Generate top-down 2d image for ship HUD damage indicator

[KuramaFox]

After seeing that "anti-lag" suggestion, I remembered something that would be cool to have in this game.

The idea is simple:

-Whenever you reboot a ship, it generates a small 2D top-down image of the ship.

-This image would be displayed on the HUD, and would start off looking green. It may optionally have a blue aura surrounding it to represent shield strength when present as well.

-When the ship takes damage, the areas of the ship that lose blocks change color, going from green to yellow to red to black (black representing when there simply isn't any ship at all there anymore).

-Optionally, there could also be a way to see the image of whatever vessel you have targeted. This could potentially increase lag however (from having to send the images, even if they are very small, over the internet), so one option could be to give players (those with good computers mostly) an option to have the target simply rendered in top-down view somewhere on the HUD.

-If it only shows the 2D top-down image for your own ship, then you can reduce lag by only loading the image when you enter a ship, and either not using any sort of target view, or using one which doesn't increase network use (such as a small "window" that simply renders a view of the target).

Spoiler: While from a different game (Freespace 2), this image shows the general gist of what I mean

As you can see, the HUD includes top-down images for the ship you are piloting and the ship you are targeting. Since FS2 has 4 shield banks per ship, it also shows those (Starmade doesn't have this, so unless it gets it we don't need to worry about that)

In the lower left, there is also a 3D rendering of the target so you can see which way it is facing relative to you. This is the sort of thing I was talking about as a potential alternative for the "target status" view that doesn't require sending lots of top-down images around the network.

 

[jayman38]

I agree, with the exception that I think the overall color of the image should be affected by overall damage. Location damage shouldn't alter image part color, because if a ship is built vertically, with lots of floors, you won't be able to tell how far up or down the damage is on the ship.

Example: The antenna farm at the base of a vertical ship is blown off, and suddenly, the center point on your ship image turns red.
From the pilot's point of view, where is that red point on the actual ship?
the antenna farm, the barracks on level 1, the med bay on level 2, the hanger on level 3, the weapons on level 4, the core room on level 5, the control room on level 6, the missile launcher on level 7, etc....

I suppose you could have 3 or 4 different viewpoints of the ship, so that you can triangulate the damaged location, but that's tricky, both to implement, and for the pilot to interpret in the heat of battle. Plus, once you have more than one damage point in line with another, it becomes even more difficult to exactly determine where you are damaged, just by viewing the damage image.

 

[Bladeriker]

The 2D image could be generated based on the longest dimension of the ship, but this would cause issues when a ship is nearly as long as it is wide and the like.

Still a HUD based ship status display regarding damage location and affected systems might be nice.

 

[Ezekial Alexander]

Perhaps a "Damage Control Computer" that allows you to set a plane like we can in build mode. Damage is calculated based on the percent of HP remaining perpendicular to the plane.

 

[Proxima_Centauri]

There are a lot of great things about the Freespace 2 HUD that could vastly improve the HUD in starmade.

 

[Nauvran]

I like this idea but what's wrong with the current way of showing how much S/AHP/SHP you have left?

 

[Sen OTS Tier]

I like this idea but what's wrong with the current way of showing how much S/AHP/SHP you have left?

Nothing particularly wrong with it, but it would be more visually pleasing to some people compared to bars and numbers, especially at a quick glance.

 

[Nauvran]

Nothing particularly wrong with it, but it would be more visually pleasing to some people compared to bars and numbers, especially at a quick glance.

So what "we" want instead is a small picture of our ships with a shield ring around it and a thick line on the ship for armour? then the ship itself being the indicator for system hp`

Spoiler: Awful example with a starmade ship

 

[Sen OTS Tier]

So what "we" want instead is a small picture of our ships with a shield ring around it and a thick line on the ship for armour? then the ship itself being the indicator for system hp`

Spoiler: Awful example with a starmade ship

That about hits the nail on the head for me.

 

[Blobfscrazy]

Even better would be the ability to code this into a display screen like you can using wiremod in the Garrysmod game "Spacebuild"

 

[KuramaFox]

Regardless, this is definitely one of those suggestions that sounds quite cool and would likely be pretty useful, but which would likely be quite difficult to actually code.