Smiley Face Things

[Sarah]

Could we get the smiley face things back, where it went from to to as characters got hurt? Only, could it work for *both* damage and hunger? Some of my characters would be more inclined to help the hurt and hungry if I didn't have to look through a million character descriptions to find the ones that need aid . . . It's also helpful, if you don't have time to check all of your characters, to know which ones need attending to due to their health.

[Peanut]

Yeah.

It takes longer to identify vict.. err people in need of help now...

[Surly]

I believe they were taken out due to the strain on the server... am I right?
If so, I would think that they aren't likely to come back - maybe once the server is upgraded.

Having said that, I do miss them... they made my life so much easier...

[kroner]

no, they were just never adapted for the new health system.

[Missy]

I've indeed seen two friends lose characters because they had gotten used to the smiley to know to feed their characters when they were hungry. One of the characters happened to be 50 or so and had only just finnished building a car like a week before she dropped over dead. LOL

(it doesnt suck for me because I make sure they have food all the time and never used the smiley's anyway.) But I can see how this would really suck for some players.

[The Sociologist]

I've indeed seen two friends lose characters because they had gotten used to the smiley to know to feed their characters when they were hungry. One of the characters happened to be 50 or so and had only just finnished building a car like a week before she dropped over dead. LOL

That is just so very sad! But yes its also in that especially way we all suffer from.

(it doesnt suck for me because I make sure they have food all the time and never used the smiley's anyway.) But I can see how this would really suck for some players.

Yes indeed. I vote for a...
"you-are-starving-to-death-in-a-very-large-town-with-many-carrots-mainly
-because-you've-lost-track-of-your-own-'you are hungry'-messages"
...indicator light.

[Nick]

Perhaps the smiley face could represent an average of your other stats? Not including thirst and whatnot, until they're added of course.

[Jos Elkink]

The reason that they have been removed is indeed strain on the server. Because health etc. are stored in a different way than was strength, it requires more transactions with the database to show the smiley, and since they would be on pages that are really often opened, this would mean a serious extra strain.

[Nick]

The reason that they have been removed is indeed strain on the server. Because health etc. are stored in a different way than was strength, it requires more transactions with the database to show the smiley, and since they would be on pages that are really often opened, this would mean a serious extra strain.

I'll take a stable server over an added feature for convenience anyday...

[Surly]

The reason that they have been removed is indeed strain on the server.

So I wasn't entirely wrong. They were just never adapted to avoid strain on the server. In fact, I was as good as right...

Anyway, is there any chance that they could ever be re-implemented? Or are they gone for good?

[formerly known as hf]

How about an optional button - both on the main player page and when you get the lists of people at a location - that shows a few 'vital statictics' for all the characters on the list - health, hunger and tiredness.

It could save server use(?) - it would save people going to each character and loading that page, then loading their charcters stats page to see what the stats are

Also - when trying to see who's hungry/hurt in a town (for handing our food ans healing etc.) it would mean that a player could avoid loading forty character info pages - if one button would bring up , next the the name or something, the more important stats...

[Ash]

Maybe like a 'hover over' type thing. when you hold the mouse over some-ones smiley it'll tell you the persons stats

[Revanael]

Bob, that would use no less resources than displaing them permanently...

[NetherSpawn]

If you want to reduce the strain on the server, just REPLACE THE DEFECTIVE BARS WITH NUMBERS!

Probably due to silly implementation somewhere, it takes an amount of time based on the fullness of the bars to load the bars, making it take all day if something's not good with your character, and it still takes a long time if you're just a bit tired. Why not display numbers? It has every advantage and no disadvantage. The values are presumably stored as numbers, so why not just put the numbers on the screen?

Quicker, more efficient, and more informative than the current setup.

I also just had a character die due to hunger (incidentally, it'd be really keen if the death message actually said that you died of hunger, because as is you just sort of stop recording events) and I agree that it's good to actually know that your characters are dying of hunger. When a smiley face suddenly dies of hunger, you know there's something wrong. Just take the (full bar) - greater(hungerBar,damageBar) as the number that has to be converted to a smiley and the problem should be solved, yes? Not precisely that if the data is stored in a different way, but that'd tell you how smiley the character really is.

[NetherSpawn]

Health is stored as an integer, or a double, or something like that, right? Ditto for tiredness? I mean, you're not storing information in an image file or something?
Then why is it slow to do constant-time math with them? If you don't want to display the image because images are slow (for the smilely) you could just use character representations like , , .