[General] For the English native speakers: Words to enhance text highlights

[Ugabunda]

Hi guys,

Maybe a bit of a weird question, but still related to WC3. In my map I use colored text tags to highlight important information.

For example:

However, some information is difficult to highlight, due to the nature of the English sentences. For example " Vengeful Spirit's presence reduces the targets armor by 1." In this case I'd need to highlight almost the entire sentence to make sure the "1" is understood in connection to "armor". Hence I thought I could use the word "induces", i.e. "...induces -1 armor."

For example:

Is this correct English though? Or any better alternative?

 

[Mayday]

Vengeful Spirits should not contain an apostrophe, and it looks like Presence is included in the ability name and should also be capitalized.

Word choice can also assist the player to understand what the ability does, faster, (this matters less in a PvE style map, such as an RPG, as you have ample time to learn what your abiltiies do, but in a PvP hero arena, time is of the essence so it's better to have the most clear description possible.

I'd go with a description more like this:

`Covers the target in mucus, reducing armor by 1, and attack speed by 23%. This ability stacks up to 4 times, further reducing armor by 1, and movement speed by 3%, respectively.
Duration: 5 Seconds
Cooldown: 1.5 Seconds`

as for text highlighting, the way I do it is graying out the less important flavor text, and giving the values a brighter number. This makes it easier to read on the fly, as the color will catch your attention.

So, something like this would look nice for abilities -

|cff808080Covers the target in mucus,|r |cffff0000reducing armor|r |cff808080by|r |cffff00001|r|cff808080, and|r |cffff0000attack speed|r |cff808080by|r |cffff000023%|r|cff808080. This ability stacks up to|r |cffff00004|r |cff808080times, further|r |cffff0000reducing armor|r |cff808080by|r |cffff00001|r|cff808080, and|r |cffff0000movement speed|r |cff808080by|r |cffff00003%|r|cff808080, respectively.|r|n|n|cff8080ffDuration:|r 5 Seconds|n|cff8080ffCooldown:|r 1.5 Seconds

which would look like this in game:

As a side note, on the latest version of the game, mentioning cooldown or hotkeys in any description is useless, as reforged has built in count-downs, and hotkey listings in the ability name.
So, the "Cooldown: 1.5 Seconds" is optional, but definitely not needed.

I would also of course change the red text there to be more in-line with whatever the theme of your game is.

Whatever you decide to do, I would suggest keeping the same theme throughout all abilities/items/descriptions etc. It can definitely make your game look more polished.

 

[Jaccouille]

Too much highlight can also confuse the player, "reducing armor " or "attack speed" doesn't require a highlight from my personal opinion, once the player know that the ability does, he just need to re-read the numbers. In my experience, most player don't even bother reading tooltips so I would advise not spending too much time thinking about it.

 

[Mayday]

They certainly do not, I was just under the impression he wanted more lighting in his texts. My primary point to him was finding a unique looking theme and sticking to it;

"most player don't even bother reading tooltips so I would advise not spending too much time thinking about it."

This doesn't mean you shouldn't bother to make an effort in making your map look nice

 

[Jaccouille]

I understood that author wants his tooltip to be easy to read, we don't know the context of his map.
In doubt I tend to follow original warcraft 3 design, since I know most player have played the original game, I assume they're familiar with its design.

If you think with the following logic, "What do I learn by just reading the highlighted text?", me, a dude who have been spending thousand of hours on warcraft 3, instantly see "-1 armor" & "-23% movement speed", I'd assume that it's a negative buff on enemy cause I don't see anything hinting that it could be a drawback on the caster, "-1 armor" is already pretty explicit by itself, I don't believe you would need to highlight "inducing" or "reducing armor".

If you want to use your own theme, keep in mind that some people are colorblind, other dude like me might have screen color altering soft, such as f.lux, enable, which make in my case, dark blue colored text hard to read.

You can also choose a color theme for certain effect, e.g armor reducing being purple, cause acid bomb is purple-ish, healing effect being green, mana being blue/turquoise, that's up your personal opinion, can also check out successful recent RTS game to see what they've done.

 

[Uncle]

DotA 2 does it best in my opinion. Check out that game's ability tooltips.

 

[Ugabunda]

Many thanks you all! I definitely stick to a defined theme. So armor = yellow, movement speed = light yellow, physical damage = red etc.

@Mayday Corrected the apostrophe About the coloring: For me that's a bit too much coloring. As Jaccouille wrote I want to only highlight the important numbers in relation to the attribute which they affect. And ideally no words should be in between the number and the attribute. Hence I opted for a wording which allows to have this "-1 armor" format.


@Jaccouille Exactly, the highlight is for easier read and these are some good tips to keep in mind. My map is basically just DotA 2 re-done in my imagination.

@Uncle Thanks a lot for this tip! Will experiment a bit with this design: