Cooldown display

[WaterKnight]

This has always been a problem and I would like to have a good solution at some time/project. Talk is of spell cooldowns. The engine does not permit manually changing the cooldowns ingame, adjusting it to a certain duration or fast-forwarding/rewinding. You may add/remove the ability meanwhile but the user has no good information about how long the ability still needs to recover. You cannot have the fancy graphical filter when you want to freely trigger the cooldown.

So my question is what would be a good method to display cooldown otherwise. Like I have already seen some projects printing them onto a multiboard but this does not properly connect to the command field and icons are small. Or you use the hero portraits regging life/mana in case these are free/of a sufficient amount. Importing tons of icons simulating the cooldown filter by replacement in command field would be expensive. Timers again do not offer an icon, changing the UI is fail mostly and of course it subtracts from the player's vision.

 

[Switch33]

Yeah i agree, hmm. . How about something like icons with numbers representing seconds? tho that would sorta take a lot of work and it'd have issues with multiple cooldowns running at the same time.

Hmm, maybe items which show a count down? Though that'd be another object editor intensive method.

You could make dummy spells with the exact cooldowns but always the same icon. I guess whatever method it will be irritating to implement.

I think the best method might be text above the unit that counts down but that'd be sorta messy too. Especially with multiple cooldowns. Maybe using bars. . .But again bars have issues too when there are lots of them.

I guess it's mostly up to you to decide. I'm sorta struggling with this problem as well.

I think i might just stick with bars or over-head display of numbers. Because with a toggleable interface i think it'd work.

 

[Kanadaj]

Local floating texts as bars would work okay, the only issue would be indicating which spell is which cooldown (could be handled by names) so like:
Roar[IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII]

 

[WaterKnight]

This would block the player's vision. There are other texttags as well. Multiple spells can be on cooldown, therefore requiring some space. Texttags are 3d environment-bound, so scrolling would flicker if you wanted to see the cooldowns of the selected unit anywhere. And finally, this again forces the player to translate the names into the buttons right-bottom, would more likely remember the icons than the names.

 

[Kanadaj]

Well you can show that bar on the right side just above the UI if you lock the camera on the unit.

You can also use multiboard with MULTIBARS

It's a pretty straight-forward version, but it needs some JASS knowledge. I think it makes it easy to take the CDs into account

 

[WaterKnight]

In most projects, a locked camera is not the case and you have multiple units. I already suggested that one with multiboard. As for triggering and techniques, these is not an issue for me, can pretty much do anything. Just a question of design and resource-protection.

 

[Kanadaj]

Then I don't understand the question of this topic? we've already told you all the possibilities ^^