Every day I see discussions about the changers in the F9 list on Discord. Some ask what the new symbols mean, some report bugs - such as player names staying red after a cycle and skull-icon not always visible when player is out.

I made this topic on the JCF, so that it doesn't go unnoticed by developers who are absent from Discord groups.

.::Choose your preferred F9 list::.

Old F9 list


New F9 list


Please only vote if you have played online at least twice in the past year.

Originally Posted by ShakerNL

some report bugs - such as player names staying red after a cycle and skull-icon not always visible when player is out

Thanks, these bugs have not been reported, so I've created threads for them so people can try to identify details.

This poll is well-intentioned but I caution that the results are going to be very blurry. Just guessing at a number, there are probably about a dozen different changes between the two list styles. If you like six of them and are less excited about the other six, how are you supposed to vote? It's the same problem as this poll which asks a single question about three separate settings.

I think for most people (at least for me) its mainly that the flag icon has been moved to the other side. People were used to looking right of a name for many years, now they have to look left. Also, the playerlist has been moved more to the center, causing it to be more of a hinderance. The new icons dont really improve our experience so we are perfectly fine without them.

Originally Posted by master sven

I think for most people (at least for me) its mainly that the flag icon has been moved to the other side. People were used to looking right of a name for many years, now they have to look left. Also, the playerlist has been moved more to the center, causing it to be more of a hinderance. The new icons dont really improve our experience so we are perfectly fine without them.

The icon in the player list can be moved to the right of players in plus settings. Do you mean this?

Good point on the position of the player list being more of a hinderance.

I'm missing a 3rd option: improve new player list. Some changes have been welcomed, such as removing the S icon, removing the scores of spectators, changing plusicons into minus icons, and greying out the ms for spectators.

Some other things are still open for discussion and change. Nothing stops it from reverting some changes. That discussion is happening on GitHub but should probably move to JCF for a broader view.

This poll however is very black and white, and I definitely don't want to back to spectator icons and k/d, because they are pointless features.

I agree with Faw here. I think progress has been made towards a more optimized player list, but it could be even further optimized. I'm thinking of having the ability to toggle between a new style and a more classic style player list, if there is a significant demand to revive the classic style list at least to some degree (just to note that this is already partially possible with the "Icons left of names"-option that can be also found from the Plus-menu). That said, I'm not personally up for a full revert of the player list style.

i agree, if ppl want the old player list back it would be important to differentiate what features of the old list they want back or what bothers them with the new list.

to a completely new player, the old symbols of S and A can be as confusing for new players as the current admin symbol. also if players ask what the symbols mean and they receive an answer, the questions should be solved sooner or later.

bugs are an issue but if they can get fixed it's not an argument to go back completely.

the feature of flag symbol being at the left side of nickname is toggleable, problem solved.

whether the playerlist should be in the center or a bit on the side can be debatable. ig it depends on where u want screen to be occupied.


either way, going back to the old list COMPLETELY would be a bad move. instead, the single features should be modified if many players dislike the new one. like position of the player list or the symbols being used for example. but why on earth revert the removal of spectator stats and S and A symbol? the removal of them is a good thing bcs they occupied screen for no good reason.

Seriously, I don't see why the F9 list needed to be drastically changed. And I've seen the excuse with "newbies not understanding the symbols and letters" too many times now. This is simply not true. In fact, the current F9 list caused much more confusion to players, not even newbies. Personally I find the new admin symbol hideous looking and plain confusing. It looks like some keychain and doesn't resemblance anything that says "this user has admin privileges". The old green "A" could at least give you a hint in that direction.

I agree that the yellow "S" symbol for spectators is not needed since spectators' names are greyed out anyway. And the fact that the flag symbol can be moved is also okay, I guess. Though, I think that we shouldn't have too many more settings added to the game.

About the name spacing for long names, that's just a terrible solution to a user created problem. Blur finally got rid of the spacing that people used to clutter the F9 list with. Please let's keep it that way. If you want to have a neat looking F9 list, maybe there could be a character limit in player names.

