`Ignore' interface

[fate]

Hello everyone,

I have been trying to put together a small patch that allows players to selectively ignore other players. However, the current user interface is less than elegant and has received some deserved criticism. In order to improve the UI, I would like to ask for suggestions, and in particular for ways in which you expect to use this patch, once it is made available.

First, players are ignored (in the current interface) by right-clicking on them and then choosing `ignore' or `disregard', or otherwise `un-ignore'. These options pick different levels of ignoring that I won't go into yet.

Current `ignore list' maintenance UI

ignore-ui-0.png (106.47 KiB) Viewed 4044 times

The above image shows the current (in-development) `ignore' interface. The list of players you can see here (again apologies to the players I randomly picked to fill this list) is the list of all players that your client knows about (i.e., I picked all of these players by right-click `Ignore' or right-click `Disregard'); the little checkboxes indicate whether these players are allowed to perform a certain action (in order: emote, talk (floating text), talk (to the chat log), whisper (private messages), offer trades). Below are further options for deleting players from the list, and, in particular, to trigger certain behaviour when another player is being ignored (to notify you that you still have them on your ignore list)-- either do nothing, or print "..." over their head, or make their name blink.

As you can see, the interface is very complex. I have found a certain selection of uses of options for myself that I consider practical and reasonable, but I would be very interested in hearing what options you would expect to use in practice.

EDIT
The five options in the above image are as follows:

• `sml' : allow emoticons
• `chat': allow chat messages to float over the head of whoever said them
• `log': log chat messages to your chat log
• `whs': allow whispers (private messages)
• `trd': allow trade requests

[EJlol]

I actually only expects 3 options:
Ignore
Hide
Uningnore / Unhide

Ignore:
I do not want to see the following things: Chat, Chatlog, Smilies, Trade, Whisper.

Hide:
Same as ignore but also hide his sprite. (some people walk around you all the time just to annoy you)

All those extra options are fine but I dont think I'll use them.

[fate]

EJlol,

completely ignoring a player's sprite would be a very extreme form of ignoring, but it might backfire (-> dropstealing, arrows coming out of nowhere, ...). I therefore don't expect to add this feature.

[Black Don]

I would like to now if some one is talking with a visual cue like an empty word balloon just encase I ignored someone out of spite and forgot that I ignored them.

[EJlol]

Items popping out of nowhere isn't a problem for me. About the dropstealing part you are right. Still I like to see that as an option. And maybe you can show his sprite for 2 seconds when he does a "action". Like when he attacks something, pick something up or drop something?

[fate]

Hi,

Don, the idea of a floating image seems to make more sense than the `...' text we have now, as that would avoid confusion.

EJlol, I don't think that the server provides all the information needed to show a player when that player picks something up. For attacking, that would be possible, though. I am still not convinced, but if there are others who believe that this would be a `good thing' to have, I could add it...

[EJlol]

Well you can always use some of these ideas for TMWserv if eathena doesn't support it. I like the idea for those floating images. Why also not use a floating image for trading?

[Crush]

I also think that all the different forms of ignoring are quite overkill. Ignoring someone should either block all ways of communication (normal chat, private chat, trading and emoticons) or what is blocked from ignored characters and what isn't could be set for all characters together.

Regarding hiding the sprite of the ignored character: I agree with fate that it is not a good idea to do this.

[Graham]

I think it would be hilarious if I could set it to ignore someone and make them say "I'm a n00beh" every time they say something.

[Black Don]

Here is how a word balloon might look









and here is the balloon file for you Fate

[Crush]

The guys from the TMW fork Legend of Mazzeroth are currently working on displaying the say texts in speech balloons.

OT: Those screenshots look interesting, Black Don. Are these your maps? Especially the woodland screenshot looks really beautiful.

[Black Don]

The guys from the TMW fork Legend of Mazzeroth are currently working on displaying the say texts in speech balloons.

OT: Those screenshots look interesting, Black Don. Are these your maps? Especially the woodland screenshot looks really beautiful.

No they are just back grounds I slapped together in Gimp to test my clothes on

I always thought it should be like a cross roads were criminals could be publicly punished in a midevil cage hanging on a dead tree

[fate]

Don,

this looks excellent; thank you very much! But the contrast seems a little low against white background; if it's not too much trouble, could you add an outline, please? (The outline needn't be completely opaque, since the icon should not stand out _too_ much.)

Seeing how the poll is going, I am beginning to think that it is defensible to always use the icon, eliminate the GUI choices to pick anything else, but leave in some of the code for some of the alternatives for people who care enough to manually edit their config file.

Thanks again!

[peavey]

.

[fate]

peavey,

perhaps you are right; I should try this with a dropdown widget first. That will unclutter the UI without eliminating the options.