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"?

Originally Posted by FawFul

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.

Cog icons overwhelmingly have eight indents, but six does show up occasionally I guess. I can give this a try--it's difficult to get that much detail into an 11x12 pixel sprite--but I also invite other people to draw their own suggestions (and maybe try them ingame by replacing... I think it should be jjAnimFrames[jjAnimations[jjAnimSets[ANIM::PLUS_PLAYERSTATEICONS]] + 6])

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

The trouble here is that there's no requirement that flag-like icons be a constant width. Mutators can give different players icons that are totally different sizes. So for the admin icons to be at a constant horizontal position, they'd need to be to the right of the flag-like icons somewhere.

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 it would be very easy to add a constant * to players' names in the chatlog if they have any such icon, it's just a matter of figuring out whether that would be helpful. Maybe in Jailbreak? Truly I don't use the chatlog much.

Originally Posted by Superjazz

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.

This is how h.mut has always worked I'm afraid, it depends on which packet the client receives first: "you are carrying the flag object" or "you should have a flag icon next to your name."

Probably a more sensible version of h.mut would have the server send all the messages, instead of letting the clients do it--clients make mistakes! This would also fix the issue where a client thinks they get a carrot but actually they don't, so they send a lot of different health numbers (e.g. 2, 3, 2) in quick succession. The server would send custom packets via jjSTREAM and then players could mock up pretend team-chat lines using jjAlert.

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

Like, all white with no shading? That would be a departure from the general font art style...

Originally Posted by Violet CLM

Probably a more sensible version of h.mut would have the server send all the messages, instead of letting the clients do it--clients make mistakes! This would also fix the issue where a client thinks they get a carrot but actually they don't, so they send a lot of different health numbers (e.g. 2, 3, 2) in quick succession. The server would send custom packets via jjSTREAM and then players could mock up pretend team-chat lines using jjAlert.

Sounds like that could work based on the theory!

Originally Posted by Violet CLM

Like, all white with no shading? That would be a departure from the general font art style...

Yeah, unfortunately I'm no visual artist, so I can't say from the top of my head what will look good and what not, so just throwing ideas without further validation.

But a bit beside the topic, would it still be feasible to make the player list reordering with icon-changes optional by using a menu icon-toggle to switch between the modern and classic view? Although I don't have much of a personal preference, these matters seem to be heavily opinionated.

Originally Posted by Superjazz

But a bit beside the topic, would it still be feasible to make the player list reordering with icon-changes optional by using a menu icon-toggle to switch between the modern and classic view? Although I don't have much of a personal preference, these matters seem to be heavily opinionated.

I'm just going to quote the things I've already written in this thread in response to this:

Sure, everything's possible, but every option means 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.

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.

Besides that, it would be really useful if people who have strong opinions could come in and say what those opinions are. There's no way to know what problem people may hypothetically have with any given image or line of code if they won't post about them. Faw is giving his own opinions and feedback, which is good and constructive, but you and kev seem to be saying "other people don't like this," and it's really hard to do anything with that. What, specifically, do they not like? What don't they like about it? Why do they feel that way? It would be so much better if the people who actually think these things could speak for themselves so it's clear what their objections are. Can these anonymous people come in and respond to the test builds in this thread and say whether they resolve their unspecified concerns?

For example, off the top of my head, here's a list of design problems that are fixed by 6.4:

• Semantically opaque * (and S) icons were used in all gamemodes. (6.4 solves this by using custom graphics related to the actual game role associated with each icon, e.g. a skull for dead players.)
• Icons were positioned inconsistently: in some gamemodes they were to the left of the name, in other gamemodes they were to the right. (6.4 solves this by making it consistent across all gamemodes.)
• Having icons appear on the right side of the name in the player list caused icons to overlap the roast/gem/etc. numbers, especially with wider icons. (6.4 solves this by placing them on the left.)
• Having icons appear on the right side of the name in the player list makes them difficult to find quickly, because they could be at any horizontal position on the screen. (6.4 solves this by placing them in a more consistent column, and the test builds even moreso.)
• Mutators had no way to assign icons to players, forcing reliance on awkward tricks like inserting the $ character into players' names, editing players' chat messages to insert an artificial * at the start, or drawing an entire separate player list on the screen just for the mutator. (6.4 solves this with the jjPLAYER::iconSet method.)
• Having an orange * to the right of your name would recolor your colon in chat and look especially silly in team chat. (6.4 solves this by having the icon be drawn separately instead of as part of the name itself.)

