Targeting failure messages moved

[CluelessWonder]

Hello,

 

I'm not a savvy enough player to know what this element of the game is called, so my searches through the forum were fruitless.  However, there is an area of the screen that displays things like "Target Blocked" and "Out of Range" and "Invalid Target" when you are trying (and failing) to activate a power.  On all of my characters these messages are (or were) located in roughly the middle-center of the screen.  However, recently one of my characters (Crimson Cop on Excelsior) has had this element move to the top-center of the screen.  (See the attached screenshot.  The arrow points to where it used to be.)  Since this is where I keep my NAV window, this means that either I have to move the NAV window or those messages get covered up.  That's really annoying when you are experimenting with new combat techniques and especially playing with the range of your sniper shot.

 

Anyone know how to move the messages back to the center?  Or, for that matter, I'm pretty sure that those messages come as part of a hidden window, so what's that window called (maybe I can adjust the window parameters for it)?

 

I have vague memories of a time when I had mistakenly activated something (maybe a debug mode) that shows me where a bunch of "windows" are located.  However, I haven't been able to figure out how to activate anything like that now, so I might be remembering from a different game.  🙂

 

Any help that anyone can provide would be appreciated.  Thank you.

[CluelessWonder]

Something else I just noticed...  It moves with the camera angle.  When I'm looking down on the enemy, it is in the middle-center.

[Arc-Mage]

Did you look through menu options? That really smacks of a menu option that has been changed.

[CluelessWonder]

47 minutes ago, Arc-Mage said:

Did you look through menu options? That really smacks of a menu option that has been changed.

Well, I went through all the selections that can be reached through the Menu -> Options window.  Are there any more that get accessed through other areas?  For example, when you want to look more detailed numbers for combat, you have to go to the Combat Attributes window and activate a window that displays that information.  So maybe there is another window/menu that I don't know about.

 

However, I should have mentioned that I already went through the Menu -> Options window and compared with one of my other characters.  I also created a new character yesterday and took note of the fact that it also uses the expected placement (i.e. middle center).  Therefore, it's not something that changed in the game.  It's just something that changed on this character.

 

Thankfully, I can move the NAV window a little to the right, and it does not impact the gameplay as much.  However, it's still annoying, and I want to figure out how to set it back.  🙂

[TheZag]

You could try saving your windows on a character that is unaffected and then loading them on that character.  That is my go to when a regular window gets messed up.

 

[CluelessWonder]

13 hours ago, TheZag said:

You could try saving your windows on a character that is unaffected and then loading them on that character.  That is my go to when a regular window gets messed up.

 

I tried that initially, but I tried it again just now with some variations in steps I take to do it.  Still no luck.  😞  I guess the hidden window (if that's what it is) is not one that is controlled by the windows tab in the options list/window.

[Luminara]

Try adjusting your character's height.  Save the costume file, then go to an Icon/Facemaker and talk to the NPC who allows gender and height adjustments.  If you need funds, let me know, I'll cover the expenses.

[CluelessWonder]

1 hour ago, Luminara said:

Try adjusting your character's height.  Save the costume file, then go to an Icon/Facemaker and talk to the NPC who allows gender and height adjustments.  If you need funds, let me know, I'll cover the expenses.

Well...  That does seem to affect it.  This character (Crimson Cop) is the shortest that the selections will allow.  I used up several free Icon session tokens so I could experiment.  It looks like any height setting affects the placement of this.  I setup 5 of my 7 costume slots with progressively taller character heights and each one affects the placement differently.  I also checked another character (Second Sound) that is the shortest the system will allow, and she gets the same placement as I showed in the previously attached screenshot.  Further, all of my other characters are the default height (a little over 6 feet) or a bit taller.  The default height seems to place the info where it has always been.

 

I know that it was not present before. Crimson Cop was my second character in Homecoming, and he's been around for over 2 years.  (Although, I favored other alts for a while, so he's still only level 46.)  I don't always use the info when I'm on a team and things are happening very rapidly and chaotically, but it is a necessary thing for me when I'm soloing (especially with blasters).  "Out of Range" and "Target Blocked" mean that I need to adjust in a different way, so I pay attention to those things.  Therefore, this has to be a somewhat recent (maybe over the last few months) change in the operation of the game.

 

Am I the only one getting this issue?  Do other people's Combat Warnings (for lack of a better name to call that info) move with the height of their character?  Is my human memory crap, and this has always been how it works?  Or is this a recent bug?  If it's not happening on other people's game, then maybe I just need to uninstall (and clear any leftover files) and then reinstall the game.

[Luminara]

1 hour ago, CluelessWonder said:

Well...  That does seem to affect it.  This character (Crimson Cop) is the shortest that the selections will allow.

 

I just tested a character that I have at the minimum selectable height, and the text is appearing about 3/4ths to 4/5ths of the way up the screen.  Not all the way at the top like yours, but much farther above the head than any of my other characters.  On all of the other characters I tested, the floats appeared in the center of the screen, and that included one maximum height character, with the float obscured by her head due to her height.

