SAMPLE GDD - Pings

Introduction

FEATURE SUMMARY

The ping tool allows players to press a [ping input] to place a contextual temporary ping that other teammates will hear, see, and possibly choose to answer. Players can also hold the [ping input] to select from a variety of pings that are either generic or contextual to their current situation such as being aboard a station. Lastly, players can also send out pings from the inventory screen to make item requests to their teammates.

CORE AESTHETICS

  • Camaraderie: Players can interact and communicate with their teammates without being required to use a microphone.

  • Freedom: Players possess various communication tools and are free to choose whichever one they prefer to use. Players also have the freedom to use specific communication tools for specific situations.

Objectives

  • Allow strangers to communicate and coordinate with each other without the use of microphones.

  • Allow players to express themselves in a contextual manner, including if they occupy a station or not.

GLOSSARY OF NEW TERMINOLOGY

  • Pings: Actions the player can perform to communicate with teammates. They traditionally of an icon, a voice line, and a written statement located in a dedicated tray.

  • Ping Types: The different types of pings a player can perform by using a dedicated ping input. There 3 types of pings:

    • Quick Pings: pings created by pressing and quickly releasing the ping input.

    • Wheel Pings: pings created by pressing, holding then selecting a ping from a radial menu.

    • Inventory Pings: pings created from the Inventory by selecting an item and pressing the dedicated ping input.

USER STORIES

  • As a player, I can communicate with other players without using verbal exchanges.

    • As a player, I can quickly ping something to share information and/or intentions with my teammates.

    • As a player, I can manually select a ping to further clarify my intentions with my teammates.

    • As a player, when inside a station, I can select a ping that is contextual to that station.

    • As a player, I can request items to my teammates using pings when I use the inventory screen.

  • As a player, other players can communicate with me without using verbal communications.

    • As a player, I can receive pings and rapidly understand where it is and what the ping is about to decipher that player’s intentions.

    • As a player, I can respond to pings to acknowledge that player’s intention.

Description

Input

The initial planned, yet not final, inputs for pinging are as follows:

  • [D-Pad Up] on Controllers

  • [Middle Mouse Button] and [Alt] on Mouse + Keyboard

Ping Types

  • When pressing then releasing the [ping input] players can either choose to perform a Quick Ping or open the Ping Wheel.

  • Players can also send pings from the inventory screen by pressing the [request input] while in the inventory screen.

General

  • All pings, regardless of type, always perform the following:

    • Place a corresponding icon in the world on a targeted location.

      • If an object is targeted, the icon will remain attached to that object for the ping duration.

      • If the ping’s location is outside of the player’s screen, it attaches to the edge of the screen.

        • For more details about how screen-edge elements behave, see UX TBD DOC.

      • See the Icon column in the corresponding table.

      • Additionally, a small indicator will be displayed to identify which teammate created the ping.

    • Play a corresponding voice line for the whole team.

      • This voice line can always be heard, regardless of distance.

        • If the originator of the ping is further than [x] meters, the voiceline will have a radio filter applied rather than being a normal unfiltered voice.

        • The most used pings will feature multiple voice lines that are chosen at random to add variety.

        • See the Dialogue column in the corresponding table.

    • Display a corresponding written line in a dedicated tray.

      • See the Ping Tray column in the corresponding table.

    • Play an animation when emitting a ping.

      • The player character only plays a ping animation if:

        • Not inside a station.

        • Not already playing an upper body animation such as reload, mantle, ladder or other upper body animations.

      • The ping animation consist of of the character signaling something with his left hand while holding its weapon with the right hand.

Characteristics

  • All pings are temporary in nature, they remains on-screen for [x] seconds before they eventually fade out.

    • Different ping types have different durations.

  • All pings fade out if the player is within [x] meters of them.

    • This also includes when the ping is attached to the screen-edge when out of view.

    • If the player moves away from it, it will fade back in and behave normally.

  • If a player pings another player’s ping, the former will perform a Ping Confirmation of that player’s ping.

  • All pings, regardless of type, are subject to the Spam Prevention mechanic.

  • Players cannot perform any pings if they are dead or spectating.

Example of ping icons

Quick Ping

General

  • Quick Pings are executed by pressing and quickly releasing the [ping input].