Here are problems that have been alluded to in this thread:

• Too much horizontal distance between the right side of the icon and the left side of the player name, making it faster to identify a player name than it used to be, but still slower than it could be. The test builds have been focusing on addressing this issue, and everyone seems to be on board with the direction that's taking, but there's still ongoing discussion about how to represent that a player is a Remote Admin.
• The * sprite is 10 pixels wide, but the flag sprite is 14 pixels wide. Kev says some players object to this--possibly because it takes up too much screen space? SJ says the flag sprite is perceived as alright. Not sure what to do with that discrepancy. Would a 10-pixel flag sprite be better? Did people change their minds about not liking it? Unclear at this time.
• The spectating eyes are redundant because spectators' names are already darkened. This is reasonable, the test builds remove the eyes.
• Kev has doubted that it's useful to see icons next to players' names ingame at all. I'm pretty sure it is useful: this is the way you tell when there's a flag carrier on your screen.

I may be forgetting something--let me know--but there are clearly stated reasons why these might be problems. It seems like it should be possible to get to a final design that solves all these problems so everyone is happy and nobody needs to use a "classic" design with a lot more problems. Clearly stated reasons like these are much easier to work with than a general sense that some people dislike something.

Originally Posted by FawFul

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?

Another build

Tried for a sharper cog with fewer indents. As I mentioned, it's impossible to have admin icons a) always align vertically, b) be on the left of player names, and c) not come between player names and gamemode icons. So I tried moving admin icons, and mute icons, and plus version icons, over to the right, where less important stuff lives. And also moving the whole player list over to the left to compensate--it's always been weird how off-center the whole thing is.

Originally Posted by Violet CLM

Another build

Tried for a sharper cog with fewer indents. As I mentioned, it's impossible to have admin icons a) always align vertically, b) be on the left of player names, and c) not come between player names and gamemode icons. So I tried moving admin icons, and mute icons, and plus version icons, over to the right, where less important stuff lives. And also moving the whole player list over to the left to compensate--it's always been weird how off-center the whole thing is.

Thanks. Tried it and here's some thoughts:

1) I like that the cog is moved to the right. And the icon looks a lot better now! The only thing i'm still noticing that stacking the icons overlaps the icons and has a cutoff point for the x and y space it has. This doesn't happen for standard textual based icons the game already had. Like stacking Y characters underneath each other would not cutoff the icons. Is there a possibility to fix that??

2) There is a bug(?) that when you press f9, the player ID number doesn't show up at all, except when you open chat, and put in the "/" in your chatbox, only then the playerID numbers suddenly appear in your f9. It's only when starting your chat message with "/". Is this intended for things like /kick, mute, /ban or /rename commands? I much prefer the idea of seeing the numbers at all times. First, I often want to have a rough idea of how many players there are in the server, for events like bash activity, for making teams and map sizes. Second, even when handling the commands, it makes more sense to first search up a player number and then type out the command action. Now it requires you to preset the command, then go look in the f9 menu and then go back to the command to finish your command action. So chronologically it requires an extra step.

3) Bug with teamname color not updating when switching gamemodes. It fixes itself when using /swap, !swap, spectating on and off or rejoining. Bug also happens in reverse where teamcolor also stays on whenever switching from a teamgame to a free-for-all game (white name). However it the bug doesn't happen when switching from teambattle yellow/green to a teamgame with 2 colours red/blue.

