Request: More Information in the Equipment Window

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Originally Posted by MarkovChain

Windower white knights. Facepalm.

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Get a clue, will you. No one is saying they should replicate Windower. Unlike the Windower team they actually have the resources and base code to make it better. All we're saying is that it's possible. If the Windower team can do it SE should be able to do it too. They don't have to do it exactly like it, if they can do it better I don't think anyone would complain. Now go away troll somewhere else.

No that's not what you are saying. We already know what kind of info is available from the dev posts, so posting a pic of windower makes no sense at all. The only purpose was to advertise windower has an exemple of UI improvement which it is not.

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Originally Posted by MarkovChain

Nah when you have to go deep in the source code to adapt to your own need, it means the UI sucks. The reason the guy let the plugins as is is because he loads the defaults one and doesn't configure further. User friendly UI, what is it ? You cannot expect much from people that don't have access to the game code. So stop explaining me I should not express criticism. All they did is display stuff on top of the game screen. We don't want that UI ty. Most people use windower for dual boxing and macros NOT for its poor UI ajustements.

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ummm....no. Users don't have to do anything to the source code. It's a bleeding config file. If I remember correctly, it was simple statements like X=300, Y=100, and Font Size=10, BGColor= 0 0 0 0 (each number represents an RGB value and an alpha value). Simple text files with .ini extension, some even had comments in them explaining how to configure them, or there was a ReadMe file or a web page that covers how to configure them.

Sounds like you've never even read up on the utilities, much less even used them.

Good catch on the yarnball vs recast hiko. I never got around to tinkering with that one--didn't know that it also put the recast list as well. All I ever looked at was Recast in the past, but that only listed the spell/abilites you've used and not the extra info like that one shows the user name in parenthesis in that screen shot.

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Originally Posted by Arcon

Get a clue, will you. No one is saying they should replicate Windower. Unlike the Windower team they actually have the resources and base code to make it better. All we're saying is that it's possible. If the Windower team can do it SE should be able to do it too. They don't have to do it exactly like it, if they can do it better I don't think anyone would complain. Now go away troll somewhere else.

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Bolded for emphasis.

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Originally Posted by MarkovChain

No that's not what you are saying. We already know what kind of info is available from the dev posts, so posting a pic of windower makes no sense at all. The only purpose was to advertise windower has an exemple of UI improvement which it is not.

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No....it was not to advertise Windower at all. The name of the tool was never even mentioned in my post--I think YOU were the one that pointed out which tool was being used. I referenced it as ONE of the the third-party tools available.

The point was that users had already discovered ways to display the information a poster was requesting. The screenshot was just an example of one method used to that end. Go back and follow the actual conversation that was taking place, for heaven's sake:

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Originally Posted by Xilk

Showing Ability recast timers and party/alliance member TP would be fantastic.

That is, on the screen, w/out having to enter a command.

As far as how to display it....
Recast timers for job abilities/spells has a great model in many games. Show either the name w/ a countdown timer somewhere, or an icon w/ a gray clock hand animation revolving around it. I prefer the name w/ timer, but both might be cool also.

TP should be indicated probably next to party/alliance hp/mp bars. w/ some indicator of where 100% is.

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Originally Posted by RAIST

Both are very doable...already being done by one of those third party tools, found a screenshot:

(image link removed)

Note the number next to the hp/mp bars...that's their actual TP values, not a bar, in the party list, and on the target the number is % of HP.

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***Note that the screenshot covers nearly every aspect the poster mentioned, and that it displays the info in real time without the use of a command line or anything.***

Simply put, it has been proven to be possible, and SE should have better resources and tools to develop a more streamlined way of doing what others have managed to cobble together in their spare time.

SE could implement TP as a third colored bar below the name, with sub-bars colored black (no TP), blue (partial TP, 0-99.9) or green (100%,200%,300% TP)
████ ████ ████
████ ████ ████
████ ████ ████
████ ████ ████
████ ████ ████
████ ████ ████
████ ████ ████

(Just a crude ascii representation :cool:)
This should work for PS2s as well.

High-res version of the menu could then (optionally) support full HP/MP/TP numbers for PC/360.

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Originally Posted by Economizer

If it isn't too much to ask, was something like the Magian Specs or an NPC as a way to view extended stats as a temporary measure still unfeasible in terms of the limits of game data that can be sent?

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This is an absolutely fantastic suggestion and one that totally addresses the concerns outlined by Camate in his post. The hidden player stats don't need to be known in real time but having an ability to query those stats would be very useful.

I'd even welcome a clunky command line style interface to query stats one by one, such as:

/query "ranged attack"

yes yes yes and YES! something to get an idea of the hidden stats! I am so sick of being on COR and seeing like 100 attack because i have a staff equipped, and that's it, when what i really want to see in is my Ranged Attack! While i would like to be able to see acc Racc Ratk eva macc and the like with the same ease as i can atk and def, just having an npc would help tremendously when building for anything specific, like say slugshot, or enfeebles.

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Way to many information useless in there. Seing others TP as WHM is totally useless,

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It's not like you'd be forced to look at that information if you don't want to see it, not that I even agree with your notion. I want to know the state of the battle regardless of the job I'm on.

Distance, recast timers, and tp/targetHP%. (Ignore the FPS counter).
No clutter, nothing really looks extremely out of place, and still easily accessible. This sort of thing is completely do-able by SE.

And yes, while not pretty, the windower UI is an improvement from what we currently have, which is NONE of these things.

http://i.minus.com/jbnt64aiQ9C5Q7.bmp

The third party windower does not look very good and it does not fit visually with the rest of the game at all, but this is understandable and to be expected when you do not have access to the game's code. However, it is showing players the information they want/need to know exactly when and where they need to see it. The plugins all use information that is already in the client's local memory, and therefore the implementation of these features in the official user interface would not lead to increased bandwidth usage or server load.

These screenshots are not posted to show the developers an example of a well-designed user interface, but to show them what sort of information it is easy to implement in an official user interface without it affecting system load anywhere outside of the end user's client.

You are being ridiculous if you think any of the windower users actually think the plugins look visually pleasing, Markovchain.


Anyway, it would be really, really helpful to see some of the statistics that are not currently shown. I really would like to see accuracy, ranged accuracy, ranged attack and total evasion at the very least. Ideally, I'd also like to see total double/triple/quadruple attack rate, total magic defence/-MDT values, resistance to status effects, magic accuracy, magic attack bonus, and probably a lot of other statistics that i can't remember right now.

If it really could lead to a bandwidth or server load issue, you could perhaps put a limit on how often we could request this data from the server. This information could be displayed in a separate window that wouldn't normally be frequently displayed, and you could limit the client to update it at most once every 30 or 60 seconds, and only when you have the statistics window open. Heck, I personally wouldn't mind if the update frequency was limited to even several minutes as long as we actually got to see this information.

Alternatively, you could store all the statistics of every item client-side, and have the client calculate all the statistics of your current gear set without additional server communication at all!

After all, your current marksmanship skill value is known by the client (displayed in combat skill window), the amount of ranged attack and accuracy from equipment is stated on the items, the client knows if you are on the ranger-job and it knows your level, so it should also be able to figure out how much accuracy you get from the Accuracy Bonus trait. It also knows your current agility, and you could tell the client how much ranged accuracy each point of agility would add. Of course, all this information might not be stored in a way that makes it easy to make the client add the values together, but it is possible to show this data without polling a lot of extra data from the server.

It would likely require a decent chunk of additional programming on the client, and items would have to have easily interpretable values added to them (not necessary visible to the users) for the client to base the total values on. Point is, it wouldn't require additional server load/bandwidth.