The same particle for some reason appears on Valia now in the Tonori Castle which to me makes it look like she's an active warp zone. Maybe there are different particles because the map changes somehow first? I've wondered about temporary warps and how it's done. The point is we should all see the same thing, not "this is hidden until this is enabled" and an option to disable would seem pointless if it puts a player at a disadvantage.

@Livio if your worried about bot functionality, IDT it would be a concern because official bot devs would/should have access to certain GM levels that would allow the bot to do more, but regular players wouldn't be able to access certain functions/options.

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Re: Options that shouldn't be

Post by Ledmitz »

BTW I really messed up because I said I talked to Livio.. I had devs mixed up and just noticed. I meant to say Jak1. Sorry about that confusion.

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Re: Options that shouldn't be

Post by WildX »

My main concern is the amount of badges and icons on and around the players. I turn off everything in my settings, but by default the player is always walking around with so many floating icons, it kinda ruins the beauty of the game. I don't even care what I'm wearing anymore because to most players I'm just wearing a bunch of icons.

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Re: Options that shouldn't be

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Ledmitz wrote: 07 May 2020, 12:05 BTW I really messed up because I said I talked to Livio.. I had devs mixed up and just noticed. I meant to say Jak1. Sorry about that confusion.
jak1 kindly hosted my bots on his server and even thanks to this you can see us chatting together about tech stuff. So it's easy for someone that doesn't know us enough to be confused.
But actually I'm not a recognized TMW developer: I only made or improved software meant to easy some tasks in game development not related to TMW itself. I believe that community thinks of me more of a contributor than a developer.
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Re: Options that shouldn't be

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WildX wrote: 07 May 2020, 15:24 My main concern is the amount of badges and icons on and around the players. I turn off everything in my settings, but by default the player is always walking around with so many floating icons, it kinda ruins the beauty of the game. I don't even care what I'm wearing anymore because to most players I'm just wearing a bunch of icons.
i thought about just show em on hover the player with pointer and or in chat so we get rid of that icon mess like that (just an idea):
[timestamp][GM-icon][guild-icon] Username : msg
inGame it would look like that:
[22:44] :mrgreen: :alt-7: jak1: Hey guys... we dont have GM-icons nor guild badges here as smileys, so i need to improve it :P

no removing sprite layers / Show beings transparency - this will get a developer and debugging state, enabled by command (hidden for regular players)
key to heal the most damaged player - not possible, you dont get the HP of every player, just in Party u get the "XX/YY HP"
I have more of an edge if I use the social tab to see who is most damaged <-- u cant see the correct state, just what he lost on HP where u have seen it, if u move away (out of render distance) you dont get how much he lost, or if the player got healed
Enable reorder sprites - becomes a debug option, and is enabled by default in future updates
video options - the whole settings section is a bit to much for newbies and i dont know if the relations tab should be a setting? isnt it more a SOC-setting?
Undress player - was general made for "Errored items" so you dont need to see that Error sprite, i would keep it (most users dont use it, and if u change the map, the equip is there again)
Show level / statuses - poll?
Enable remote commands - atm just a GM command lv60 iirc. so only gm's+ can use it (not needed to get removed i think)
Show and highlight warp portals - you can hide warps, so you cant see them in the client, name the warp like #this i think they arnt seen in NAV tab then too
Guildbot yes, the "real guild system" works just in evol2/herc servers, the bot "guild" is still needed

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Re: Options that shouldn't be

Post by Ledmitz »

jak1 wrote: 07 May 2020, 22:44 key to heal the most damaged player - not possible, you dont get the HP of every player, just in Party u get the "XX/YY HP"
I mean there is one in the client now, but it seems to go by social. Mine is mapped to F. Not sure about default.
jak1 wrote: 07 May 2020, 22:44 Show level / statuses - poll?
I'm in.
Livio wrote: 07 May 2020, 16:31 I believe that community thinks of me more of a contributor than a developer.
Personally, I don't see a difference, especially if the bot is useful to ... anyone. :D

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Re: Options that shouldn't be

Post by Hocus Pocus Fidibus »

WildX wrote: 07 May 2020, 15:24 My main concern is the amount of badges and icons on and around the players. I turn off everything in my settings, but by default the player is always walking around with so many floating icons, it kinda ruins the beauty of the game. I don't even care what I'm wearing anymore because to most players I'm just wearing a bunch of icons.
I very much agree on that.
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Re: Options that shouldn't be

Post by Livio »

WildX wrote: 07 May 2020, 15:24 My main concern is the amount of badges and icons on and around the players. I turn off everything in my settings, but by default the player is always walking around with so many floating icons, it kinda ruins the beauty of the game. I don't even care what I'm wearing anymore because to most players I'm just wearing a bunch of icons.
I prefer a keyboard shortcut to disable those temporarily before taking a screenshot.
Ledmitz wrote: 08 May 2020, 01:38 Personally, I don't see a difference, especially if the bot is useful to ... anyone. :D
He got chat, jokes, fortunes, spinning and advanced palindrome detection.
Useful for sure™
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Re: Options that shouldn't be

Post by Hello=) »

WildX wrote: 07 May 2020, 15:24My main concern is the amount of badges and icons on and around the players. I turn off everything in my settings, but by default the player is always walking around with so many floating icons, it kinda ruins the beauty of the game.
On other hand, it very useful for gameplay.
1) You see who is going.
2) You see who they are - friend or foe.
3) Also HP, status and so on, useful during battles.
4) Some monsters could look fairly similar to players, icons make battlefield more manageable.