More detailed poll here
This goes through every separate, individual list design change that I could think of. If I forgot something anyway, clearly it wasn't for lack of trying!

Originally Posted by Violet CLM

This poll is well-intentioned but I caution that the results are going to be very blurry. Just guessing at a number, there are probably about a dozen different changes between the two list styles.

Haha, no, more than two dozen actually!

Let it be said that the intention of this poll was not to point out what was wrong but rather whether people want to revert or not. Figuring out what it is specifically is always useful and should be done pre-release imo.

Also the option that allows the flag to move back to the right of a players name seems to reset every time you restart the game...

Originally Posted by master sven

Figuring out what it is specifically is always useful and should be done pre-release imo.

Again, this did happen. There was a very detailed discussion, right here in this very forum, lasting over a month, about most of these things.

Also the option that allows the flag to move back to the right of a players name seems to reset every time you restart the game...

Yes, that is how all JJ2+ options have always worked. If you want to save a setting, you can edit plus.ini or use the /savesettings command.

I detect a very defensive attitude. The state of the matter remains that many functions are debatable, whilst some are clearly opposed by most of the community.

1. Yes we agree that this poll was not intended for finding specifics, rather for reverting to the old playerlist, specific bugs could still be located in the aftermath though. (I recommend looking at my entry for the new poll)

2. As can be clearly seen from who voted here, the current active community is largely not represent on this forum and never has been for over 10 years. The only way proper testing can occur and the risk of reverting can be minimized is to reach out to them. Probably the best place for it is the jj2 multiplayer discord. We could talk to a7med to arrange allocation of a proper channel and format.

3. We see that while there is the option to revert to a more similar form of flagholder display, we acknowledge that the fact that this resets and requires one to go and adjust files, raises demand for reverting. As many active players have said: why fix something that wasnt broken.

These are some of the things you could have learned. I hope to see you on our discord soon, with an open mind. Many active players arent going to (re-) make an account here, just as you havent been willing to move to a more suitable platform. Now is the chance to demonstrate the right example. If not, I foresee more reverting in the future.

It's been a month, so this feels like a great time to take stock of people's votes and figure out how to go forwards from here. I'm including screenshots of the poll results because the pie charts are nice, but screenshots of text aren't accessible, so you can still view the results in spreadsheet form too.

Individual question results:

This is a pretty even split, but based on the next two questions, it seems we'll need more information drawn to the left of the player list, so it's going to make sense to move the list back to the right again.



I'm grouping these two together because they're so related. Additionally, Faw wrote in the "Is there anything else" question at the end:

I've missed a question about the position of playerlist symbols (admin, mute). Upon playing I started to be frustrated to see them on the right, inbetween scores and ms. I prefer to group those all left of the player number. (Mute, version, admin, player number) in column order.

Faw had voted 6.6 (right) for the first question but 6.3 (left) for the second question, then forgot he'd done so partway through the survey, so really the first question should also be a 6.3 plurality.

In summary, players prefer the Admin and Mute symbols to be on the left of the player list, not the right. Again, this means it is not practical to move the player list to the left, because that would leave very little room on the screen for gamemode information.


Clear 6.6. preference.


"Don't care" is the winner here. After making the above changes (moving the list back to the right, moving the icons back to the left), I'll see how much room there seems to be and how practical it is to allow two columns. I wonder if people just don't mute each other very much and that's what we're seeing here?


Perfectly even split. Just going to stick with 6.6 because it's cleaner.


Another even split. Again, after moving the list/mute/admin symbols around, I'll have to see which option makes more sense for IP addresses.

IP adresses should be completelyinvisible in game. Only in admin logs... has to do withpotential ddossing

(I combined the free-text responses from this and the next question.)

