Astraeus Player's Guide

Display and Debug

PLAYER MESSAGES

Player Message System

  • Astraeus has a built-in system for displaying information to help you keep track of your team's state and display important stats.

  • Some common uses are:

    • Showing your team's current strategy (attack, defend, skirmish, etc)

    • Showing what types of speed, weapons, or defenses your opponent is using

    • Showing how close together your fleet or the opponent's fleet is

    • Comparing your current breakdown of unit types to desired unit types

Syntax

  • You can use the method addMessage() to include a message on your list to display that frame.


UNIT MESSAGES

Unit Debug Messages

  • Similar to player messages, Astraeus has a debug system to output information on units. By default, debug messages will appear above a unit's healthbar in a gray color for a short duration.

  • Sometimes it's still useful to use System.out.println(), but the problem with text logging is that it can be difficult to tell which specific unit of a given type the message came from. Sometimes you simply need to tie the output to a specific unit on the screen.

Syntax

  • You can use the method dbgMessage(String message) to output text above a unit's healthbar.

  • Consider this example:


if(getPercentEffectiveHealth() < .25f)

{

dbgMessage("Very Low Health");

moveToNearestHealer();

}


  • Note: This method is overloaded. It has additional versions that allow you to specify the message duration and color.



DRAWINGS

How do I use drawings?

  • Both the player and unit class have a draw(Graphics g) method that is called every frame.

  • You have access to the full power of the graphics commands you would find in any Slick project. The most common uses are for lines, circles, and rectangles - but there's no real limit!

Examples:

Attack Targeting

Fleet Center and Power

Movement / Rally Points

Area of Effect Aiming

Resource Gathering

Distress Signals

Team Amaranth uses drawings to show both attack and spread.

TOGGLE INFO

Hotkey

  • Press the "Q" key to disable drawings, messages, and debug output for the left player

  • Press the "E" key to disable drawings, messages, and debug output for the right player

Settings

  • You can change the default settings in the Settings file to change the default state.