Alternatives to Highlight?

[CoolJohnnyboy (John)]

Highlights are a pretty near feature ROBLOX added a while back. I’ve been using in them my game, World War Tycoon, to help players denote which plane is their plane/their teammate’s plane, and what is an enemy/hostile plane. It’s not perfect, since, at a distance, the team that has Navy Blue as its team color will look the same as the team with Black as its team color, but it works well, as seen below:

An issue that has started happening is, if there are a number of players flying planes around, random things get highlighted on the map. As planes get destroyed, or pilots land and leave their planes, which, in either case, the highlight goes away, the random highlights also go away, but you can imagine when you have upwards of a dozen people flying around, the highlights will get pretty noticeable… The blow image is a pretty mild case:

After researching this, it seems like this is an issue with highlights themselves, judging from the below topic:

Highlight Glitch?

There is a glitch when any (even just one) part in the map has a Highlight instance in it. When I bring the map from ServerStorage and place it in Workspace, all parts in map shows a Highlight instance in it. Making all parts to have the borders VISUALLY only. I mean, the parts are not getting a real Highlight instance inside them,its just all parts visually has the “Outline/Border” from the Highlight. This happens when I manually drag the map folder from ServerStorage into Workspace in studio…

And that is just one of many I ran across. This is weird, since this feature has been around for at least a year or two now, and is still buggy as hell.

As such, I am looking for alternatives that mimic highlights to some degree. Recoloring the planes in the game won’t work for a few reasons, mostly because the models are not easily re-colorable, and we already do such a scheme for identifying cars/tanks/general vehicles, and players don’t really like that approach.

I’ve been considering doing something I did in an old game, as seen below:

I’m not the biggest fan of this, as I think highlights are more aesthetically pleasing for the planes, but I hate how the highlight glitch ruins the aesthetic of everything else.

What have you done before?

[MenardsBDS21 (OctoInk)]

One thing you can do is maybe change the plane color depending on the team. Its not as efficient as highlights but it might do the job

[BendsSpace]

You could consider using this resource:

Location Marker System

[Line] Location Marker System Hello again developers! Recently I’ve been working on a really cool project: a GUI based location marking system! This system helps players find their way around the map, especially things off screen. I had a ton of fun designing the algorithm to do this . I’ll explain how it works below for anyone interested. [Line] Showcase Without further ado, the GIF! [ezgif.com-gif-maker (23)] (Location Marker System (Game) - Roblox) [Line] Details For…

@PersonifiedPizza

With this you could have a marker on (or above) each of the planes showing which team they’re on.

Roblox is also pretty good at fixing engine bugs so the highlight thing might get sorted out at some point.

[CoolJohnnyboy (John)]

Mentioned that in my post here,

@CoolJohnnyboy

Recoloring the planes in the game won’t work for a few reasons, mostly because the models are not easily re-colorable, and we already do such a scheme for identifying cars/tanks/general vehicles, and players don’t really like that approach.

not an option for most of the planes in-game

[CoolJohnnyboy (John)]

This is good actually, but if a player is looking straight at a plane flying towards them, will they be able to determine what team they are on? Or is this only for figuring out the location of something when it’s out of your line of sight?

This being said, I will likely use this resource for helping players figure out where capture points and other teams are.

[BendsSpace]

I think it shows planes flying towards players, though the marker can be a little small and harder to spot when it’s not on the edge of the screen.

Using it for capture points is a cool idea!

[Judgy_Oreo (DisplayName)]

@CoolJohnnyboy

at a distance, the team that has Navy Blue as its team color will look the same as the team with Black

That’s pretty weird. All the pixels should just be the exact color of the highlight, are you sure something else isn’t going on? Maybe it just looks darker because it’s more difficult to see?

[CoolJohnnyboy (John)]

@BendsSpace

I think it shows planes flying towards players, though the marker can be a little small and harder to spot when it’s not on the edge of the screen.

One thing I don’t like, is how you can’t make it so the markers are only seen up to a certain distance. If I could toggle that, I would certainly use it for planes… However, I don’t want players on one side of the map, 4,000+ studs away, getting the indication for a bunch of planes that are over there… it will just clutter the screen and look bad.

@Judgy_Oreo

Maybe it just looks darker because it’s more difficult to see?

Yes, that is what I mean. Navy Blue and Black are pretty similar in terms of darkness, so from a distance, you will likely mistake the two colors.

[Miserable_Haven]

@CoolJohnnyboy

After researching this, it seems like this is an issue with highlights themselves, judging from the below topic:

There is a glitch when any (even just one) part in the map has a Highlight instance in it. When I bring the map from ServerStorage and place it in Workspace, all parts in map shows a Highlight instance in it. Making all parts to have the borders VISUALLY only. I mean, the parts are not getting a real Highlight instance inside them,its just all parts visually has the “Outline/Border” from the Highlight. This happens when I manually drag the map folder from ServerStorage into Workspace in studio…

this is so annoying and is the only reason i have stopped using highlights

[CoolJohnnyboy (John)]

It’s a shame, on paper they are such a neat and useful feature, but in reality… they are kinda crap.

[foxnoobkite]

are you enabling and disabling the highlights everytime it is needed? maybe try deleting and adding highlight only when needed

[BendsSpace]

@CoolJohnnyboy

One thing I don’t like, is how you can’t make it so the markers are only seen up to a certain distance. If I could toggle that, I would certainly use it for planes… However, I don’t want players on one side of the map, 4,000+ studs away, getting the indication for a bunch of planes that are over there… it will just clutter the screen and look bad.

Ah, that’s a very good point! I thought I remembered seeing in the thread the OC made something for that:

@PersonifiedPizza

It looks like the modification the OC made uses fade in and fade out distances which might look nice:

@PersonifiedPizza

local maxDistance = 100
local minDistance = 10

He talks about it on this reply:

Location Marker System

Thanks again! (I really should have tested this more ) I updated the model and the uncopylocked game. Here is the IndicatorClient code:

New code for: "IndicatorClient"

-- v.1.2 local Workspace = game:GetService("Workspace") local Players = game:GetService("Players") local RunService = game:GetService("RunService") local createNewIndicator = require(script:WaitForChild("CreateNewIndicator")) local updateIndicatorUI = require(script:WaitFo…

[CoolJohnnyboy (John)]

I don’t think that is going to change the fact that random highlights will keep showing up. Enabling and disabling highlights makes rogue highlights that highlight unintended parts go away when they are disabled/not needed. I can try this and see if I does anything different, but I don’t really see how it could.

[foxnoobkite]

having highlight objects exist make it automatically use up a highlight storage, it might work