My tests, in conjunction with your tests and other evidence, confirm that it's definitely related to character height, and specifically minimum character height.

 

I don't recall any changes to character hit boxes or camera placement in any of the updates or patches, but that doesn't mean there weren't any.  Something might've been adjusted under the hood that wasn't directly linked to these, but still affected them.  Since I witnessed the same behavior on a character, I suspect that a reinstallation won't resolve the issue.  I recommend increasing the height of the character until the floats are at a comfortable viewing point.

 

You might try pinging @Naomi or @Cobalt Arachne after the holidays to see if they can find a solution, but... I'm theorizing that this is a direct result of the shorter minimum height and how the camera adjusts to match the character model, without adjusting the hit box.  I think, based on other tests, the character model is only a visual representation, and the hit box itself is static.  If that's true, then the only way to fix this would be to write new code to allow the hit box to be adjusted in synch with the height slider, and that would open up another set of issues, like characters slipping through newly accessible geometry holes, exploiting terrain to prevent critters from reaching them, et cetera.

[Cobalt Arachne]

@CluelessWonder

Is it it exclusive to targeting through the SG portal?

 

There's actually an invisible cylinder geometry inside those that serves the function for mouse-clicking detection, it used to be solid (thus SG portal objects had collision) but when Homecoming made the portals side-color specific, we removed the collision property of that internal cylinder geometry so players could walk through SG portals, however because it still exists inside it, the camera and target pathfinding still calculate for it, and if you're standing behind an SG portal targeting something on the other side, it won't think you have line-of-sight with your target because you're behind an invisible geometry.

 

That's all a side-effect of that non-rendered geometry cylinder inside the portal FX, and not something I'm aware can be fixed with the way the map engine works, fortunately you're not super likely to encounter SG portals where you're fighting in most content.

 

Also the reason player names vanish when they walk inside the portal FX, the game thinks they're behind a wall and not in view.

[Luminara]

1 hour ago, Cobalt Arachne said:

Is it it exclusive to targeting through the SG portal?

 

It has nothing to do with portals.  I was nowhere near a base portal, a tram station, a ferry, an Ouroboros portal or any other transportation access point when I tested.  The float notifications on minimum height characters appear near the top of the screen, instead of the center.  Look at the screenshot in the first post, where the float notification is circled in red.  That should be just above his character's head.

[Cobalt Arachne]

10 minutes ago, Luminara said:

 

It has nothing to do with portals.  I was nowhere near a base portal, a tram station, a ferry, an Ouroboros portal or any other transportation access point when I tested.  The float notifications on minimum height characters appear near the top of the screen, instead of the center.  Look at the screenshot in the first post, where the float notification is circled in red.  That should be just above his character's head.

Ah, the explanation of the issue and the picture specifically included having the SG portal threw off my understanding of what I thought was being referred to with the report.

I wonder if it's some kind of monitor resolution related issue and what the game reads as valid coordinate points on-screen to generate the float? Hard to say.
I've never noticed that issue on my own computer, despite having played a couple characters who were the absolute minimum size the costume creator can legally create, but I'll start keeping my eyes out to see if I notice it when on them.

 

[Norl]

Disinterested programmer here, I ran some experiments with a min and max and mid height character.  With the short characters, as you mouse-wheel zoom in to follow your character more closely, that text box moves up towards the top of the screen, though I could never reproduce it all the way at the top.  However, for all characters it is completely gone on full or almost full zoom in.  That seems like a feature of extreme zoom in, though, as it disappears with 7 footers, too, even though it never moves up as you zoom in.

 

Maybe you are at the magic height and zoom in level to get that placement.  This isn't to say there doesn't need to be a few tweeks to that algorithm 🙂

Edited December 24, 2022 by Norl

[CluelessWonder]

On 12/23/2022 at 9:06 AM, Cobalt Arachne said:

Is it it exclusive to targeting through the SG portal?

I agree with Luminara.  It is not tied to the SG portal.  That just happened to be where I was when I took the picture.  It is happening all over.

 

As far as zooming in and out goes, when I zoom out (i.e. camera farther away from the character), the text becomes more centered.  When I zoom in to first person view, the text is completely gone.  Presumably it is somewhere above the upper edge of the viewable screen, but I don't know for sure.

 

I would really be fine with moving it, but moving it to where it is covered by the default placement of the NAV window seems wrong.  Also, part of me just wants to know if I'm crazy in thinking that it was not like this a year ago.

 

If no one else is getting that, maybe I just need to uninstall and reinstall the game.  I might try that over the weekend.  Or I might be lazy and just play more on my Villian.  🙂

[BlackSpectre]

Wow. I've never noticed those messages. LOL

 

I guess my point is, and it does nothing to fix your problem, is that the messages haven't seemed to have any impact on my gameplay. Are they useful enough for me to go looking for them?