In the spirit of simplicity, we've removed a "feature" for the upcoming 225 release. I suppose I should have asked first, but I'm almost certain that this will be met with appreciation.
The feature of which I speak is the object-associated stat panels. (Note: we have not removed the stat panels! ... read on). Currently you can assign stats to each object and override object.Stat() to display them. In order for an object's stats to be seen, it must be made the current client.statobj. The default value of this is the user's mob, and I'm pretty sure that 99% (if not 100%) of demos have never set it otherwise. In this case, only mob.Stat() is relevant, and it really only applies when the mob is a PC.
The user can also currently change the statobj by right-clicking + selecting and object or by clicking on one of those three buttons next to the stat panes. However, I don't think anyone has ever really done this intentionally either. How am I so sure? The point of that old info-button was to make this feature more accessible, and when I removed that there seemed to be great rejoicing.
So in this new version, we've just replaced all of the Stat procs with one: client.Stat(), and have eliminated all of this clicking business (along with those irritating buttons).
We've also gotten rid of the "target" menus (those with blue text tabs) that currently appear in your panes. The intention of these was to show the verbs that targeted the current statobj (which, as I mentioned, was almost inevitably the usr). But I think they just added confusion and cluttered up the screen. You can still get at the exact same menus by right-clicking the target-obj. It makes more sense that way, anyway.
Overall, I'm pretty happy with the stripped down interface. It's a lot more sensical now. Frankly, I'm a bit annoyed that we took so long to figure it out.
ID:259151
 Apr 18 2000, 12:22 am
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#2 Apr 18 2000, 3:47 pm
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On 4/18/00 1:22 am Tom H. wrote:
The feature of which I speak is the object-associated stat panels. (Note: we have not removed the stat panels! ... read on). Currently you can assign stats to each object and override object.Stat() to display them. In order for an object's stats to be seen, it must be made the current client.statobj. The default value of this is the user's mob, and I'm pretty sure that 99% (if not 100%) of demos have never set it otherwise. I do that in Spuzzum Domain ONLINE! I set the statobj to each object you click on. Granted, it isn't to see the object's stats, but I still do that! The user can also currently change the statobj by right-clicking + selecting and object or by clicking on one of those three buttons next to the stat panes. However, I don't think anyone has ever really done this intentionally either. How am I so sure? The point of that old info-button was to make this feature more accessible, and when I removed that there seemed to be great rejoicing. I've done that intentionally quite often, actually. Any time someone made a description of something and neglected to provide support for displaying it, I did that. A la A Taste of DUNG. So in this new version, we've just replaced all of the Stat procs with one: client.Stat(), and have eliminated all of this clicking business (along with those irritating buttons). We've also gotten rid of the "target" menus (those with blue text tabs) that currently appear in your panes. The intention of these was to show the verbs that targeted the current statobj (which, as I mentioned, was almost inevitably the usr). But I think they just added confusion and cluttered up the screen. You can still get at the exact same menus by right-clicking the target-obj. It makes more sense that way, anyway. Overall, I'm pretty happy with the stripped down interface. It's a lot more sensical now. Frankly, I'm a bit annoyed that we took so long to figure it out. So Spuzzum Domain ONLINE won't work anymore...? | |
On 4/18/00 4:47 pm Spuzzum wrote:
On 4/18/00 1:22 am Tom H. wrote: Not to worry! As I said, it's very easy to soft-code the current behavior: client var/statobj Click(loc,panel) statobj = loc Stat() if(statobj) statobj:Stat() mob/proc/Stat() stat("desc",desc) // ditto for other object types | |
I think this is definitely a good thing, and will actually reduce bugs in games -- I often found that I was unintentionally providing stat info that other players could see when I only intended for the mob's player to see it. Easy enough to fix, but an easy mistake to make.
I will definitely allow for some form of selecting a player or mob and seeing info about them -- but I prefer to handle that myself, given that it should always be filtered through the current context of the game -- rather than have BYOND do it for me.
So thumbs up from me!