hello,
in 6.4 the flagholder has the orange flag symbol added at the end of his name above the rabbit in the game. can you please make this feature toggleable? since the rabbit is already carrying the big flag, it's clear that his player is the flagholder so it seems like that little flag symbol makes the player name longer for no important reason. the yellow star being attached directly onto the name took a bit less horizontal space. at least so far multiple players have stated that they dislike the name being made longer by the flag symbol being attached to it.

in the playerlist the orange flag symbol appears at the left side, away from the player name. when we want to QUICKLY see in playerlist who is flagholder, it's sometimes not clear who it is using only a blink of an eye, bcs the symbol is now farther away from the name. when the flag star was still written directly at the flagholder's name in the playerlist, one could always identify the flagger quickly enough.
would be cool if the flag symbol (whether its an actual flag or just the start like before) can be attached directly onto the name of the flagholder in the playerlist like before. this way its always INSTANTLY clear who is flagholder and a blink of an eye is 100% enough to see it correctly.

actually on a second thought, we do we need any symbol at all added to the nickname of the flagholder above the rabbit ingame? since the big flag is attached to the rabbit, everyone who sees that player knows that this is the flagholder. perhaps one doesnt need any symbol there at all.

as for the flag symbol in the playerlist: ofc it looks cleaner this way when its on the side and not attached to the nickname in the playerlist and it works out in most situations. but like i said, sometimes in some chaotic/fast paced moments u only wanna spend a blink of an eye to check in playerlist which opponent has the flag now. and in those moments it's simply easier when the flag symbol is attached to the nickname (like the yellow star was before) and now away from it. so u cant mistake which player has the flag, which is possible when u only spend a blink of an eye checking who is flagholder now when the symbol is on the left side there like it is now.

Personally yes, I strongly want the symbol next to the flagholder ingame. Everything else in CTF is red and blue, so seeing a little orange symbol makes me think "oh this is a flag holder, this is actually important." BlurredD made a good decision adding that to the game. And of course you want it for all the other gamemodes and mutators.

I'm absolutely open to discussion about where the flag (, padlock, star, brain, skull, assorted mutator icons...) should appear in the player list or the chat. I would just caution people to wait a few days before having strong opinions. Whenever there's a visual change, it's really easy to say the old way was better no matter what the change was. First impressions aren't always the most reliable.

One particular problem with having the symbol be on the right of the player's name in the player list is that it looks bad on players with long names. It starts running into their stats and making everything hard to read. If the symbol is always in the exact same horizontal spot in the list, independent of the length of players' names, it should be much easier to find.

yes i get the idea of visually highlighting the flagholder bcs of importance. but we can see it already bcs he is carrying a big flag, even if its red/blue. would it be possible to make it toggleable? in wrn's mutator there are multiple toggleable visual features as well. this way everyone can adjust the settings to their liking.

yes, if the nickname is too long it can also get confusing if the symbol is hidden behind stats, but afaik there are not many players where this applies. myb splat when he changes his nick sometimes XD
however i agree, lets wait a while and play some more before making a final judgement

Regarding the player list and being able to check it quickly, I think we could do well by just moving some things around, here's an initial take:

Current:
Alternate:

Some caveats:

• The current list style always dedicates enough horizontal space for two-digit numbers, here we'd only be doing that if there were 10+ players on the list
• I haven't thought about how to indicate muted players (currently there's an M on the left)
• Putting the gray + on the right end makes it too confused with the ms text, but I do want to do something with the gray +. Right now there are a whole bunch of things you might see there:
  • Red @ if you're the server and the client has a different plus version
  • Gray + if you're not the server
  • Teal + if you're the server and the client is running 1.24
  • Blue + if you're the server and the client is running 1.23
  • Gray ! if you're the server and the client isn't running JJ2+ but the client is running 1.23 and you're running 1.24, or the client is running 1.24 and you're running 1.23
  Not only is that difficult to keep track of, I'm doubtful it's all still useful. This is a system that predates JJ2+ v4.3, when 1.23 and 1.24 became fully interoperable. Personally the only thing I would actually want to know if someone's not running JJ2+, or possibly if they're running an earlier version of JJ2+ than I am (if clients even have access to that information).
• Most of the time you don't care about player ID numbers, but unfortunately they are useful for kicking/banning/muting/forcespectating/etc... maybe they could be hidden unless you're chatting something that begins in / or @?