This seems to be based on a misunderstanding of either the question, the internet, or JJ2+. Let's go over these points:

1. IP addresses have only ever been visible in this way to the server host, not to admins. The question is about the player list, not the /ip command.
2. If you use the internet to connect your computer to another computer, inevitably they will see your IP address. This is just how the internet works. If you don't trust a server host not to ddos you, you should not join their server. Hiding your IP from the ingame player list has zero effect on whether they can ddos you.
3. If you're worried that the server host might be streaming their server, and therefore your IP address might be visible to viewers, you can ask them to enable JJ2+'s Streaming setting.

Clear 6.6 preference.


Clear 6.6 preference.


Okay, this one's hard. There's not an obvious answer here at all. I think you can make a case that a plurality of people doesn't want to see a + next to every player in servers where every player is running JJ2+. Whether to implement that with + or - symbols is a little murkier.

It's been mentioned to me that the - icons aren't currently showing while people are still connecting to the server, out of fear that the information will be inaccurate, but I don't know for sure whether it's inaccurate at that stage or not. I'll have to experiment and see if that would make a difference here, because that might be the reason for some people's hesitance.


Clear 6.3 preference.


Clear 6.3 preference, at least within people who have opinions. This is being discussed in this thread. My worry is that people want to see this information because there's some unknown problem with 1.23 clients that they haven't reported, so if that's the case, I hope it does get reported. In the meantime, sure, they can be distinguished somehow.


Clear 6.6 preference.


Clear 6.6 preference.


Clear 6.6 preference.

Leaning towards 6.6 but blank rows ofscores are particularly unattractive on anunsorted F9 list. What if a dark "-" wasdrawn, or something?

This an interesting point. Maybe, yeah, do this only when the list is unsorted? It's worth trying out at least.


Clear 6.6 preference.


Clear 6.6 preference.

This function resets every time I restart the game. This way Im definitely in favour of reverting.

This was user error. (See my previous reply.)


Clear 6.6 preference.


Clear 6.6 preference.


Clear 6.6 preference.

I don't mind the game mode icons. I don't like the fact that the new feature isbuggy, and therefore the old was better

Currently there are two known bugs, and no clues for how to reproduce the second one. Any contributions to identifying these bugs is appreciated.


Clear 6.6 preference.

To the players who are asking for the flag icon to be redrawn, I don't have time right this minute, but later I'll try to track down the history of flag icon redraws we've had so far, for context, and we can definitely throw ideas around for further redraws from there, once we've identified what issues people may have with the current design.


Clear 6.6 preference.


Clear 6.6 preference.

Like spectatong or zombies, namecolour adequately conveys enoughinformation in this case

This is not true, name color does not change for Out players in TLRS.


Clear 6.6 preference.


Clear 6.6 preference.


Clear 6.3 preference. It looks like we'll be reverting to a green A for now. To the people who would support the gear if it were redrawn, I support your efforts to redraw it, but I've drawn so many different gear icons at this point that I personally need a break.

Debatable if this is useful information ina game in servers where a lot of peoplehave remote admin access

There are indeed some servers where lots of (or all) people are remote admins, but the default server behavior is definitely not that.


Well, this one is absolute chaos, huh? I have another idea that doesn't appear on the poll, maybe we'll try that, and then just keep experimenting with other ideas until we get to a point where people feel happy. This doesn't need to be solved in one update, we can keep trying.


Yeah I dunno either!


Free text responses:

Basically I just didn't like 1) the eyes icon for spectators 2) how freaking long my name looked as "[CDF]spaceboy" plus the flag icon when I had the flag, and 3) how cramped longer names look in the playerlist (almost unreadable) but everything else is good. I think greyed out names with no roasts/deaths indication suggest spectators anyway, so no need for something extra.

The eyes icons for spectators have already been removed, and based on question 16, most people agree that there's no need for an extra icon at all, so good news on this front.

Otherwise, yeah, the long names issue is a tricky one with no consensus on how to solve it! You very possibly have the longest name among active players, so it's no surprise that it affects you the most.

