Highlight useful items for your class (on [C])

One of the main complaints you hear from begginers is that they don't understand what is happening , adding this will surely help solving this problem .

 

First of all, I think the basic idea is good, and visually it also looks good. I have a couple of concerns though.

The highlighting implies a builder can "only" pick up materials, which is wrong. I think that if things are going to be kept intuitive, all objects that can possibly be picked up should be highlighted. But if that's the case, this doesn't really solve as many problems. Objects will still be easier to spot, of course, but that's it. One could possibly change the pickup system so that classes are actually limited to picking up relevant objects.

Highlighting does also not really help when objects are overlapping, which often happens. I've suggested making objects repel each other a little to avoid overlapping, but the idea was not well received.

Some have expressed performance concerns, and how this highlighting could be limited, and how not everyone would want it (being elitist or whatever reason). What if highlighting was only active if help was enabled, so as to cater to newbies?

A valid point was made though. Will it actually end up being used, or is this a "waste" of time? Are there, perhaps, more pressing concerns? Pickup order, for example, has always been an annoyance for me, since way back. Again, I think avoiding overlapping solves that problem, and it also helps with this highlighting idea.

 

Highlighting makes the "useful" items appear to the front, even when these are hidden behind grass, trees, or other "useless" materials. It should be useful especially for new builders because this class is quite more complicated to start with.
Performance is not much of a problem now because it "detects" what items to highlight very efficiently (= spread accross ticks, to avoid lag spikes), the only bottleneck left is GUI functions being dead slow. But then again it runs only when highlighting items, which now is done only after about half a second later.
As for people not noticing the feature, there's no reason it couldn't be hinted as other helps. If newbies turn off help or ignore it then we have an issue with the help not with such features.

About the [R] key: The reason no one knows about it is because it doesn't have any visual feedback. When you tap it without realizing you should be aiming someone in particular, you won't even notice what it's supposed to do (and it's not like the gray arrow is noticeable anyway).

 

It wasn't a waste of time since I had fun coding it (but I think it wasn't fun for Asu to optimize it).

 

Just to make it clear; I did not mean your effort was a waste. I just pointed out what was already kind of pointed out, that perhaps this isn't the best (most important) thing for the developers to spend their limited time on. At least if this becomes a feature no one is really going to use/enjoy. It's a risk.

Also, is this going to cause an influx of lots of new players? It's unlikely, I think, so I kind of wonder why "newbie"-friendly is apparently such a big topic at this point. I doubt people quit playing KAG only because it was hard to locate loot on the ground. It's more likely the game didn't fit with their taste, or they just grew bored (which I feel I can't blame them for, since even I grow bored of it after a while).

It's a small, but nice, improvement that has probably come years later than it should have (in some form or another).

 

It's only me and Asu working on this feature (took 1-2 hours for now), so nobody spent much their limited time, if you care about that.
And this feature won't affect an influx of new players, only ads will. And this feature might help them with getting into the game, yeah.

 

I have hardly ever actually seen dropped goods get wasted, the only time that happens is if a builder covers the goods with some blocks blocks. as someone who does keep my eye's out for dropped goods i like it when someone o the other team doesn't see dropped goods becasue i can take it back to my team or use it myself, i think there should be a sense that you were skilled and kept your eyes open, and the other guy was too busy looking were he was going and becasue of that you can get to pick up his heart, bomb mats whatever. besides we already have auto pick up for class items. i also just find glowing auras visually irritating and immersion breaking. but yes it is true that it could help noobs. so if this does back implemented i hope there in an option in the menu to turn it off

 

Finally a good reason for voting "No"

--- Double Post Merged, Oct 31, 2017, Original Post Date: Oct 31, 2017 ---

Making a detection radius can balance it (Asu's idea), maybe 15 tiles length.

 

If new players might not see it, it could be implemented in the cheatsheet or in the tips compartment.

 

it would be wise if you made it so that players could only detect items that are not obstructed by dirt walls, so if a builder were to look for wood lying around, he wouldn't see the rat tunnel. Not unless you are trying to get rid of ratting, though

 

Items in full darkness are not highlighted.
Maximum darkness is 0, minimum - 255 (max brightness). Items darker than 40 can't be highlighted.

 

I'm pretty sure someone had been playing too much pubg

 

I'll try to host a server today with that change to see how it works.

 

I saw this quite a while ago, and I would like to see how this works. One question, does it only highlight the items your class would need?

 

Yes

 

Okie! Sounds cool