I have just implemented an enhancement on the test7341 server that makes the voting prompt more visually obvious ( base on the approach the gpp mod Edge took ), players can try it on the server now and post their thoughts on this topic. This should help with the problem of ninja votes. If you have suggestions on how the visibility of voting can be implemented in a better way, you are especially encouraged to post your idea(s).
The next thing to implement is a distinguishable unique sound that is very noticeable but not detracting/annoying (as votes are called often during the course of a game). If anyone has a link to a sound that satisfies those requirements is licensed either cc-by or cc-by-sa, they are encouraged to post those links here for consideration. Here is a link to a website that has a searchable database of free sounds: http://freesound.org/browse/
This visual change makes votes more noticeable
This visual change does not improve the visibility of votes
0voters
This visual change distracts too much from game play
This visual change is not distracting from game play
I don’t see how people can accurately answer the 2nd one, unless they’re playing a match; you never know whether it’s going to be a distraction unless you’re actually playing. At the moment I’m leaning towards the ‘not distracting’, but I would have to play a match with it in operation in order to see for definite.
It is not difficult to change the color, size, and positions. First I think we should see how this implementation works out in development games, then we can try different other configurations (do you have some suggestions at the moment?). I can even adjust it for map changes on the dev games (it only takes a few minutes to implement those formatting adjustments). First is important that the votes are noticeable without being too distracting to the game, but it should look good as well.
different colors (or at least some color mark) for mute, kick and map votes. polls can be left as they are right now. and prevent using custom colors within the text of the poll and reason
it is important that the votes don’t interfere with other elements of the HUD, like the infomation at the bottom left corner when you are on a team, and the chat at the top left corner.
Cyan is less visible than white imo. I suggest using green or yellow or stick with white and make [POLL] and Kick/Spec/Mute/Change to map/ etc each their own colour.
As in:
([color=red]27[/color]) [[color=yellow]VOTE[/color]] [color=red]Kick[/color] player “player” [color=yellow]Reason[/color]: “reason” [color=yellow]called by:[/color] “ur mom” [[color=lime]F1[/color]] Yes [[color=red]F2[/color]] No
([color=red]27[/color]) [[color=yellow]VOTE[/color]] [color=fuchsia]Mute[/color] player “player” [color=yellow]Reason[/color]: “reason” [color=yellow]called by:[/color] “ur mom” [[color=lime]F1[/color]] Yes [[color=red]F2[/color]] No
([color=red]27[/color]) [[color=yellow]VOTE[/color]] [color=yellow]Spec[/color] player “player” [color=yellow]Reason[/color]: “reason” [color=yellow]called by:[/color] “ur mom” [[color=lime]F1[/color]] Yes [[color=red]F2[/color]] No
([color=red]27[/color]) [[color=yellow]VOTE[/color]] [color=Cyan]Change to map[/color] “map” [color=yellow]Reason[/color]: “reason” [color=yellow]called by:[/color] “ur mom” [[color=lime]F1[/color]] Yes [[color=red]F2[/color]] No
([color=red]27[/color]) [[color=lime]POLL[/color]] “poll” [color=yellow]Reason[/color]: “reason” [color=yellow]called by:[/color] “ur mom” [[color=lime]F1[/color]] Yes [[color=red]F2[/color]] No
I am going to try out newb’s and MaeJong’s suggestions to have at least part of the vote prompt color coded based on the type of vote it is. But from games on Edge servers, I have found that the cyan color stands out more when you are immersed in a game than white, so I think it would be good to try out cyan for the foundation color of the prompt in this week’s development games. Edge’s prompt also had an emoticon in it, so I might try one of the current emoticons we have as a placeholder until we make a more appropriate emoticon. I’ll also look into not allowing custom colors in polls/reasons, and re-positioning the prompt as per newb’s suggestions.
Some of the current updates to the voting display include:
The text of the voting prompt is now shadowed like the chat so it is easier to read with various backgrounds.
The votes are now color coded where red is used for votes that can affect the game greatly for all players on the server (like change map, draw, sudden death, etc…), yellow for votes targeted on specific players (like kick, mute, unmute, allowbuild, etc…), green for nextmap votes, and entirely cyan for polls.
The vote timer is yellow while over 7 seconds, and turns red when has 7 seconds or less left.
The positions of the general vote and team votes have been modified.
if you have tutorial mode on, the the tutorial mode test would be hidden while the vote prompt is drawn. Although, because of this, I should probably still indicate in the prompt which key does casts what king of vote still, even though the yes/no counters would not longer be shown.
Maybe the polls and reasons should be separate strings from the main vote string, so that they can be placed on a new line with a slightly smaller font size? This would mean that vote prompts would have 4 lines.
That may seems off subject, but the last image posted by Woodbury reminded me. It would be cool if we could toggle on or off the building zone indicator thingy (I don’t know how it is called but you can see it on the picture). It’s fun when you are building and wants to know where you can build things, but it can get annoying otherwise. I know only builders and spectators (wtf?) can see it, but like I said it would still be cool to have the possibility to toggle it on or off.
Those are called range markers. Besides using the menu to adjust them, they do have cvars, and you could bind “cg_rangeMarkerDrawSurface 0” and “cg_rangeMarkerDrawSurface 1” to a key to toggle them on and off.
