Health bars

[k776]

I added rank icons too. Do they work okay?

As already discussed on IRC, but I'll post here too. It's very inconsistent. Units without a rank should have an icon too, else it appears (initially) not to work.

Honestly? I find them unnecessary and cluttery. Let's see what k776 says.

I don't find them "cluttery", but I do find them unnecessary for now. Do the ranks even really have an effect in the game? Does a unit get stronger as they rank up?

An 'R' hotkey to toggle them on/off would be good.

[Mythos_Ruler]

'R' should be for "Run/Charge" IMHO. I just don't see the need for the ranks in the health bars at all. Even though soldiers get better as they level-up, they will still have the same functions and bonuses, although stats will be a little different.

[Shield Bearer]

a smaller one would be better if we're to have it. but i don't see why that symbol can't go on the icon. i mean it only shows once its selected and when the unit is selected we can see the icon as well.

Edited October 5, 2010 by Shield Bearer

[Kimball]

Nice work Phillip! This was a much needed feature!

[Ykkrosh]

If the player is familiar enough with the unit's plain appearance, then allow them to toggle off rank in the config. I would assume that most first time players won't know 0 A.D. and they won't know history to the extents that the people reading this forum do.

Hmm, first time players probably won't want to worry about micromanaging combat to the extent of separating differently-ranked units, and currently they won't understand what the rank icons mean anyway (we'll need some kind of tutorial to teach them about experience and ranks etc). I've disabled the rank icons for now, to avoid the visual clutter - probably would be good to revisit it once ranks are an important part of gameplay and once we have a way of explaining them to players.

Yeah, I'm color blind, so I'm speaking for a minority. The outline I'd recommend would just be a simple 1px border around the health bar (it used to be a sprite - I think, but I could see how some would think it was bulky)

Ah, I forgot about that problem, and it's a large enough majority that it seems important to address. Maybe this is a case where a configuration option would be worthwhile, so we can default to the cleaner style but have a higher-visibility alternative. Regardless of outlining, is the green-on-red health bar a problem for red-green colour blindness? (If so, maybe we should adjust the brightnesses or put a black line between the two segments or something.)

[Jeru]

I would just allow a choice of different health bar color schemes, like a black and white one or a blue and yellow one or whatever.

[Shield Bearer]

green on black or team color on black could work too

[Wijitmaker]

Thanks Philip - yeah the difference between green and red is my issue, but every colorblind individual is different (I believe a smaller minority of the population are yellow and blue color blind). For me, it would be sufficient if the green hue color was edging towards a yellow (a lime green color) and if the red was darker towards a maroon color.

Example... pure red and green RGBs such as #FF0000 and #00FF00 are contrasting enough for me because the green appear lighter to me than the red.

However something like #808000 and #FF0000 is very hard for me to distinguish the difference, especially in a small health bar.