[Black Wolf]

Firstly, Custom Status Bars.

Basically, they'd be three blank, long boxes between the target view and the directives window (or wherever's convenient) They could be controlled by sexps to appear, disappear or flash. The use for it would vary from campaign to campaign, but basically the mission designer would simply write something on the box that he wants to show up in mission. Best example I can think of is a SW one...

Say you're using an interdictor cruiser in a mission (Designed to prevent hyperspace jumps within a certain radius for you non Warsies). As you entered the Radius, using a distance from sexp you could make one of the boxes appear (with an apporpriate  warning beep of course ), customized with "Interdicted" or "Mass Shadow Present" or something. Once you moved away again, another (distance from) sexp is used to turn the light off, again, with an appropriate beep. You could even make it flash as you crossed the threshold, or in the last hundred meters before freedom.

This would not, of course, be a solely SW related change. Imagine an asteroid field where you had to locate a specific asteroid (perhaps hollowed out and equipped with some sort of surveillance or espionage gear). Its location might not be possible to pinpoint precisely, but transmission strength could be measured and used to calculate an approximate distance. Your three bars could have been customized to say 10 kilometers, 5 kilometers, 1 kilometer, with the appropriate bar appearing and disappearing as you get closer and closer to the asteroid (or, for extra fun, asteroids). Keep in mind, both of these are fairly possible with repeated sexps (assuming that the bar stays up until told to go off that is).

There are also dozens of other potential uses - indicators for radiation or fuel levels, The prescence or abscence of AWACS silence cones, nav buoy counters etc. etc.

The second modification would be the addition of a customizeable counter akin to the supernova timer. It could be set up to do time (to, say, a self destruct), or distance (to an escorted or important ship), or even to count the numbers of something (say, total friendlies or hostiles, or ships of a specific class).

I don;t know how possible either of these changes are, but I definitely think they'd be useful to mission designers, especially the status bars, so if it's possible, I'm sure there're others who'd like to see them.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Black Wolf
Firstly, Custom Status Bars.

Like it. I can think of several uses for that too

Originally posted by Black Wolf

The second modification would be the addition of a customizeable counter akin to the supernova timer. It could be set up to do time (to, say, a self destruct), or distance (to an escorted or important ship), or even to count the numbers of something (say, total friendlies or hostiles, or ships of a specific class).

I don;t know how possible either of these changes are, but I definitely think they'd be useful to mission designers, especially the status bars, so if it's possible, I'm sure there're others who'd like to see them.

I already suggested having the ability to start a timer on the SEXP thread but nothing seems to have come of it.

This is even better though.

[KARMA]

Originally posted by Black Wolf
Firstly, Custom Status Bars.


Say you're using an interdictor cruiser in a mission (Designed to prevent hyperspace jumps within a certain radius for you non Warsies). As you entered the Radius, using a distance from sexp you could make one of the boxes appear (with an apporpriate  warning beep of course ), customized with "Interdicted" or "Mass Shadow Present" or something. Once you moved away again, another (distance from) sexp is used to turn the light off, again, with an appropriate beep. You could even make it flash as you crossed the threshold, or in the last hundred meters before freedom.

that's a nice idea:)

[Black Wolf]

Buuuuump.

Any chance I could get a coder in here to give me a difficulty/likelihood estimate or something?

Think of it as an Obligation Free Quote

[Starks]

Even though I am not a coder... I can add my input. Almost all crosshairs available today are non-interactive and in fixed positions. Creating something along the lines of your ideas wouldn't be easy but not a daunting task. We already have examples of this. Examples: The missile and target lockon warnings, the useless LAG icon, and other indicators. Coding this is basically using information we already have.

[Goober5000]

As with any new source code feature, no one really knows until they try it.  Some seemingly easy things turn out hard, and some seemingly hard things turn out easy.  Usually a coder has to get fired up about something before he'll attempt to implement it, but once started, it is often finished pretty quickly.

[ZylonBane]

"Special" messages can already be placed on the HUD using the training message interface.

[karajorma]

Yeah but that's a repeatative pain in the arse way of doing things compared to a custom bar.

You could set up the bar with a single SEXP while with training messages you have to set up several repeating events triggered by the function you're interested in e.g distance.

Then while playing the game you have to put up with repeated messages during combat as you fly closer to and further away from the target.

A custom bar is a simpler and more effective way to do this by far.

[ZylonBane]

Umm... no you don't. You just use "training-msg" instead of "send-message".

[pyro-manic]

Bump.

Excellent, practical and useful idea.

Somebody do this!

[Black Wolf]

Originally posted by ZylonBane
"Special" messages can already be placed on the HUD using the training message interface.

Yes, but these aren;t messages - they're status indicators. Training messages are fine :
A - if you only want one status and
B if you only want to indicate when that status begins. With these bars, you'd be able to decide what makes it show up and what makes it disappear, unlike training messages where you can use time to define how long it stays up, but not the players situation.

These would simply be more flexible.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by ZylonBane
Umm... no you don't. You just use "training-msg" instead of "send-message".

What the hell are you talking about Zylon?

Picture this senario. You're fighting the shivans near a Ravana. The brief says that you must be less than 2000m away from it when a certain weapon goes off and preferably under 500m.

Using a status bar you've set up based on distance to the Ravana you could just look at the bar and you'd know instantly how far away you were from the ship at all times.

Using your suggestion on the other hand you'd get a training message the first time you went near the ship and then nothing. Even if you moved 10,000m away from the ship chasing after enemy fighters you'd get nothing!

That's why I said you'd need repeating message events. You need to take into account that the player will move out of range again after the first message has gone off.

Now the example with a Ravana is trivial because you could just target it but there are more complicated examples where a status bar could only be replaced by a lot of repeating SEXP's and even then it still wouldn't look as professional as a bar.

[TrashMan]

BUMP!:D

[Black Wolf]

*Continues to bump*

Hey, it worked for GE didn't it?

[Goober5000]

It took about two months, though.