Indicators and Distance

[DarkNacht]

Game designers often don't know anything about programming.

that's like saying that you don't expect your barber to know anything about scissors/blades and that he can just use random sharp stuff lying around.

Its more like saying that you don't expect your barber to know how to make scissors or blades. Many game designers know the basics of programing but are not necessarily any good at it.

[ImpalerWrG]

Game designers often don't know anything about programming.

that's like saying that you don't expect your barber to know anything about scissors/blades and that he can just use random sharp stuff lying around.

Its more like saying that you don't expect your barber to know how to make scissors or blades. Many game designers know the basics of programing but are not necessarily any good at it.

Where did you get any idea what my expectations or preferences were? I simply pointed out that 'game design' and programming rarely coincide. The reason is that creative design schools generally lump game design together with graphic design, creative writing and other 'artsy' stuff, an these 'right brain' kind of folks are generally the people who go to design schools. When they go to work in the industry they generally have to bounce all their ideas off the programers to even know if they are technically achievable and if so how much work it will require.

If a programmer becomes a game designer they rarely go to schools for it as they are usually already in the industry and get promoted from within, or in the case of Loftar they are indie developers. In the golden days of early game design (Nintendo & DoS) the programmer designed the game and their were no design schools, that's a big part of why indie game have a more old-school feel to them.

[cyberchild]

I, for one, would love a distance indicator in parties and even better in kin. Trick one guy into joining your party or even just kinning you and when he goes home, you can know not only the direction of his homestead, but also is exact distance. So much easier than only knowing the direction, and that only if they agree to a party.

Unbelievable! I did not intend this to be an exploit for griefers and PK's and other game criminals. I just saw this post by Mereni , and Realized people actually can use this data for evil purposes. I begin to regret this idea.

[Feone]

I, for one, would love a distance indicator in parties and even better in kin. Trick one guy into joining your party or even just kinning you and when he goes home, you can know not only the direction of his homestead, but also is exact distance. So much easier than only knowing the direction, and that only if they agree to a party.

Unbelievable! I did not intend this to be an exploit for griefers and PK's and other game criminals. I just saw this post by Mereni , and Realized people actually can use this data for evil purposes. I begin to regret this idea.

Yea, it's difficult to imagine all the consequences of any small addition.

[Kandarim]

Unbelievable! I did not intend this to be an exploit for griefers and PK's and other game criminals. I just saw this post by Mereni , and Realized people actually can use this data for evil purposes. I begin to regret this idea.

People already did. There have been numerous locator bugs, and believe me: you don't want any more about Being able to accurately locate members of your party seems enough for me.

[ImpalerWrG]

You know now that I think about it is probably possible already to do a crude distance indication on the client side by just measuring how much the angle indicator changes by as you move at right angle to the indicator. It would be very crude and require a good deal of bookkeeping on the client side to do the comparison but it's not beyond the reach of a skilled programmer. If this proves to be a damaging exploit then it could be nullified by reducing the angular accuracy of the indicator, an indicator only accurate to 3 degrees would be adequate for the player walking around in the woods but would give very scant information to determine distance.

Also I recall that the client already knows the distance to party members because you in fact do get an X on the map for every member no matter how far they are so the client is actually receiving some kind of relative coordinate and it would be trivial to calculate a distance from that. At least for party members the OP's idea for better or worse can already be done.

[Feone]

You know now that I think about it is probably possible already to do a crude distance indication on the client side by just measuring how much the angle indicator changes by as you move at right angle to the indicator. It would be very crude and require a good deal of bookkeeping on the client side to do the comparison but it's not beyond the reach of a skilled programmer. If this proves to be a damaging exploit then it could be nullified by reducing the angular accuracy of the indicator, an indicator only accurate to 3 degrees would be adequate for the player walking around in the woods but would give very scant information to determine distance.

Also I recall that the client already knows the distance to party members because you in fact do get an X on the map for every member no matter how far they are so the client is actually receiving some kind of relative coordinate and it would be trivial to calculate a distance from that. At least for party members the OP's idea for better or worse can already be done.

I believe the Latikai client already does this.

[Kandarim]

I believe the Latikai client already does this.

as mentioned earlier in this thread, it does.

It would be very crude and require a good deal of bookkeeping on the client side to do the comparison but it's not beyond the reach of a skilled programmer.

I'm pretty acceptant of pull requests. Try your luck