It'd be great to have an indicator over players that have this option ticked to "None" so you don't walk up to them and start typing at them like a manic:


It would also be good to have one for players who have you blocked.

I don't think it'd cause much indicator clutter, because I think the first set of options are rarely used anyway. Same for the second one, unless you're some total douche who everyone seems to block.  

Could always make any indicator for whatever's useful and provide granular controls in options.  

I actually like this idea.

But there's stuff like the heart icon over your spouse, which could interfere with these icons. How would this work?  

Posted by Common Sense

I actually like this idea.

But there's stuff like the heart icon over your spouse, which could interfere with these icons. How would this work?

There seems to already be some sort of indicator hierarchy. For example, if you're in a guild with someone who is also on your friends list, the green icon will display instead of the blue one.

I'm not sure how you'd really determine which should take precedence if you have someone on your friends list who also has you blocked.

I imagine it'd be something like:

1. Spouse
2. Guild
3. Ally
4. Guild holding tower
5. Has you blocked
6. Friend
7. Has chat off

Seems messy, would be better if the indicators for people who have you blocked or have chat turned off were an overlay of other indicators, like a scaled down version of:
https://cdn0.iconfinder.com/data/icons/pixelo/32/block.png (Unsupported image host)

So if they were in your guild but have you blocked, it'd be the green icon with that over it... I dunno.  

I mentioned something similar before. It would only need to be something that only appears over others' heads when you type in the chatbox, and disappears after a few seconds. Just to signal "this person does not see what youre saying"  

The issue with indicators is that in order to give display an indicator about stuff like that, from your end as a player that information needs to be available clientside--and it's typically not.

For blocked players it's probably doable, but for players who have everyone else muted I don't know how possible it'd be.  

Yeah, I've been called a jerk so many times for not replying to someone when my chat was just turned off and I couldn't see what they were saying.  

Posted by Dusty

The issue with indicators is that in order to give display an indicator about stuff like that, from your end as a player that information needs to be available clientside--and it's typically not.

For blocked players it's probably doable, but for players who have everyone else muted I don't know how possible it'd be.

It's doable so long as there is at least one broadcast attribute available (e.g. I believe the player hat is one of them, player.attr[1]?). To get started, here's a little tutorial on bitfields: http://forum.codecall.net/topic/5659...-with-example/

You manipulate numbers at the binary level to achieve a bit field. You can see how they're sometimes used in practice here: http://php.net/manual/en/errorfunc.constants.php

Basically you take a number of on/off, true/false attributes and merge them into a single integer using bitwise operators. For the attribute value though, you can condense it even further into a string with 7 or 8-bit characters, and each character represents it's own 7 or 8 on/off, true/false values. The client at the other end can then use that to determine how to display an indicator.

I must caution, Thor told me that bitwise operators have become broken in some sense. I have no clue about any specifics, so if you were to do this, you might want to do some testing to see how reliable each bitwise operator is (and if any are unreliable, complain up the ladder).

Meanwhile, displaying an indicator to show the other player has blocked you? That would be a bit less trivial because it's specific to each player and not a global on/off value.

I believe I actually used this method with the custom movement system for post-NPC server Classic. E.g. a flag would be set if a player was within a space that was something like 3 tiles across horizontal or vertical to signify that the player was not blocking and be accessible using a player attribute field.  

Here's some example HTML/Javascript code. You'd set one of the players attr values to some encoding of the bitflag result.