ETA: some possible muted player designs

i like the idea of having flag symbol being closer to nickname in your alternate version. but if one would login as admin there, would the flag symbol and nickname be separated farther by the "A" symbol?

from what i read in the community, most active players prefer the old design with "S" instead of eyes symbol and the flag symbol (whether it's flag or star) being attached directly to the nickname in playerlist.

can these features be made toggleable so everyone can just select their perfered visual settings?

Originally Posted by t3Kev

i like the idea of having flag symbol being closer to nickname in your alternate version. but if one would login as admin there, would the flag symbol and nickname be separated farther by the "A" symbol?

You can see in the screenshot that I was trying to mark remote admins with the green background, tomorrow I can see about making this a playable test if that would help.

from what i read in the community, most active players prefer the old design with "S" instead of eyes symbol and the flag symbol (whether it's flag or star) being attached directly to the nickname in playerlist.

This would be a much easier discussion to have if these people came here and said these things in their own words, but also, this is a false dilemma. There are an infinite number of possible designs besides eyes and an 'S.' I strongly doubt that the best possible design to indicate anything is a capital S (especially when we want to move away from being English-specific) or an asterisk. These are choices BlurredD made because reusing existing font sprites was his only option, but we don't have that limitation anymore.

So if there are people who don't like one sprite or another, but do prefer a different sprite, it would be so much more helpful if they could say what they like about one sprite and what they don't like about a different sprite. Falling back to 'S' or '*' is not great, we want something that new players can look at and actually understand, but for that, we need people to actually say what their feelings are.

can these features be made toggleable so everyone can just select their perfered visual settings?

Sure, everything's possible, but every option makes the the code is harder to maintain and it would be much more satisfying and much better game design to just have the right solution for everyone.

Like, there are a whole bunch of different possible layouts for the player list, and some of them we just don't bother with. We could put the roasts on the left side of the player name, and the deaths on the right side. But we don't, and we don't even make that a toggleable option, because it's so intuitive that would be bad.

In the current design, having player icons like skulls and flags and brains in a consistent horizontal location is much more intuitive: you can easily find the icon, and then you know exactly where to look to find the name from there. It's slower if they're attached to a bunch of jagged, variable-width player names which you have to scan individually. Again, it's also a problem with long names and/or wide icons: the old design would look pretty bad when playing Condemned or Gold Rush.

The issue you identified in your opening post, that there's too much horizontal space between the right edge of the icon and the left edge of the name, is valid, but also solvable.

And also, keep in mind, this is more toggleable than it used to be! BlurredD added the gold asterisk to JJ2+, and you couldn't do anything about it. Now you can replace any icon you want with any other sprite you want, including a capital S or an asterisk if you're really attached to them. You can use jjPLAYER::iconSet or save over the frames in PLUS_PLAYERSTATEICONS.

Originally Posted by Violet CLM

tomorrow I can see about making this a playable test if that would help.

Okay here's the concept. Very quick to see which player has the flag.

Here's my thoughts:

- What if there is just no icon at all for spectators? They have grey names in the scoreboard and in chat. This communicates more than enough that this player is inactive. Whether or not they are spectating is not so important, whether they are part of the game is. A golden S or eyeballs don't really communicate that a whole lot better, it really just clutters the screen by communicating the same thing twice. And while we're at it, it should be good to also remove the roast 0 and the red death 0 scores from anyone that is spectating.

- I tried the green back panel, but it just looks ugly. I can't really go explain it into detail either since it's subjective, but translucent backpanels without any canvas edge or pattern look very cheap to me. Also some characters like 'y' clip through the translucency. Also, like Kev I didn't notice the backpanel at first since it's behind the text/icons you would be looking for. It doesn't do a good job at communicating information to the player and what that information is. I think for the admin I suggest to draw a small green cog icon instead of the green A, and make it only visible at a double f9 press instead of a single one.

- I don't like that the flag icon exists in both the left side and right side of the player name. Was this not consistently on the right before?

- For further clutter removal, remove the '+' icon whenever server has /plusonly on.

