Name Tags in 1.0.2.4 - Pre-Release Feedback/Questions/Ideas

[ToejaM]

This originally started out as a question but by the time I'd got to the end of the sentence I had a few ideas. So firstly before you get bored, here is the question.

 

Question

It doesn't say in the explanation thread or the changelog yet but my question is this: Do players names show at all if they are set to hidden, by this I mean if they are set to hidden do you just get a "Stranger/Unknown" tag instead of their actual name with the colour coded system?

 

Idea 1a)

Do you think in future there will be, as was planned with the orb system, some kind of persistent database function with this that perhaps remembers players you "tag as friendly" or alternatively on dead bodies, tag as unfriendly.

 

This may be one of the only reasons for using the character ID so that with each char that dies, this is lost. However unless there is some kind of cleanup system removing old/dead characters from the database column I could see the database column becoming very large, whether this affects database performance I'm not sure but if its anything like large text files then eventually it obviously would right? However if its done on char ID, I very much doubt anyone player would get a column large enough to cause performance issues with the database if dead character IDs are removed from this section.

 

1b)

Instead of a database system, could there be a user saved file created by the mod? Does the mod/arma allow for editting of files on the client side automatically? If not could there be a userfile created called "friendly.txt" which is manually editted with playeruids that would be checked by the server on connection of new players to then automatically display friendly players names? I imagine this shouldnt cause desync as it would be only checked once "onconnect"

 

Idea 2)

Proximity information, by this I mean if you get within <5m of someone, could you have it show a message displaying what your character sees in terms of health status. I mean for example, if the player is:

 

>11999 blood "_playername appears to be entirely healthy"

7000-11998 blood with broken leg "_playername looks slightly pale and has a broken leg and is in pain."

4000-6999 blood and in pain "_playername looks pale and seems to be shaking with pain"

<3000 blood  "_playername looks very pale"

 

You wouldnt need worded cues for bleeding or infected, bleeding is visibly seen and infected is audibly heard. It would ideally be for those things you could not see. I included broken legs due to those not being visibly seen but that could be changed by a screaming sound added each time you move a certain amount of distance while crawling which alerts zombies, "if _player moves >10 then play "screaming" call_zombies" as at the moment when you have a broken leg you handle it as well as my girlfriend did during the birth of my son on only gas and air. Like a boss.

 

Unless of course you're adding in a script which twists up the leg when broken and forces players to fall over if they stand up with a broken leg for too long.

 

I have a modified study_body.sqf that I use which is similar for inspecting bodies. It also assumes all players have a journal on them. I take no credit for the script other than modifying the temperature times of the dead body and custom messages to be a bit more cryptic.

 

Idea3)

If when you meet someone who has recently killed someone, say within the past 30 minutes, there could be an additional information added to the proximity information

 

Stranger looks slight pale and appears to be shaking with pain. They have blood on their clothing.

 

I realise its becoming a bit of a mouthful, especially if all the ailments are displayed but additional to this, if they have a full water bottle they could 'wash away the blood' which would make the last part of the proximity information disappear. Perhaps for the first 5-10minutes after washing away it would display like:

 

Stranger looks slight pale and appears to be shaking with pain. Their clothing seems to be dripping.

 

I guess you would also have to consider if the Stranger had interacted with the dead body of a player before it added the blood on the clothing message as obviously anything after a certain distance would not leave blood splatters on the attacker. It could also create some interesting scenarios if a hero has just checked out a body or someone wounded and got blood on their hands. I mean, I don't roleplay, my server doesn't either but DayZ is about the story and working out if a player is good or bad and then working out if you can trust them and I would take notice of this information if I met someone. You could even make it a % chance to flag someone as having blood on them so even the person who did the murdering wouldnt know until someone pointed it out, though that would be unrealistic unless it was on their face or back, places you wouldnt see it.

 

 

 

Just throwing some ideas around to enhance the nametag system.