This next free-text response I am breaking into three because I think it covers several different points:

Please do not change anything to the game unless you are sure it does not affect anything except for the fix... I do not see why this new playerlist couldnt have been tested thoroughly first.

In an ideal world, yes! This would happen! Let me be realistic here, however.

Releasing JJ2+ updates is the only reliable way to get code tested.

I've tried public tests. I've tried private test groups. I've tried sending test builds to other people on the JJ2+ team. All of them work sometimes, but in general, the best case scenario is that somebody maybe tests some code a year or two later, because otherwise, no matter how much people clamor for code to be tested, people are not themselves willing to be the ones who test it. And that's just not reasonable. I don't want to put together a feature and then forget about it for years until somebody finally downloads a zip. More to the point, I don't want to still be doing this a year from now! I want JJ2+ to be done!

Please refrain from doing anything that is not fixing.

This is not a good idea.

Please find out how to communicate with the current playerbase. I recommend visiting the jj2 multiplayer discord and website. And I recommend joining zeal duels frequently on Saturdays.

I don't think this is a fair description. It's true that there are people who are using websites other than J2O, and there's nothing wrong with that. There have always, always been multiple active JJ2 fan websites, even if currently we have fewer than usual. But using a different website instead of J2O doesn't make someone the current playerbase, it makes someone part of the current playerbase. People who don't use J2O (or the discord server that J2O links to) are deliberately choosing not to participate in the JJ2 community in many ways. They don't participate in discussions, they don't upload or review levels or tilesets, nothing. There are so many topics I've never seen them react to. There's nothing wrong with being more interested in competitive multiplayer than other aspects of Jazz Jackrabbit. There's nothing wrong with using a different website if it gives some functionality that they want, like tracking player scores across different levels. But there are other people in the community, people who do actually use J2O for example, and it's not fair to minimize them just because they interact with Jazz Jackrabbit in other ways.

And personally, whenever I look at Zeal Duels, it's hosting CTF. I am so tired of CTF. JJ2+ has so, so many gamemodes.

I don't mind the new icons and some decisions, but I really don't like that these features broke functionality. More like: Why fix something when it wasn't broken?

I'm reposting the links to the two known bugs. As for what was broken, I've written about this a lot already, especially in this news post and the text of the google form itself, which design issues were being fixed by each individual change.

The option to turn off team colours in names (mainly for server hosting tests)

The gamemode for test levels should take care of this problem better.

Dynamically widen the score for wider names on top of paragraph 1 spacing, but max like 20 pixels. Acknowledge more just breaks it.

yeah, maybe, that's one option.

I've missed a question about the position of playerlist symbols (admin, mute). Upon playing I started to be frustrated to see them on the right, inbetween scores and ms. I prefer to group those all left of the player number. (Mute, version, admin, player number) in column order.

(Addressed higher up in this reply.)

There is a number next to the server name (on the left). (For example: "2 ZD 2"). I think that numbers should only appear next to player names. There should be no numbers next to the server name. Or perhaps they could be marked in pale gray or with a 0. Beginner players may think that the "player" marked with a number is in observer mode.

I believe you're the one who's confused here. The player marked with a number (ZD 2) is indeed a spectator, a spectator who happened to join the server with the name ZD 2. The server's name is not "ZD 2," it's "Zeal Duels 2." The server host is player 1, not 2, and you don't see them in the player list because they're using idle server mode, which hides them from the player list. When server hosts are not idle, they do appear in the player list, because they are players like anyone else.

Perhaps there shouldn't be a rabbit's head next to the flag bearer's name. It takes up too much space in the background of the game. Maybe a smaller star symbol would be better.

I don't understand this point at all, because as far as I know, there is not a rabbit's head next to the flag bearer's name.


Summary:
For the most part, 6.6's changes have been received positively. The things that seem like they'll need to change back, or change again, are:

• The horizontal positions of the player list, the mute icon, and the admin icon. (And possibly IP addresses.)
• The admin icon itself.
• How to handle long names.
• Indicating (to server hosts) 1.23 clients.
• Indicating (to server hosts) players running a different plus version.
• Possibly how to distinguish plus and vanilla players.

I'd also like to thank everyone for sitting through a very long, very detail-specific poll. We're all in this together to find the best design for the player list--and for JJ2 in general--and granular feedback like this is really helpful.

About the potential ddossing. You dont have to explain to me how the internet works.
Its not about the host having access to your IP. Its about it being displayed on their screen when they are running the game. This could lead to someone screenshotting, recording or streaming (unintentionally) displaying others IP adresses. By merely displaying the IPs in an admin file the host will not be hindered when they do need IP adresses, yet potential ddos risk is lower.

Originally Posted by Violet CLM

I'd also like to thank everyone for sitting through a very long, very detail-specific poll. We're all in this together to find the best design for the player list--and for JJ2 in general--and granular feedback like this is really helpful.

Thank you for taking the time to run such a thorough and detailed poll. It's great to see how much care is being put into finding the best possible design for the player list and for JJ2 as a whole. The opportunity to give granular feedback is very much appreciated.

Thanks DanZeal! I've just released 6.6b based on the poll results and the summary from my last reply. I don't pretend that this marks the end of the discussion... in particular I want to call out these more experimental points, all of which can be edited further as time goes on:

• There was not a clear consensus response to question 10, whether there should be + for plus players or - for non-plus players. Like I said, for now we're keeping - for non-plus players, but making sure that - shows up even when the players are still connecting to the server/level, in case that was people's concern.
• Question 12's consensus merely committed to "1.23+ and 1.24+ clients are distinguished somehow" (to server hosts) without specifying how they should be distinguished. Currently this is achieved through the teal color: the player number is teal, the + is teal (if they're running a different plus version), the - is teal (if they're not running plus). Older versions of JJ2+ used both teal and blue for this purpose in different contexts, but that feels over the top, and blue was too easy to confuse with blue players in team-based gamemodes.
• Almost everyone liked hiding the roast/death/etc. numbers for spectators, but there was a free-text answer suggesting that we try drawing - - for them instead of drawing nothing, because it looks weird having empty rows alternate with non-empty rows. That sounded interesting, so we're doing that only when the player list is sorted by player number. Consider the case where player 2 is a real player, player 3 is a spectator, and player 4 is another real player. If your player list is sorted 234, then player 3 will have - - for their stats. If your player list is sorted 243 (or 423), then player 3 will have empty stats. I think this is a nice-looking compromise, but we'll see what everyone else thinks.
• Obviously there was no consensus at all about how to handle long names, so I'm trying a combination of two or three different options. Long names do get tighter spacing but not tighter than ?2. The player list grows or shrinks horizontally based on the longest name, but with arbitrary minimum and maximum widths that I'm sure people will have opinions about. Let's give it a try.

This could lead to someone screenshotting, recording or streaming (unintentionally) displaying others IP adresses.

I would again recommend that if you don't trust someone not to leak your IP address, you should not join their server.

You literally wrote a paragraph about how to treat cells without data, yet you refuse to consider reducing ddos risk which doesn't have any negative implications. This is not something I suggest for selfish reasons. Im sure team UK would have been happy with this in the past. And perhaps some future newbies that download your version trusting it is safe. This has been my last comment regarding jj2+ on the JCF.

Some feedback on 6.6b, except for game version symbols. I hope someone else is willing to take the time to test that

1. The dynamic spacing for the maximum amount (scores moving, ?1 at most) looks good. However for short names the dynamic spacing goes wider than ?0. I suggest reverting that and making the treshold between ?0 and ?1. I don't think anyone likes wider than 6.3 names where it feels like there is gaps inbetween, also it's wider than chat messages. I think this "lower than ?0" also applies to the score numbers too. Double decimal scores feel more spaced out for no particulair reason.

2. Ping/ms needs to be a tad further to the right to not clip or attach to the scores, as happens with more than 4 digits.