For further clutter removal, remove the '+' icon whenever server has /plusonly on.

Otherwise great feedback, thanks Faw, but I'm confused by this point; isn't this done already? there shouldn't be any + icon showing up in that build at all.

Here's a build with Faw's ideas for admins and spectators.

I don't like that the flag icon exists in both the left side and right side of the player name. Was this not consistently on the right before?

It wasn't very consistent, no. The asterisk was on the right in CTF and DCTF, but on the left in JB and TLRS.

Originally Posted by Violet CLM

Otherwise great feedback, thanks Faw, but I'm confused by this point; isn't this done already? there shouldn't be any + icon showing up in that build at all.

My bad, this is indeed seen and removed in the test versions in this JCF thread, but not in the live version. Will check the new build later today

Originally Posted by Violet CLM

Here's a build with Faw's ideas for admins and spectators.


It wasn't very consistent, no. The asterisk was on the right in CTF and DCTF, but on the left in JB and TLRS.

Looks good!

- Spectator mode and roast/death removal and ping ms in grey is very satisfying. I don't miss the spectating symbol whatsoever and it's one of those changes that seem so simple and better.
- The green cogs upon seeing it I'm not sure about my own idea. The icons do not overlap like the 'A' did and it kind of resembles a flower more than a cog maybe? I'm questioning if a player less familiair with the icons can destillate what those UI icons are meant for. Not saying the icon looks bad, there is also not a lot of pixels and room to work with. Maybe a double f9 press should just spell out the full 5-character word 'Admin' for full clarity? It's longer, but still a short word and with it it leaves no ambiguity. I'm trying to weigh all the options and I think the clarity of 'Admin' makes sense to me for how little extra it shows, besides since it's moved to a double f9 press tab it wouldn't be held onto regardless.
- I prefer the flag icons to always appear on the right side of the name like it was before. It was consistent when chat, scoreboard and player overhead had the flag/asterisk icon on the right next to the player name. Also doing it like that way stops any misalignment of the word/icon for admins.
- Also because of the flag icons the chatlogger no longer logs the flag carriers chatting. maybe it can log a [Flag]?

Originally Posted by FawFul

Maybe a double f9 press should just spell out the full 5-character word 'Admin' for full clarity?

I prefer the flag icons to always appear on the right side of the name like it was before.

Here is where I get off: these would both look worse.

Also because of the flag icons the chatlogger no longer logs the flag carriers chatting. maybe it can log a [Flag]?

It would be pretty silly seeing [Jail], [Third], etc. in the chatlogger, not to mention the AngelScript API would need to be modified somehow. Is it useful looking at the chatlogger and knowing whether people had a flag at the time?

Originally Posted by Violet CLM

Here is where I get off: these would both look worse.

It would be pretty silly seeing [Jail], [Third], etc. in the chatlogger, not to mention the AngelScript API would need to be modified somehow. Is it useful looking at the chatlogger and knowing whether people had a flag at the time?

I suppose changing A to Admin is a big change. Perhaps the icon could be a little bit more refined, sharper around each edge, overlapping like the A symbol and with sharper indents, maybe less indents total.

Also maybe move the green icon further left so there's always room for the flag symbol and the icons always align vertically?

About the chatlogging. On second thought, this is probably not interesting because it says who captures the flag, who loses the flag and who scores. So forget about this.

I think these are good steps towards the right direction. One thing I noticed regarding the flag-icons in the chat, but which may or may not be related to this feature itself;



When using h.mut to teamchat flagholder's health automatically, there is a roughly a 50% chance that the flag icon is not displayed in the chat when a player captures the flag, but I haven't identified any clear pattern to this. It could be also an issue in h.mut itself, so I'm not sure if it's directly or indirectly related, so just an observation.

Back to the main topic; I also seem to prefer the absence of additional spectator metadata and in that sense the player list looks much cleaner to me than before. I personally don't have much of a preference whether the flag-icon should appear on the left or right side of the player name in general, but I sense that the strong preference in the online community (without any concrete statistical data) is that the flag-icons appear on the right side, like previously. The flag-icon itself should be alright, from what I understood.

What if the cog-icon was white? Or would that make it look like a "daisy"?