New mod: Disable health bars, but color damage numbers based on health

Nintendows

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1296261690

A very simple mod. This disables enemy health bars, but colors your damage numbers (which are forced to be enabled now) based on the target's health fraction. Green is 100% HP, red is 0%, and the color smoothly transitions between them.

Why? Health bars (and name popups) make it difficult to hide or dodge. Health bars also make it super easy to track a target in a pack. But at the same time, it makes sense to communicate how damaged a target is in a game where a unit's health can be affected by so many factors. It's also important to see how much damage you're doing.

The_Welsh_Wizard

You kept the main problem of the HP bars in the mod: That it shows enemy HP.

Nintendows

The_Welsh_Wizard wrote: »

You kept the main problem of the HP bars in the mod: That it shows enemy HP.

If you tried the mod, thanks for the feedback! You'll notice that you only know a rough estimate of the target's HP when you hit them. The exact percentage or values is not given to the damage dealer.

If I could, I would have some sort of status effect like a limping animation or blood decals to communicate roughly how much HP a target has. I think it's important information in a game where a unit's health and total health can be affected by so many factors.

IeptBarakat

Nintendows wrote: »

If I could, I would have some sort of status effect like a limping animation or blood decals to communicate roughly how much HP a target has. I think it's important information in a game where a unit's health and total health can be affected by so many factors.

If the overall game speed was dropped by about half I'd agree with you but that type of information would generally be lost in the midst of the action considering how fast and erratic alien movement can be.

Nintendows

IeptBarakat wrote: »

Nintendows wrote: »

If I could, I would have some sort of status effect like a limping animation or blood decals to communicate roughly how much HP a target has. I think it's important information in a game where a unit's health and total health can be affected by so many factors.

If the overall game speed was dropped by about half I'd agree with you but that type of information would generally be lost in the midst of the action considering how fast and erratic alien movement can be.

Exactly why I can't do it. I don't have the resources to fix alien animations nor add new ones.

Kasharic

Honestly, some people like healthbars, others don't. I appreciate your attempt to find a middle ground and I genuinely like the idea. But people need to just get used to the fact that healthbars are here to stay and that those who don't want to play with them already play on servers/with mods that get rid of them.

Nintendows

I couldn't find any other mods that get rid of enemy health bars.

The_Welsh_Wizard

Comp mod disables health bars for example.

Kasharic

Nintendows wrote: »

I couldn't find any other mods that get rid of enemy health bars.

There is no mod that ONLY disables healthbars, I believe their used to be, but there are a few different mods that contain the disabling of healthbars alongside many other changes.

.trixX.

Kasharic wrote: »

Honestly, some people like healthbars, others don't. I appreciate your attempt to find a middle ground and I genuinely like the idea. But people need to just get used to the fact that healthbars are here to stay and that those who don't want to play with them already play on servers/with mods that get rid of them.

The only half-ass reason to have HP bars is to make the game more accessible. But as we all know, the whole game is unfriendly towards new players, so this feature is like throwing a gnawed bone to pack of wolves.
On the other hand, it deprives players of tactical options. You cannot feign a retreat with full HP, its harder for a pack of skulks to absorb damage without dying, etc...

Nintendows wrote: »

I couldn't find any other mods that get rid of enemy health bars.

Oh, but there is (was?): https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=687900606&searchtext=hellrunner

EDIT:
@Nintendows btw i love the mod, great job! x)

Kouji_San

Ah good ol' Health bars...

As .trixX. mentioned, it was intended to lower the accessibility threshold, but resulted in giving better players, especially vets more information to further rek newbies.

A typical example of a so called "newbie feature" that's actually more useful for more experience players and completely missing the boat. But hey, we've done this conversation and even though we are 100% correct and they simply don't understand the concept of a "noob tube" feature, this is still in the game after all these "years" (just little over one year right)? Why am I not surprised

NousWanderer

Also: the bars are ugly, which only intensifies their offensiveness.

Nintendows

Some of the feedback I have received after testing:

• Too hard for marines since they don't have aim assist against aliens
• Difficult to approach marines as a fade since you can't tell who the good players are by their nametag
• Difficult to pick off low-health individuals in a group
• I like the colors

pSyk0mAn

Not sure, if this was your MOD I played on 8bit server, but I didn't like at all that structures didn't have HP bars either. Made resbiting really weird.

Nintendows

That's a good point. I don't see the harm in putting the health bars back on non-player entities.

