Hi guys! Loving Alpha 5 (beta) so far and have a small suggestion with a mighty impact on role-play and that is …
show settler names over their heads so we can identify and call them out by name at a glance without having to click on em. Even if it’s not showing all of the time, it would be nice to only have to mouse-over em and see it pop up.
Could be an optional setting, ie Name Toggle ON/OFF
I apologize if this already on the ToDo List or has been suggestion. Just poked my head in and didn’t say anything similar!
I like the idea with a toggle function. I can see it getting pretty crowded around the campire with Doombring Mephistopheles sitting next to Adamantium TortoiseKiller.
Well, hopefully things like their clothing will help differentiate them, and as time goes on and games get bigger, you’ll start splitting them up - the carpenter in his workshop, the weaver in hers, etc, which should also prove useful.
To go off of @paulsoaresjr idea, how about adding a symbol next to their name to indicate what profession they are as well. As seen in the visual mock up. Just have that information pop up when the cursor is on them.
I mean, we could go all out here and when levelling is introduced, you could fit their level underneath the name (raise the name up so it’s in line with the top of the symbol)?
Is there any other information we might need really quickly?
Profession, profession level, health, certain (de-)buffs, current action (esp for military units).
Can’t think of much else we need, and no I don’t consider names something necessary. That said however, Radiant have said they don’t want to see everyone going around with a health bar etc.
Expanding on the image in @Feashrind’s post, I’d say having a number or fancier icon for the profession to indicate its level, and possibly a thought bubble type thing for critical (de-)buffs would suffice.
I thought about health but then decided that currently you only need to know if a unit is damaged as health regenerates right? So health is probably a bit unnecessary right now.
Very final fantasy esque, I like it.
As for the class image, what about superimposing the level over the class image as a background? As long as you could still read both to know the information.
Yeah may work - though as you say, the key thing is readability. Flashier versions of the icons may do as well, particularly if they’re colour-coded to be the same across all classes (ie “black border = level 0, silver = level 1, gold = level 2” for all classes).
Yeah, one can really get carried away with this and though none of it is absolutely necessary, it undeniably will eliminate some (mis)clicking and even some potentially embarrassing moments of calling someone the wrong name!
Edit: oh, and it should be optional to have these “Nametag” pop-ups. Maybe a 3-way toggle:
I thought about this, wasn’t sure how easy it is to initially understand this - the most recent example I have is of Destiny, when you fully upgrade a piece of gear the box has a yellow outline - it’s just not readily apparent what it actually means (of course if you stop and think about it for a minute it’s all clear but ya know :P).
It does make it awful pretty though.
Actual background colour difference though would work well, but maybe they want to reserve that for items/ equipment? Borderlands/ Diablo/ WoW etc. style. Plus depending on the amount of levels they might have to use all the colours of the rainbow …
I am personally voting for an entire menu subsection dedicated to this.
I want toggles, I want opactiy sliders, Text size sliders, Font changes, Colourblind mode. The works.
I don’t know…I think that it’s just way too crowded honestly to have names and such pop up over these guys. I mean, at just a half dozen sure. But what’s the max number of people you’ll get? Dozens upon dozens would be far too hard to track and then it would go from playing Stonehearth to more like playing StarCraft 2?
Definitely what @Balkin has said - if names and that were always on then I agree it would get far too cluttered, but if it was something that just popped in upon hovering over a unit then that wouldn’t be bad at all.
And you could always have the option of not playing with it on, so everyone’s a winner?