3. I actually agree with MS that it's better to hide IP's completely in-game. And it's different from how I filled in the poll. Initially I thought like why not. People can grab the IPs anyway, but I think MS makes a good point that it's easier to leak IPs through streams, screenshots while it's visible from the scoreboard menu where the user goal is to find other information. I can see scenario's where a host showcases a level and shares a screenshot with IPs in jcs-and-modding. I've also only very recently found out there is a "streaming" option in the first place, which I think is disabled by default. The naming also feels ambigious as to what it means, where the first thought goes to streaming your game, not about hiding. (the naming is not indicative of what it's trying to accomplish). And to play devils advocate: You never actually need IPs of players when in-game. While they are in the server you can use the /ban <playernumber> which is sufficient, when they are outside the game the IPlog is required regardless, and lastly banning a IP range is usually a more serious matter of repeated offenses where diving into the IPlog is also required to see how the dynamic ip of an offender works. So I think there is no scenario where showing the IP while the person is still in-game is ever necessary. If it's not ever necessary and there is a risk leaking information, then it shouldn't be there. Not trusting servers is beside the argument, this is about joining people you do trust but they somehow mess up and end up sharing your IP.

4. While spectating, the name shifts ever so slightly to the right and misaligns with the scorenames. Tested while having a double digit player ID. Probably a bug?

5. I think the - - symbols for spectating is a good idea in isolation, but I'm not a fan of having both designs at the same time. Similar to the now removed feature of only showing playerIDs when using a /kick or /ban command. I don't think it's good design to alter the scoreboard in so many different ways. The core design philosophy has always been simple: press f9 once and it shows you the most important information, press f9 again shows to show more things. The core design of that should never change in my opinion. My point is: make a choice, either fully - - or nothing. I don't gravitate strongly towards either design.

Originally Posted by master sven

And perhaps some future newbies that download your version trusting it is safe.

This is a deeply uncharitable framing. Server host have always, always been able to see IPs, right back to vanilla JJ2. A case could definitely be made that should stop being the case, but this is not something new that is being introduced.

I've also only very recently found out there is a "streaming" option in the first place, which I think is disabled by default. The naming also feels ambigious as to what it means, where the first thought goes to streaming your game, not about hiding. (the naming is not indicative of what it's trying to accomplish).

It's by analogy to Discord's streaming option, which has the same effect of hiding sensitive information in case you are streaming your screen, though it also tries to prevent you from playing copyrighted music. It was introduced last July.

Originally Posted by FawFul

However for short names the dynamic spacing goes wider than ?0. I suggest reverting that and making the treshold between ?0 and ?1. I don't think anyone likes wider than 6.3 names where it feels like there is gaps inbetween, also it's wider than chat messages.

This is not true. The name spacing range is from ?0 (jjTEXTAPPEARANCE::spacing = 0) to ?2 (= -2). All of these are narrower than chat messages, which default to ?/ (= 1).

To be clear, I'm not stating that the range cannot change, only that you're not describing how JJ2 works.

I think this "lower than ?0" also applies to the score numbers too.

This is also not true.

2. Ping/ms needs to be a tad further to the right to not clip or attach to the scores, as happens with more than 4 digits.

Thanks, that's a good report and should be easy to fix.

4. While spectating, the name shifts ever so slightly to the right and misaligns with the scorenames. Tested while having a double digit player ID. Probably a bug?

Are you seeing this for someone with a colored name? My current guess is that the code for drawing dark text is advancing a pixel when it encounters a | character, rather than skip over it completely. Don't know if this is new behavior or not.

The core design philosophy has always been simple: press f9 once and it shows you the most important information, press f9 again shows to show more things.

This has not changed. It is reacting to a difference in Ctrl+F9 (sorting style) not regular F9 (detail level).

Originally Posted by Violet CLM

This is a deeply uncharitable framing.

Where do I say that this has been added to the game?

You have been making a lot of false conclusions about the reasons for my improvement suggestions.

You should have responded on topic.