Originally Posted by FawFul

The only thing i'm still noticing that stacking the icons overlaps the icons and has a cutoff point for the x and y space it has. This doesn't happen for standard textual based icons the game already had. Like stacking Y characters underneath each other would not cutoff the icons.

I truly don't think I understand what you're saying here, especially the "cutoff point" thing. The cog sprites are 11 pixels tall and each line in the player list is 10 pixels tall, so yes, they will overlap ever so slightly, but the top and bottom rows of pixels are the same. Meanwhile, the 'A' sprite is 12 pixels tall so it overlaps even more.

There is a bug(?) that when you press f9, the player ID number doesn't show up at all, except when you open chat, and put in the "/" in your chatbox, only then the playerID numbers suddenly appear in your f9. It's only when starting your chat message with "/". Is this intended for things like /kick, mute, /ban or /rename commands?

Did I forget to mention that experiment in the thread? Sorry, my bad. Yes, this was in response to people wanting the gamemode icon to be as close to the name as possible. The numbers were still getting in the way, and it didn't seem like they were actually useful in any case other than when you wanted to whisper/kick/mute/etc. someone. Looking at player numbers doesn't tell you how many people are in the server, because they don't shift backwards if someone leaves, you could have player 2 and player 10 and no numbers in-between.

3) Bug with teamname color not updating when switching gamemodes. It fixes itself when using /swap, !swap, spectating on and off or rejoining. Bug also happens in reverse where teamcolor also stays on whenever switching from a teamgame to a free-for-all game (white name). However it the bug doesn't happen when switching from teambattle yellow/green to a teamgame with 2 colours red/blue.

https://www.jazz2online.com/jcf/showthread.php?t=20822

Originally Posted by Violet CLM

The * sprite is 10 pixels wide, but the flag sprite is 14 pixels wide. Kev says some players object to this--possibly because it takes up too much screen space? SJ says the flag sprite is perceived as alright. Not sure what to do with that discrepancy. Would a 10-pixel flag sprite be better? Did people change their minds about not liking it? Unclear at this time.

Just to clarify, that it was my personal perception. I was personally fine with the flag icon itself from the beginning, but can't speak for the community. I'm not exactly sure whether other people are against the icon itself. I can't get a clear picture.

I think it was the eyes-icon that was clearly throwing people off since the release, so it was safe to remove it also due to redundancy as you explained.

Originally Posted by Violet CLM

Kev has doubted that it's useful to see icons next to players' names ingame at all. I'm pretty sure it is useful: this is the way you tell when there's a flag carrier on your screen.

Wasn't that how the asterisk * worked anyway? By having it displayed next to the in-game player names. It would seem weird to me to get rid of that now, if it was so.

Originally Posted by Superjazz

Wasn't that how the asterisk * worked anyway? By having it displayed next to the in-game player names. It would seem weird to me to get rid of that now, if it was so.

Yeah, the asterisk has played that role since 2007. I think Kev is saying it's always been redundant.

I'm realizing that people may be looking at the screenshots from the first test build and ignoring the download links for the second and third test builds, so here's the current state of affairs:

Increasing levels of detail: single F9, double F9, double F9 with player numbers and mute symbols.

Originally Posted by Violet CLM

I truly don't think I understand what you're saying here, especially the "cutoff point" thing. The cog sprites are 11 pixels tall and each line in the player list is 10 pixels tall, so yes, they will overlap ever so slightly, but the top and bottom rows of pixels are the same. Meanwhile, the 'A' sprite is 12 pixels tall so it overlaps even more.

Did I forget to mention that experiment in the thread? Sorry, my bad. Yes, this was in response to people wanting the gamemode icon to be as close to the name as possible. The numbers were still getting in the way, and it didn't seem like they were actually useful in any case other than when you wanted to whisper/kick/mute/etc. someone. Looking at player numbers doesn't tell you how many people are in the server, because they don't shift backwards if someone leaves, you could have player 2 and player 10 and no numbers in-between.

https://www.jazz2online.com/jcf/showthread.php?t=20822

I think most text based characters have the dark outline underneath, and the cog is smaller / doesn't have it which makes it seem like the cog icons are more glued together?