Kouji_San

Hmm, weird this mod would remove those. Structures should always have Hp bars, I've always preferred the floor and ceiling based HP rings from NS though Looks way better and actually part of the game, it also means you have less clutter from floating HUD items that way...

IeptBarakat

Kouji_San wrote: »

Hmm, weird this mod would remove those. Structures should always have Hp bars, I've always preferred the floor and ceiling based HP rings from NS though Looks way better and actually part of the game, it also means you have less clutter from floating HUD items that way...

We had them for a short time around b215 but they were removed for some unknown reason, I always enjoyed them more than just another flat percentage number at the center of the screen.

Vetinari

Well, players like to cluster structures together in corners. I imagine that could lead to problems with overlap.

Kouji_San

Vetinari wrote: »

Well, players like to cluster structures together in corners. I imagine that could lead to problems with overlap.

Nah not really, because they only show up on structure you point at and once you look at something else they instantly disappear. It was never an issue in NS in a base stacked with stuff, just check the vid I posted to see it working


@IeptBarakat damn I totally forgot we did have them in NS2 at one point! Seeing those screenshots next to each other, I also totally forgot how washed out NS2 seems to look compared to the contrasty look of NS And that was even a bad frame grab of a video encoding thing called frame-blending

Nintendows

Not a bad idea to bring back the old health circles. I never liked how you can't easily see the health of structures you're biting (or axe-ing).

White_Wizard

Nintendows wrote: »

Not a bad idea to bring back the old health circles. I never liked how you can't easily see the health of structures you're biting (or axe-ing).

Exactly what I was thinking. As a skull, I hate having to constantly look up to see the health of the phase gate when grinding it.

Handschuh

As I already wrote:
- please make it configurable (so you can turn it off)
- you need to be able to see the name
- structures still need numbers/hpbars whatever... I alwasy liked the optic from ns1

The colored Numbers cluttered my view quite a bit and distracted me... hard to keep track of the target in general... if that's the case for me - while I loose about 5-10% accuracy, it is probably even worse for others...

Nintendows

Handschuh wrote: »

- you need to be able to see the name

How do you suggest putting names back?

FYI I did add hp bars back for structures and non-player units.

Handschuh

@Nintendows
a) the same way it was shown before? It's bad - especially for the weaker guys to not know who that is... ^^

b) I've got a new issue: BABBLERS and HP Damagenumbers
Fighting a gorge is especially frustrating and confusing. Since you constantly see different colors due to the babblers... After fighting against the gorges for a while I can adapt distinguish between the HP-Color of the gorge and the babblers... but it still feels extremely bad.

For me it would be fine to have a checkbox that I can disable the damagenumbers for babblers completely... (or structures and babblers count as structures)

.trixX.

Im too lazy to sift through the responses x), but here are my 2cents:

Nintendows wrote: »

Some of the feedback I have received after testing:

• Too hard for marines since they don't have aim assist against aliens
• On 8bit, after ONE DAY, people got used to it and acc% creeped back up
• Difficult to approach marines as a fade since you can't tell who the good players are by their nametag
• Is that bad? The thing i mostly hate about HP bards is that it gives unreasonable amount of information about the enemy
• Difficult to pick off low-health individuals in a group
• Yet again, is that bad? This opens up tactical avenues, instead of mindlessly attacking the least HP enemy. I've mentioned this so many times, without HP bars you can feign retreats, absorb bullets as skulk then disengage to let your group finish off the marine, etc...
• I like the colors
• meh x)

What bothers me personally is that structures also got this new UI. I think it would be better if only lifeforms did.

SupaFred

I like the idea and think it works well when I tried it. Can you make it usable for colour blind players as well? I hear the reds can be a problem.

Nintendows

@SupaFred I just released an update that adds two new options to the NS2 Options menu: A color algo selector and a damage number opacity slider. One of the new color algos is a green/blue gradient that should be easier to see by green/red colorblind users.

SupaFred

Thanks, I'll check it out.

Nintendows

I'd like to get this mod whitelisted again, but on servers like The Thirsty Onos it caused alien winrate to increase from 73% to 76% and therefore it has too much of an impact to be allowed on vanilla servers.

Would anyone have any ideas of how I could nerf aliens alongside this mod?

Handschuh

Wasn't it already nerfed by changing that you see the HP lowered after the enemy is almost down?

Nintendows

Handschuh wrote: »

Wasn't it already nerfed by changing that you see the HP lowered after the enemy is almost down?

I think the buff health bars give marines is that players use them to aim. When you remove them, you lose the aim helping they provide.

Maybe I should make a new mod that "lags" the health bars behind the players so you can't use them to aim.