    • If the player holds the [ping input] for longer, the Ping Wheel appears.

Categories

  • Quick Pings are divided into 5 ping categories, depending on the targeted object (or lack thereof).

    • Quick Ping categories are as follows

      • Location: when targeting the world or a wreck.

        • Wrecks can only be targeted from far away. Once close enough, pinging the wreck will yield a world ping.

        • When attempting to ping something, if no object is hit, a Location ping is the default selection.

          • Note that it still must hit the terrain or something, pinging in the sky yields nothing.

      • Hostile: when targeting a hostile enemy, regardless if it's a player (human or vehicle) or NPC.

      • Item: when targeting an item.

      • Station: when targeting a cruiser station.

      • Support: when targeting something that requires support such as a KO runner or a repair point.

  • Determining the object being pinged does not require the player to aim the object perfectly.

    • A certain degree of imprecision is acceptable when attempting to ping a specific object.

  • Players can only have 1 ping maximum of each category.

    • Performing another ping of the same category will remove the previous one before placing the new ping.

  • All Quick Pings are removable by their authors.

    • If a player performs a Quick Ping, looks at their ping, and performs another Quick Ping, it is removed and no other ping is added.

  • Once the ping category has been determined, additional context may be taken into account to determine the proper ping.

    • The type of additional context depends on the ping category, see the Ping Table for more details.

Design Brief
Having 1 ping per category is a staple of many ping systems. It allows players to ping a location then ping an enemy while preserving that location, removing the need to ping it again once the battle is over. Additionally, it encourages players to decide what enemy to ping since they are prevented from pinging dozens of enemies simultaneously.

Duration

  • As mentioned above, all pings are temporary but pings of different categories have different durations.

  • Additionally, some pings are removed if their attached object is removed.

    • Hostile: [5] seconds

      • Ping is removed if the enemy is killed/destroyed.

    • Item: [30] seconds

      • Ping is removed if item is removed (looted).

    • Support: [30] seconds

      • Ping is removed if the repair point is repaired.

Design Brief
Different durations per category are necessary since their uses are vastly different. Locations need to stay for very long in case players need time to adjust their navigation or need time to orient themselves. Hostile pings need to be short to not give away their position for too long.

Ping Wheel

General

  • The Ping Wheel can be opened in 2 ways:

    • The player can hold the [ping input] for more than [x] seconds, after the delay, the Ping Wheel will appear.

    • The player can hold the [ping input] and immediately move their camera in a direction to make the Ping Wheel immediately appear.

  • Once the ping wheel is open, players can select a ping to perform.

  • Releasing the [ping input] will perform the selected ping.

    • If no ping was selected (the mouse/stick remains in the center), the Ping Wheel closes and no pings are performed.

Categories

  • The ping wheel selection is always contextual; the context considered is as follows:

    • Is the player inside a station?

      • If so, a selection of pings related to that station will be offered.

      • If not, a default selection of ping will be offered.

Design Brief

The intention behind contextual pings is to represent what players most often need to communicate when occupying a specific station. Things like the pilot requesting fuel or the gunners asking the pilot to stabilize the cruiser to aim better. Since those request often aren’t location sensitive, it makes sense to simply place the ping on themselves rather than placing is a random spot in the world.

HUD

  • The ping wheel always has [6] pings to be selected.

  • The Ping Wheel always displays:

    • Where the cursor is pointing.

    • The currently selected ping.

  • The Ping Wheel has no ping selected when it is initially opened.

    • On controller, the player must move the thumbstick past the deadzone to make an initial selection.

    • On mouse + keyboard, the player must move their mouse outside of the inner circle to make an initial selection.

  • Because pings on the wheel are contextual to the player’s situation, pings are either emitted where the player is currently aiming (like quick pings) or will be emitted to where the player is currently standing.

Duration

  • All pings made from the ping wheel last [10] seconds.

Example of ping wheel

Ping Confirmation

  • Players are able to confirm another player’s ping by pointing at that ping and performing a Quick Ping.

    • When doing so, the following happens:

      • A small identifier associated to the confirmer appears on top of the ping.

      • A voice line confirming the ping will be heard.