About the player numbers, this is why I said it's a rough idea, as in an indication.

Also something completely new i've always found confusing. But what does "baud" mean. Are those the packet amounts? if so would it make more sense to call them "packets" instead of "baud"?

Originally Posted by Violet CLM

Another build

Tried for a sharper cog with fewer indents. As I mentioned, it's impossible to have admin icons a) always align vertically, b) be on the left of player names, and c) not come between player names and gamemode icons. So I tried moving admin icons, and mute icons, and plus version icons, over to the right, where less important stuff lives. And also moving the whole player list over to the left to compensate--it's always been weird how off-center the whole thing is.

I personally think the move of player's client metadata to the right side is a step towards the right direction, if we are introducing game mode icons on the left.

I know the cog icon was colored green to resemble of the green 'A' for Admin, but in this case I would rather try to make it look like an actual cog image as much as possible to enable the new memory connection of a cog-icon standing for remote admin access. How would it look like if it was roughly the same color as the spectator name characters (dark grey or so)? My imagination tells me that this would make it look closest to a cog image, which could make it slightly more difficult to spot, but I'm not sure if that is necessarily a problem.

I'm not yet sure what I think of conditionally hiding the player numbers themselves, but I also cannot think of a better option at the moment. This might be another one of those changes that ultimately is a matter of getting used to, but it might also be quite a radical change for some people to digest. I'm also wondering, whether it is better to jump the player names to the right or the game icons to the left in order to make room for the player numbers and make it easier to notice the addition of extra data.

A bit besides the points mentioned regarding the player list; As since the beginning, exceptionally long player names will overlap with the right side information like player stats, as shown in the screenshot below. Since we're touching the player list in general here, I think it could be worth optimizing on the same go as well.



Since I doubt that people will want more empty space between short player names and player stats, I think the only reasonable is to further limit the maximum length of a player name, to let's say 15-16 because that seems to be on the border. If 16 is a safer choice in case of people playing with clantags etc. Then maybe a few more pixels (like 4-8?) could be added to the distance of player stats to the right? Considering this, we probably shouldn't be moving the player names conditionally depending on the display of player numbers.



I ran a quick scan on different player names found on https://jj2multiplayer.com/leaderboa...&mode=CTF_TEAM and it seems that the longest player names (13 characters) currently belong to [CDF]spaceboy and k43rSPLATinum. Otherwise to me it seems to me that people are generally used to short player names.

One question regarding the game mode icons themselves; How many of those is it possible to have on a player simultaneously? Like is there any kind of a combination game mode where there could be more than 1 icon at a time? Or what is possible to achieve via scripting? Etc.

Originally Posted by FawFul

Also something completely new i've always found confusing. But what does "baud" mean. Are those the packet amounts? if so would it make more sense to call them "packets" instead of "baud"?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baud

Originally Posted by Superjazz

I know the cog icon was colored green to resemble of the green 'A' for Admin, but in this case I would rather try to make it look like an actual cog image as much as possible to enable the new memory connection of a cog-icon standing for remote admin access. How would it look like if it was roughly the same color as the spectator name characters (dark grey or so)?

This feels like something that would be easier for you to try out by editing screenshots than for me to upload any number of subsequent builds with slightly different color balances.

(JJ2+'s current cog icon, used in the updater changelog screen, is blue, but I don't pretend that needs to be emulated.)

I'm also wondering, whether it is better to jump the player names to the right or the game icons to the left in order to make room for the player numbers and make it easier to notice the addition of extra data.

The game icons are about as far left as they can possibly go, excluding only the IP addresses that server hosts see.

I think the only reasonable is to further limit the maximum length of a player name, to let's say 15-16 because that seems to be on the border.

