ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I don't know if anyone else has this problem but it is hard for me to judge the radius of the continuous AOE effects with the swirly vortex particles.

I propose some sort of indicator to clearly show which squares are effected and which arent. Lighting up the ground an appropriate color similar to retch or ruined earth would work.

I'm not entirely sure that lighting up every square in a firefight like a christmas tree is the best option, either.

This seems like something that would make a very good graphics option, though. That way, people can toggle on/off if they want to see the full radius of attacks.

how about including this information in the mouseover information box (or whatever it's called. the thing that tells you floor/in sight/lit). It's unobtrusive and it seems to me it'd be the best place to put this information if it's technically doable, and it would be great if you could see time remaining on AoE effects with durations, so 'floor/in sight/lit/Circle of Sanctity(8)'. Ghoul retch it's particularly handy since counting turns is made difficult by your global speed penalty, and ano circles increase in duration when they crit.

I think they are refering to things like Ice Storm, where the damage range appears to be slightly more than the particle range.

I don't see why something like Ice Storm couldn't also be treated the same way: mouse over the tile description and it tells you Ice Storm is on that tile. Simple and unobtrusive.

Icestorm does not exist on the tile.
It only exists on the actor using it.

That still doesn't prevent the game from generating mouseovers on the tiles for it, though.

The game, as I understand it, basically just is using a normal, stationary AoE, with a duration of one turn, and retargetting it every turn, with your average storm type effect.

(I hope I understand it, I did write one. <_<)

Yeah, it can be done, its just not elegant.

I think there are subtle ways to indicate which tiles are affected. Scanning over every tile with the mouse is absurd, and despite the heavy graphical treatment, ToME should not try to pretend it isn't on a grid. We might as well have projectile paths drawn as pixel-perfect lines instead of showing which tiles they will pass through.

I don't see anything particularly wrong with showing both, though. (That is, both the line and the hexes it goes through.)

In this case, the optimal answer seems to be "showing both"-that is, showing the graphical effect and then finding a nice way to communicate the data, either through another graphical effect or something as easy to interpret. Since the alternative is recoding every even slightly vague storm type graphical effect.

An option to highlight the squares would be a good start there. Not sure how easy that'd be to implement, though, and I'd rather have it be an option-might just be a personal taste thing, but I'm less worried about the exact radius of the storm effect than knowing it's there, and too much graphical loudness might make me miss something I consider more important.

For another thought, how about having storm effects have another bracketted spot for radius? Such as "Ice Storm(5)(Rad 3)".

This doesn't fix the problem across the board, but it would communicate the data in a much faster to read way than reading the status menu, if not as immediately obvious as a graphical effect would be. (Since the latter shows clearly which squares are effected, while you have to puzzle it out with a radius text line.)

Might be a lot better than nothing?

Would be good to have a slot for extra info on those tooltips.
Displaying radius sounds excellent.