5. Mars Roleplay
Now the the refactoring of the Oxygen/Health system is completed and it fully works reliably across all 19 regions, it was time to add some tweaks and additional functionality.
To begin with, I wanted to add the ability for the HUDs to do a version check when (a) entering the RP Zones or (b) when attaching the HUD. As this is part of the Oxygen/Health system, the HUDs can only check when IN the RP Zones, but to be honest it doesn't matter if the HUD gets out of date outside the zones so this doesn't matter. As soon as they enter the zones, if they're already wearing their HUD the user will get the update message. The same applies when attaching the HUD when in the zones.
What if I update the HUD while someone is already in the RP Zones? I've got that covered too. The system sends out a broadcast message to all HUDs across the zones with info about the new version, which the HUDs - once they receive the message - can check against their own version data. This broadcast is automatic when I update a “.config” notecard with the new version details.
Dialog or Chat
I opted to pop up a Dialog box with the 'New HUD' message, rather than throw the message into chat, because stuff can get missed in chat very easily. That means I had to build in the ability to pop up dialog boxes. That might sound obvious, but there is a subtle difference between popping up a dialog because there is a HUD update message and sending the HUD update message to a routine that can display arbitrary messages in a dialog. Doing the latter means that I can now send other messages to the user via dialog.
I made a few design changes to the HUD while I was at it. As you can see, the HUD now has rounded ends, a darker background to help it stand out, and some arrows at the right end. The large numbers have gone too.
The numbers were originally on a texture - all ten of them plus a dash (negative numbers) and a space. To display a number was as simple as scaling up the texture and setting the offset. To display three numbers required either three prims or a tortured prim that had three faces facing forward. I'd been using three prims to display numbers from -99 to 999. Since there were two sets of these, that's six prims. I replaced them all with two tiny and invisible prims and displayed the numbers as their hovertext.
As an additional tweak, the numbers now change colour based on the value they are displaying. When Health or Oxygen is at 100, the numbers are a nice healthy green colour. At the opposite end of the scale, they are red, and there are colour steps between the two.
The arrows are to adjust the position of the hovertext numbers, if they are not quite in the right position for the user's monitor and font-size configuration.
You might notice too that there seems to be a tab at the top-left of the HUD. The purpose of this is to rotate the HUD vertically (that is, around the x-axis), revealing more statistics/meters. Another tab will allow you to rotate back. The intention here is the HUD can be expanded for a full-fledged role-playing system. This would be a major expansion of the Oxygen/Health system, and I have no plans to actually do that - there are already full-fledged role-playing systems out there, such as the Myriad Lite RPG System. Alternately, this could complement such an RPG system by displaying the RPG character statistics.
To add to these thoughts, I have been thinking of using NPCs much like they are in RPGs - as people who can offer quests and missions, giving out rewards. I have some ideas for both missions and quests, along with thoughts about what the rewards might be - they must be tangible, useful and complement exploration of the Mars Complex.
Thinking about NPCs like these has also got me thinking about other NPCs and how they might bring life to the world. I'm already working on a system that will allow NPCs to not just wander around, but have conversations with each other (fully voiced, of course). These conversations will not only add flavour to the world, but also give information that may be useful in a quest or mission.
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