    • If the player had already confirmed a ping, performing a Quick Ping will remove their confirmation.

      • When doing so, the following happens:

        • The confirmer’s identifier is removed from the ping

        • No voice line or ping tray are printed out TBD

  • Confirming a ping does not modify the duration of the targeted ping in any way.

Design Brief

Ping Confirmations are a great way for players to acknowledge other players’ pings without requiring a dedicated ping wheel section.
It truly completes the communication loop.

Ping Tray

General

  • The ping tray is a small tray where all recently performed pings appear as written statements.

    • When a ping is performed, the following happens:

      • The whole tray appears instantly.

      • The ping is added on top of the tray and previous pings are sorted in descending order (from newest on top to oldest on the bottom)

    • After [x] seconds, the whole tray fades out and disappears.

    • The ping tray only accommodates up to [5] pings,

Format

Pings

  • The format for a ping is typically:

    • The name of the player performing the ping is colored [green].

      • In the case of the actual player, the word “You” will appear instead in [orange].

    • Ping icon.

      • The icon will correspond to the icon that appears in the HUD.

        • For more details, see ping tables above.

    • Contextual information

      • For more details, consult the ping table for each ping.

      • Item names are colored according to their rarity.

Confirmations

  • The format for a ping confirmation is as follows

    • The name of the player performing the confirmation is colored [green].

      • In the case of the actual player, the word “You” will appear instead in [orange].

    • Icon of the ping being confirmed.

      • The icon will correspond to the icon that appears in the HUD.

        • For more details, see ping tables above.

    • The word [Confirmed]

Design Brief

The purpose of the tray is to quickly allow players to see a recently made ping in the same location on-screen since the tray never moves. Because pings can either be on-screen or on the border of the screen, they can sometimes hard to find which is what the tray helps with.

Additionally, the tray gives a limited amount of history, which can be useful when it comes to ping items.

Spam Prevention

  • To prevent griefing, if a player performs [x] pings within a span of [y] seconds, its subsequent pings will be muted for [z] seconds.

    • Any pings from any type and category count.

    • While pings are muted, the player can perform pings as normal but they will not be executed at all.

      • Meaning players can press the ping input or open the ping wheel normally but no pings will play.

    • The ping mute timer will reset if the player performs pings during the mute.

    • The player’s other communication methods remain unaffected.

  • Once the ping mute timer elapses, the player can ping normally again.

Design Brief

The intention behind resetting the mute timer is for the player to chill out. Otherwise, the player can spam pings, get muted, wait for the timer, spam pings again.
This measure also prevents spam scripts; I don’t know if they are still a thing but just in case…

Inventory Request Ping

  • Inventory pings are special pings that can only be triggered from the Inventory screen.

    • While inside the inventory screen, depending on what the player is currently selecting, a Request option will be displayed.

      • Pressing the [request input] will create a ping on the player and will correspond to the item requested.

        • Request pings are placed on the player and will follow it for the duration of the ping.

    • Players can create Request pings on the following items/slots.

      • Weapon Slot

      • Ammo Slot

      • Gadget Slot

      • Body Slot

      • Head Slot

      • Backpack Slot

      • Backpack Item

        • Players cannot send a Request pings from an empty Backpack Item Slot

    • Players can only create Request while selecting their own inventory. If the player is selecting an item in a deathbox, storage container or a merchant, the option does not appear.

  • For more details, consult the Inventory page.

Categories

  • All Request pings belong in the same category.

    • This means players can only have 1 ongoing Request ping maximum.

      • Performing another Request ping will remove the previous one.

Duration

  • All request pings last for [10] seconds.

request input in inventory screen

ACCESSIBILITY CONSIDERATIONS

Volume

  • Ping Volume Slider

    • Allow the player to adjust the volume of pings in general, independent from all other sounds. This also affects their corresponding voiceovers.

Muting

  • Mute Voice

    • Allow the player to mute someone’s voice.

  • Mute Pings

    • Allow the player to mute someone’s pings.

Key Bindings

  • Ping Keybinds

    • Allow the player to change the ping inputs.

      • Ping

      • Ping Wheel (by default, same input as ping).

Subtitles

  • Ping (and Barks) have their dedicated subtitle section (close captioning).