I've mentioned to you before that different letter sprites are different widths: somebody whose name is llllllll takes up less horizontal space than someone whose name is mmmmmmmm. Also, people like to use recoloring characters (which don't take up horizontal space at all) or spacing characters (which affect how much horizontal space everything else takes up).

Truncating player names altogether would probably go over badly, but I could get behind truncating them (based on pixel width) only in the player list, in order to, as you say, avoid overlapping the gems/deaths/whatever numbers.

One question regarding the game mode icons themselves; How many of those is it possible to have on a player simultaneously? Like is there any kind of a combination game mode where there could be more than 1 icon at a time? Or what is possible to achieve via scripting? Etc.

https://docs.jj2.plus/plus-angelscri...layer::iconSet
Examples

Originally Posted by Violet CLM

This feels like something that would be easier for you to try out by editing screenshots than for me to upload any number of subsequent builds with slightly different color balances.

I'll see what I can do.

Originally Posted by Violet CLM

The game icons are about as far left as they can possibly go, excluding only the IP addresses that server hosts see.

Right. I haven't hosted a server in ages, so I completely forgot about the IP Addresses. My bad!

Originally Posted by Violet CLM

I've mentioned to you before that different letter sprites are different widths: somebody whose name is llllllll takes up less horizontal space than someone whose name is mmmmmmmm. Also, people like to use recoloring characters (which don't take up horizontal space at all) or spacing characters (which affect how much horizontal space everything else takes up).

Could be, but I guess I expected the difference to be more subtle. I checked now and noticed that having 16 characters of 'l' instead of 'm' results in pretty much half shorter name in pixels. I didn't realize the difference is so drastic.

Originally Posted by Violet CLM

Truncating player names altogether would probably go over badly, but I could get behind truncating them (based on pixel width) only in the player list, in order to, as you say, avoid overlapping the gems/deaths/whatever numbers.

Sure, if you can find a subtle way to truncate them.

Originally Posted by Violet CLM

https://docs.jj2.plus/plus-angelscri...layer::iconSet
Examples

Thanks! So that clarifies to me that it's only one icon at a time. I was thinking of always having the game icons and player names aligned next to each other and trying out with player numbers on the left side of the icon, possibly with some kind of a divider sign somewhere between, but if the space is already running out due to IP addresses, then probably nevermind that suggestion. I'm also not fully confident, whether that would look good in the long run, when players are having no icon next to them anyway.

I guess there ain't no easy solution to these, considering that we have to live with a 800x600 area on a computer screen. Perhaps if we one day raise the resolution to 1024x768 (and break a bunch of level visuals and change how they play etc), we can find more elegant options to try.

I don't think the IP addresses are the biggest concern, in that most players in any given server are not the host, and even the host only sees them when double F9 is on, and they're drawn in front of everything.

Honestly, truncating the names (by pixel width) might be the missing piece of the puzzle here. What if there were three possible left-to-right orders:

• Number, icon, truncated name: default
• Number, truncated name, icon: enableable as "jagged player list" option, similar to "always show pings," for people who are very used to seeing this order
• Icon, number, truncated name: modify the iconSet signature to jjPLAYER::iconSet(jjANIMFRAME@ icon, uint8 param = 232, bool wide = false), so that mutators like Condemned can let the game know that all their icons should be treated as wide and therefore drawn to the left of the player name, where there's closer to infinite space

This does bring back inconsistency, unfortunately, but only for specific mutators, and only because it seems like there's no option that involves leaving icons to the left of numbers that satisfies everyone.

I suppose this would involve leaving the player numbers in all the time. It looks nicer without them, but Faw makes a reasonable point here:

even when handling the commands, it makes more sense to first search up a player number and then type out the command action. Now it requires you to preset the command, then go look in the f9 menu and then go back to the command to finish your command action. So chronologically it requires an extra step.

Originally Posted by FawFul

About the player numbers, this is why I said it's a rough idea, as in an indication.?