PHP Code:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Bitflag Example</title>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<body>
<header><h1>Bitflag Example</h1></header>
<form id="bitflag-form">
    <fieldset>
        <legend>Input</legend>
        <input type="checkbox" id="music-on" name="music-on" value="1">
        <label for="music-on">Music On</label>
        <br>
        <input type="checkbox" id="sfx-on" name="sfx-on" value="1">
        <label for="sfx-on">Sound Effects On</label>
        <br>
        <input type="checkbox" id="nicks-on" name="nicks-on" value="1">
        <label for="nicks-on">Show Nicknames</label>
        <br>
        <input type="checkbox" id="chat-on" name="chat-on" value="1">
        <label for="chat-on">Show Chat Messages</label>
        <br>
        <input type="checkbox" id="pms-on" name="pms-on" value="1">
        <label for="pms-on">Show PM Notifications</label>
        <br>
        <input type="checkbox" id="gms-on" name="gms-on" value="1">
        <label for="gms-on">Show GM Notifications</label>
    </fieldset>
    <fieldset>
        <legend>Output</legend>
        <label for="bitflag">Bitflag Value:</label>
        <output id="bitflag" name="bitflag"></output>
        <br>
        <label for="char">Character Value:</label>
        <output id="char" name="char"></output>
        <br>
        <label for="is-music-on">Is Music On?</label>
        <output id="is-music-on" name="is-music-on"></output>
        <br>
        <label for="is-sfx-on">Are Sound Effects On?</label>
        <output id="is-sfx-on" name="is-sfx-on"></output>
        <br>
        <label for="is-nicks-on">Are Nicknames On?</label>
        <output id="is-nicks-on" name="is-nicks-on"></output>
        <br>
        <label for="is-chat-on">Is Chat On?</label>
        <output id="is-chat-on" name="is-chat-on"></output>
        <br>
        <label for="is-pms-on">Are PMs On?</label>
        <output id="is-pms-on" name="is-pms-on"></output>
        <br>
        <label for="is-gms-on">Are GMs On?</label>
        <output id="is-gms-on" name="is-gms-on"></output>
    </fieldset>
</form>
<script>
    function updateBitflag() {
        var FLAG_MUSIC = 0x1;
        var FLAG_SFX   = 0x2;
        var FLAG_NICKS = 0x4;
        var FLAG_CHAT  = 0x8;
        var FLAG_PMS   = 0x10;
        var FLAG_GMS   = 0x20;
        
        var get, flag;
        get = function (x) { return document.getElementById(x) };
        flag = 0;
        
        if (get('music-on').checked) flag |= FLAG_MUSIC;
        if (get('sfx-on').checked)   flag |= FLAG_SFX;
        if (get('nicks-on').checked) flag |= FLAG_NICKS;
        if (get('chat-on').checked)  flag |= FLAG_CHAT;
        if (get('pms-on').checked)   flag |= FLAG_PMS;
        if (get('gms-on').checked)   flag |= FLAG_GMS;
        
        get('bitflag').innerHTML = JSON.stringify(flag);
        get('char').innerHTML = JSON.stringify(String.fromCharCode(flag));
        
        get('is-music-on').innerHTML = (flag & FLAG_MUSIC) ? 'yes' : 'no';
        get('is-sfx-on').innerHTML = (flag & FLAG_SFX) ? 'yes' : 'no';
        get('is-nicks-on').innerHTML = (flag & FLAG_NICKS) ? 'yes' : 'no';
        get('is-chat-on').innerHTML = (flag & FLAG_CHAT) ? 'yes' : 'no';
        get('is-pms-on').innerHTML = (flag & FLAG_PMS) ? 'yes' : 'no';
        get('is-gms-on').innerHTML = (flag & FLAG_GMS) ? 'yes' : 'no';
    }
    document.getElementById('bitflag-form').addEventListener('change', updateBitflag);
    updateBitflag();
</script> 


Should comment on using 0x1, 0x2, etc. These are actually sequential powers of two in hex. Hex is a bit more readable when using bitflags because it follows an actual pattern due to hex being a number base that's a power of two.

0x1, 0x2, 0x4, 0x8,
0x10, 0x20, 0x40, 0x80,
0x100, 0x200, 0x400, 0x800

is the same as

1, 2, 4, 8,
16, 32, 64, 128,
256, 512, 1024, 2048  

Deadowl is dev material  

Posted by Blu

Deadowl is dev material

He was before. He's old  

I'm not a developer, nor am I in any position of power.
But if I was I'd be trying to convince him to come back.  

Posted by Blu

I'm not a developer, nor am I in any position of power.
But if I was I'd be trying to convince him to come back.

At this point, I'd be willing to contribute to Graal as a paid professional. It's not an NPO, and I wouldn't have much to gain from volunteering development hours as much as I did when I was in high school and early college (i.e. when it provided a learning opportunity). However, I'm happy to provide resources for anyone who would like to learn more about programming. Working on Graal helped me learn how to program, so I'm willing to help give that back to anyone in the community who is interested.

I personally don't consider what I posted here by any means impressive. Bitflags are an older topic that some people take a while to stumble upon. I find the paper I posted about Weighted Reservoir Sampling in the thread regarding event hosting queues pretty impressive though, primarily because it's so elegant that it screams that I could have probably thought of that, but those guys did it first. People that create innovations that seem obvious often don't get enough credit.  

The viewing no players chat is decent idea for many players idk why other graals havent got this.