Idea: Finished construction notifications

[Decimator]

When a unit/building finishes constructing, its buildpic should pop up on the side of the screen notifying the player that it has been completed. For buildings, this should be accompanied by the building's sound.

Units could possibly have sounds as well, with a delay based on how fast they were popping out of the factory. They could pop up with a number by their buildpic indicating the number of that unit that has been built.

Edit: Unit notifications could also be used only for expensive units, or the unit side of the idea could be cut out altogether.

[NOiZE]

late game you produce a unit every second.

[Argh]

... or less

[Machiosabre]

a popup for finished queue would be good

[AF]

Could easily be done with a groupAI, only I know little about how to program a user itnerface, nevermind load an image into a small window and pop it up in the corner

[zwzsg]

a popup for finished queue would be good

Popups are the spawn of devil. Period.

[SinbadEV]

what I think would be cool is management tools like Roller Coaster Tycoon has, a little pop-up you could position on the screen or close when you are done with it for a bunch of in game statistics... useful items would be:

- list of all units including current heath and job with option to sort based on currently selected units, health, jobs, unit class, movement type... anything available... ability to filter based on pretty much any grouping possible, defalting to "all units" or "selected units"

- Currently contructing units with a list of factories/builders constructing/helping the job

- Kills, team stats

- List of lables (` lables)

- List of recent system messages OR chat messages OR Both (also the verbose messages) ability to filter by team/allies/spectator etc.

all of them would also have the ability to click a link and go to the location on the map if applicable

[Maelstrom]

The Roller Coaster Tycoon way of doing it was very nice. Anything that works rmotley like that would be great.

[Leaderz0rz]

I think building completion is needed..expecially early in the game where you rush and could possibly destroy your enemy but your units need commanding to do so and doing so neglects your base building. It could easily be a toggleable option so those who don't want it don't have to see it. I can understand that if pop ups show for units during end game this could be quite a spam..but if its just a message by the metal/energy bars I don't think it will be in the way that much..and of course you can always make it toggable.

[Kixxe]

What about a bar that shows the 3 latest stuffies built? And then you can click minimize it, just like the minimap.

Offcourse not dragebole and all that shit, but you get the idea.

[AF]

Now that I think about it, a small circular buffer shown in the corner, with a unitsname with a multiplier, and they get deleted fromt he buffer after so many seconds.

So even though you're building lots of a unti it'll never overflow the list, and it'll be presented in a nice format, showing you whats just been built, and the quantities in the last second in which ti was built. This being with a transparent background so it blends with the itnerface...

hmm I have an idea...

[Decimator]

That system sounds nice, AF, though I would suggest togglable sounds for major structures, because finishing factories matters more than units. I'd say, if a structure produces units, it gets a notification sound, and if a constructor finishes its build queue it gets a sound. A hotkey to go to the last constructed item that played a sound would be good too.

[AF]

1: I need sound files if I'm gonna do that, aswell as it being a lot mroe complex since I now have the problem of hundreds of beeps every second and am forced to adopt an entirely new approach to the situation (I originally planned to have it onyl update once a second but realtime rules out a nubmer of methods as beign too slow)

2: I wouldnt have a clue howto do a key combo without bringing the focus on the window I created leaving spring key combos useless, and forcing the user to click on the new thing. That and I dont have a way to move the camera using groupAI, I could just do marker animations though...

[Leaderz0rz]

what kind of sound files do you want? a simple unique sound would be easy..or were you looking for like a voice saying "structure completed"

[AF]

Anything, it was your request, just give us something appropriate.

The ultimate target will be a flash file anyways, I've figured out all the stuff exept for the actionscript to print it.

[SinbadEV]

well... teamspeak manages to monitor key combos from outside of the active app... so it must be possible without a click... I would suggest mapping it to scroll lock, if scroll lock is engaged, show the thing, if it's not don't... it's not like anyone using windows has used scroll lock for anything useful in years (I use it as my teamspeak button because it doesn't interfere with any other programs right now)

[AF]

I know it's possible, only it's beyond my knowledge.

For now your going to get a transparent window with a flash animation inside showing the ino you wanted, that you can move around, that gets shown by a GroupAI assigned to a unit. That is the only way.