Beauty makes players to enjoy things for a day, or maybe two. Beyond this point it better to be a good game with sane gameplay, even if usability comes at some cost of beauty to reasonable extent. That's where icons, statuses and so on are damn useful. Plenty of other games have similar things. They even have more e.g. overhead bars showing also players "mana" status and so on, target sharing, "radar" showing who is where on map, ... . While it definitely clutters view, taking place in viewport and scenery and makes it looking a bit strange for sure, it's very, very helpful to see status of other players during MMO actions (like battles). I guess that's why it should be configurable - so those who prefers good look over pragmatic setup can have it, and those who want convenient gameplay also should have it.

Maybe you don't know, but in e.g. shooters some ppl go as far as to disable all textures, using minimal settings and so on. And client should have settings to provide it - otherwise it simply drives away these "cyber sport" nuts that are, ironically, most active and hardcore part of the game who showscase how far human can get under particular assumptions. These explicitly give up all the beauty to have edge in gameplay. MMORPGs aren't as heavy on this, BUT as you can see there're also ton of players who are obsessed on topmost efficiency at all costs as well.

I also guess that when someone mumbles "even cpu can do it" - okay, okay, I know at least 2-3 players running Manaplus on RaspberryPi and playing TMW. And I'm sorry to inform you but this cpu isn't like your overgrown power hungry core i9 on dev workstations. Actually CPU usage has been a problem. Esp with software render. I guess it still a problem, video drivers, edge cases of content, different HW and so on are, ahem, funny. So before removing any of this crap, THINK TWICE. It appeared for a reason. And reason is: players with various configurations complained here and there. Computers can give supriising amount of crap. If there are settings to go around this crap and play - fine, after some chatting around person get things on wheels and (hopefully) stays. If there're not - whoops - it's 100% fatality! The only thing most mortals can do at this point is to remove the game and forget it exists. You don't expect arbitrary players to grok in client code and/or do hardcore code profiling on their own, right?

I'll also ask rather weird question that is for those who familiar with effects vs content: is displaying bitmap via effect also hindered by some of settings? I got idea real problem is that there is no really good difference between "critical" content that MUST be shown (e.g. attempt to display some key part of gameplay on map as bitmap) and "optional" (that is ok to skip if user runs under weak configuration, etc). In perfect world there probably should be some content attribute or so outlining showing this and that is mandatory. At which point devs abusing it would have it hard, getting eaten by players with performance problems - like it meant to be.
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Re: Options that shouldn't be

Post by Hocus Pocus Fidibus »

A shortcut to switch between different configurations (can be setup by user) would be nice.
E.g.:
Config 1: No icons, no healthbars, no floating names ... nothing.
Config 2: attack range indicator for players and monsters, mapview ultra 2, healthbars
Config 3: Guild Icons and Names

An additional key to temporary enable one of the configs while a key is pressed would be useful, too: Sitting in town with config 1. Want to know the names of the players around you and to which party they belong etc.: as long as you keep "default-config" pressed: config 3 is shown.
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Re: Options that shouldn't be

Post by jak1 »

Hocus Pocus Fidibus wrote: 22 May 2020, 08:18 A shortcut to switch between different configurations (can be setup by user) would be nice.
E.g.:
Config 1: No icons, no healthbars, no floating names ... nothing.
Config 2: attack range indicator for players and monsters, mapview ultra 2, healthbars
Config 3: Guild Icons and Names

An additional key to temporary enable one of the configs while a key is pressed would be useful, too: Sitting in town with config 1. Want to know the names of the players around you and to which party they belong etc.: as long as you keep "default-config" pressed: config 3 is shown.
hmm, sounds nice :D

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Re: Options that shouldn't be

Post by jesusalva »

jak1 wrote: 23 May 2020, 05:25
Hocus Pocus Fidibus wrote: 22 May 2020, 08:18 A shortcut to switch between different configurations (can be setup by user) would be nice.
E.g.:
Config 1: No icons, no healthbars, no floating names ... nothing.
Config 2: attack range indicator for players and monsters, mapview ultra 2, healthbars
Config 3: Guild Icons and Names

An additional key to temporary enable one of the configs while a key is pressed would be useful, too: Sitting in town with config 1. Want to know the names of the players around you and to which party they belong etc.: as long as you keep "default-config" pressed: config 3 is shown.
hmm, sounds nice :D
MORE SHORTCUTS D: D: D: D: D:

Personally, I would have these cool settings as things which you could drag'n'drop to the shortcut window >__>
(Actually I would even have the emotes drag'n'drop to the shortcut window, and use Alt modifier to change pages, but whatever xD jak1 is the one coding stuff, so he is the one with "decisory" power over it)

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