Since the last conversation ended quite abruptly because of my short reply: It would be nice if the player name numbering returned. The other reason I described feels a bit dismissed now: When server organizing and taking actions against players I rather not want to go back and forth the chatbox for information, or to have that up when discussing the matter with other admins. Or at the very least show the player numbers on a double f9 press like how everything works and shows up with double F9. It's strange to lock the numbers behind a third option that is related to the chatbox. I can see admins getting confused thinking of the taking actions and pressing F keys on their keyboard before starting a command.

Originally Posted by Violet CLM

Honestly, truncating the names (by pixel width) might be the missing piece of the puzzle here. What if there were three possible left-to-right orders:

• Number, icon, truncated name: default
• Number, truncated name, icon: enableable as "jagged player list" option, similar to "always show pings," for people who are very used to seeing this order
• Icon, number, truncated name: modify the iconSet signature to jjPLAYER::iconSet(jjANIMFRAME@ icon, uint8 param = 232, bool wide = false), so that mutators like Condemned can let the game know that all their icons should be treated as wide and therefore drawn to the left of the player name, where there's closer to infinite space

This does bring back inconsistency, unfortunately, but only for specific mutators, and only because it seems like there's no option that involves leaving icons to the left of numbers that satisfies everyone.

I suppose this would involve leaving the player numbers in all the time. It looks nicer without them, but Faw makes a reasonable point here:

Definitely worth a try I guess. It sounds like a plausible solution at least in theory.

I tried playing around with the gear-icon in the particular branch a bit and I came up with 2 candidates for the palette that would look alright to me. I know these matters are highly subjective and you might not necessarily agree with me, but in my personal opinion these do already look better, albeit it might take some time to get used to this kind of more subtle symbol for showing that a player is remote admin. I also moved the icon 2 pixels downwards so that it is more aligned with the rest of the text like pings and the most top icon will be fully visible too. EDIT: Of course, I forgot about the mute-icon at first, but naturally that would benefit from this y-position tweak too.

For the first option I simply tried the normal drawing mode with the image's original palette. The only nitpick I have with this one is that the icon colors are quite close to the number of roasts/points/whatever, but I would still be fine with it if others perceive it to be fine.



The other option that I would be personally happy with as well, is this more "cold grey" palette shift (by value 8), which on the other hand is a bit closer towards the ping colors for players in game, but still more matt so it should be probably distinguishable enough.



One additional thing I wanted to highlight regarding the display of remote admin icons on Double F9 is that there may be a couple of use cases where it is beneficial to know whether a player is remote admin or not, without extra steps. For example when you start typing in a chat message that is meant to be received only by remote admins via > or /, so you may want to double check who is logged in and who is not. If there is no better solution idea, the remote admin icons could be simply activated upon entering chat mode (if not already activated via Double F9 dashboard).

Another case is when you should know whether you are logged in by yourself in the first place in order to use remote admin commands/chat (but there could be alternative ways to display this).

While writing this message, I also quickly tried editing the code to always display remote admin icons in the player list, but I admit that it does look a bit distractive and overcrowded given the new design, so maybe let's not aim for that in the first place.

What if we contracted the spacing of the text instead of truncating the names?

Originally Posted by Superjazz

I tried playing around with the gear-icon in the particular branch a bit and I came up with 2 candidates for the palette that would look alright to me.

I'm fine with either of these. I had thought that remote adminship was more closely connected to green that it actually is, but for some reason the "Remote Admin" reminder text for server hosts is orange, it's always been arbitrary.

For example when you start typing in a chat message that is meant to be received only by remote admins via > or /, so you may want to double check who is logged in and who is not.

Remember that you can press F9 while chatting

Originally Posted by cooba

What if we contracted the spacing of the text instead of truncating the names?

They're already contracted a little, the spacing is tighter in the player list than above players ingame. I suppose that different names could be given different spacing numbers based on the letters in them, and we'd have to ignore players' attempts to manually change the spacing in their names... though that sounds good in general, it's always a mess when people have negatively spaced names in particular.