Creating a pre-match Borrow / Request overlay in TWD ( mostly required for TWBD )

[apt]

Hey,

I know we can send a chat command to bot, but it's easier if we can just see an overlay on one side or both sides of screen, showing who we requested to borrow, who the other team has requested to borrow, who is on our team as what ships.


Just to speed up the process and make it easier. Sometimes you get bombarded with DMs, chat messages, priv chat messages and we can't keep up. Just lookin out for things which will add efficiency to the game.

Also would be cool ( for now ) if we could also have stars added in TWD as well, so we can gauge balance out. Until MMR system is in place.

I know everyone here likes to fight so imma get 30 replies with slurs and insults, im here for it.

cheers

[RageRitual]

A couple of things that might help:

:matchbot:!list ~list shows who is been added in, shows who has left and I think it even shows what ships people are in for base.

:matchbot:!lb ~list borrows command shows who has done the borrow me command to the bot.

:matchbot:!cap cap command shows who is in the arena that can add people for either team if you need to co-ordinate adding with someone on other team.

?lines=50 (or whatever your screen res can handle) might help when setting up a game, naturally you can just do ?lines=5 after or whatever you normally like.

Having a command that added up a sum of dt ratings per team would be interesting way to keep it balanced. This obviously would not work for new aliases though. Also this would require more dev work and we have a tiny dev team.

[apt]

yes but the point is not to type because chat is already flooded with streaming messages

[qan]

Agree that it would be useful. Unfortunately, we operate in a sort of development limbo in which we're not able to modify the actual game code. To create an overlay (for example, as seen in elim) requires a lot of work; it's one giant hack, really, though a smart hack.

I've thought about having some external app that allows you to communicate with the bots, and could display information in a more human-readable fashion than a wall of text. Something on your phone, maybe. TW Copilot. Would be a great project for some young blood, but there are a million other free games these days, so we don't really have the new talent influx.

[Rab]

could the same be achieved by putting everyone in little safe boxes?

art:

[qan]

That could work, yes. You'd need people to be placed in-game for it to work, though. All that would mean is the loss of spec chat before a game, so everything would need to be public.

A simpler method would probably just be setting people to a freq. Again, some people might get annoyed that they lose their ability to speak in spec chat when moved to a freq (or box) simply because someone's requested to borrow them. A solution there could be just muting spec chat entirely while a game is starting, and asking that everyone speaks in public chat.

Another option would be just to have a command that shows all of this information concisely.

[daresound]

Seeing that an LVZ overlay is too much to ask...
Submitting my vote of disapproval for placing me in the corner for a borrow request... I'll likely not even !bm if you'll take me out of spec for it, potentially under the view of 20 other players, floating there alone, silently. I'll take my chances.

Alternatively, could we have a ^Dare/~Dare enter the arena and drop into that box? I'm recalling the HZ recordings, and have no idea the involvement I'm asking.

Even matchbot dropping some lines in blue chat could be an improvement, maybe one line including all borrows, each time one is added. The issue is that each singular borrow is getting lost in a flood of green.

Any contrast helps, clearly we're too lazy to ":MatchBot:!be"

[qan]

The box idea is interesting, but I agree that it'd probably be unpopular.

Some kind of master command that shows all of the same information in a concise fashion is probably the compromise. Unfortunately we can't do colored text or the pseudo-players because we're not running ASSS.


Would something that shows all this via one command actually be useful?

Freq 0 Players:
Freq 1 Players:
Available pool: (Both as seen on !benchers and those not, with a separation between the two? Or just !be players? Could include a symbol if they have been requested)
Requested Borrows, Freq 0:
Requested Borrows, Freq 1:
Requested Borrows, Both freqs: (Possibly omitting this category and just having a special symbol in the requested borrow lists for 0 and 1 showing that the person is requested by both)


Could be formatted for easy(ish) viewing. Does that order make sense?
We could omit the requested borrows section entirely and show that information using symbols in the available pool category, too, sorting in some fashion.

(Also, it looks like players added to !be are not removed from this list after accepting the borrow request, is that correct? If so, that seems like it should be changed.)

[daresound]

(Also, it looks like players added to !be are not removed from this list after accepting the borrow request, is that correct? If so, that seems like it should be changed.)

That's correct - just noticed this today. Maybe the single best improvement.
One one hand, Freq 1 received several borrows and is tasked to scroll up and dig through borrows reqd... a cmd to view all reqd borrows would be useful
On the other, Freq 0 is looking for who is available but not yet borrowed, !be with the removal of the accepted would be useful

MatchBot> BORROWS REQUESTED
MatchBot> FREQ 0 | FREQ 1
MatchBot> -------------------------------------------
MatchBot> | Pressure | midoent
MatchBot> | Pawner | beam
MatchBot> | Paky Dude | Warrior
MatchBot> | |
MatchBot> |
MatchBot> -------------------------------------------
MatchBot> | BENCHERS:
MatchBot> -------------------------------------------
MatchBot> | ogron, L-A-S-E-R, rEnZi, saiyan

Here's a format that could work, not sure how it will look on forums

[Rab]

you can wrap it in code tags for proper formatting daresound

yo              |          mama

[BIET]

First off, sorry I'm late to the party.

I'm seeing some good suggestions on how to display potential/requested borrows. As qan mentioned it's a pain to utilize the overlay. However, it isn't nearly as painful when it's actually already available. In the bottom right corner just above the radar there should be 5 rows of 30 characters waiting to be used. Showing borrow info before and between rounds sounds like a good use. One of the original ideas was to display line ups and/or show players with the highest death count which has showing the player's name in common.

If you think this might work please have a go and see how showing all the necessary info would work when constrained to 5x30. Characters include A-Z, 0-9 and most, if not all, special characters found on the normal font image of ss. The font is the same that's used for the squad names top right. There might be room to add 1 or 2 additional assets to help with displaying the info, like a box around the text or a header, but keep in mind that they will be static.

As it's been a while since I messed with the overlay I'll double check to see if the assets are actually there (I only found files saying TODO) and I can provide some screenshots if needed. And if you can come up with some suggestions examples I could render those too.

[BIET]

Got this for now. All i could find on my ipad

[BIET]

The assets are there so I made a couple of mockups to show potential layouts. Light blue text is fixed text and can't change. The status indicators in front of the names would have to be added but should give the necessary info.

The top shows the layout with the squad name as the header and the names of the borrows below that. Alternatively to add 2-4 more names the 2nd row could be used as well, at the cost of making it less readable.

At the bottom all 5 rows are used to show names and has a static header with freq 0/1.

Names can be shown up to 14 characters in single column per freq mode, and up to 6 in double column mode.

[Rab]

3-5 borrows per team isn't really enough (for basing), so we'll have to go with the shorter names.

I'm not sure about the ordering of the names. I notice they are different in the options and key.

I think the middle options are best. Ideally it would show the squad name, but not if it looks shit. Maybe start with bottom middle and see if squad names need to be added later.

[BIET]

Since it's just a grid of characters the layout is pretty flexible. Meaning it could be both the middle option as well as the other two depending on the situation. There should be just enough room to add a 6th row, which could function as a dynamic header row (slightly separated from the rows below to improve readability), to show squad names. Available borrows could be shown at the bottom, spread over all columns, while requests are only shown below the corresponding squad.