Saturday, August 22, 2015

Tooltip Overhaul Details

For next few weeks, I will revisit the tooltip and make significant changes to them, in order to make it easier to comprehend for first-time readers and be compatible in multi-language setup. Below are some details for the interested :

1. Cut off chunk of 'extra' information and attach it to hidden description
-  Being a WC3-based game, we have tons of gimmicky interaction that often don't make sense and those extra bits were adding up to create a wall of text for some abilities. I will be following Dota 2 practice to shrink them. An additional information that involves gimmicky interaction(i.e Saber's Instinct and Tsubame Gaeshi, B-Scroll-Pass-through) is going to be moved to hidden tooltip which can be displayed by pressing Alt button.

 2. Clearly denote core functionality of ability, namely Crowd Control effect
- CC and damage are often two defining properties of abilities. Dota 2 has built-in support to show whether an ability is magic/physical/pure, but CC requires special handling. Again, we have very vague definition of CC coming from WC3, other than couple obvious ones such as stun and slow. The upcoming overhaul will hopefully categorize them more clearly.

Refer to Appendix II. for list of CC.

3. Push the possible variables away from main chunk of text and put them into bottom variable lines instead
- This is needed to ensure the version control is consistent and easy between multiple language files. Say, we have a description of 'Gordius Wheel' which says 'Increases magic resistance by 50%' in main description. If I were to change this value to 40%, I have to change this in 4 different files, which correspond to number of currently supported languages. Not cool eh?



Appendix I. Updated Tooltip Examples






Appendix II. List of Crowd Controls :

Stun : Disables any activity.
Root : Disables movement(Blink Scroll can be still used)
Slow : Impales movement speed
Knockup/Knockback : Disables any activity, often accompanied by disposition. Cannot be cleansed
Revoke : Severs the connection with Master, disabling usage of Command Seal
Lock : Prevents the interaction with multi-dimension, disabling usage of Blink Scroll and alike abilities(i.e Avenger's Dark Passage)
Banish : Renders target immune to physical and pure damage, but twice as vulnerable to magic damage. Additionally, target cannot perform autoattack.
Silence : Causes target to be unable to cast spell.

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