Surgery Slip Up Indicator

[NotDucc]

A small, quality of life change I'd really like to see for medbay would be a better indication of slip-ups during surgery rather than just a red message that doesn't really explain "You need to repeat this surgery step again". It's already often a difficult mechanic to explain to newer doctors, leading them to being confused on how a pancreas replacement surgery turned into a stomach removal. On top of this, it can be difficult to notice on higher pops when the radio chatter can sometimes make the message disappear up the scroll within a second.

A few suggestions to help fix this would be:

• Make surgical actions have a short action bar that turns red towards the end on a slip-up.
  
• Loud screams from the patient on a slip-up (Suggested by Wrench on Discord)
  
• Have a "Surgical Computer" on some surgery tables that can be set to assist with a surgery procedure (set the organ on the computer) and yells at you when you slip up. I like this concept the most though it would probably take the most work to make.
  

Those are just a few ideas, wouldn't mind hearing some more ideas on this.

[Brixx79]

The surgery slip ups being text alone really confuses new doctors (including myself when I started). An action bar like the claw machine would be boss, though I'm not much in favor of slowing down surgery.

[Snowy :D]

I hate having to pay attention to both the chat bar and the game simultaneously. Any change that allows me to do less of that is always welcome.

[Frolicsome Flufficorn]

Wait people actually look at chat to see if they messed up? it literally make a separate noise when you make a mistake and makes them have a very clear indication with the cut causing red particles to emit from the person. And (not sure about this que or if its just me being dumb) but if the sprite of the tool your using goes over the person as if you were hitting them it also means it isnt correct or that you messed up.

Idk, personally when I mess up its quite obvious to me, both visual and auditory ques seems fine to me. Ive never had to read the chat to figure out if I screwed up or not

[kyle2143]

Wait people actually look at chat to see if they messed up? it literally make a separate noise when you make a mistake and makes them have a very clear indication with the cut causing red particles to emit from the person. And (not sure about this que or if its just me being dumb) but if the sprite of the tool your using goes over the person as if you were hitting them it also means it isnt correct or that you messed up.

Idk, personally when I mess up its quite obvious to me, both visual and auditory ques seems fine to me. Ive never had to read the chat to figure out if I screwed up or not

Yeah, this is something I added years ago for OP's exact grievance. The sound and blood splatter effect IIRC. But I still do not think that they are noticable enough; as is clear by people not noticing. I didn't want to make the bloodsplatter larger (and therefore more obvious), but it would have been too much for onlookers and looked overexaggerated.

I would like to see something to make it clearer to the surgeon, moreso than onlookers though. I think the first thing I'd reach for now is some sort of HuD or effect appear broefly over the patient, visible only to the surgeon to clearly show your mistake. Like the red-flashing "KILL" HuD sprite when strangling someone, maybe it could say "OOPS" or other silly words you'd associate with making mistakes. Not that it needs to be text like that, just the first thing that came to mind.

I don't like broadcasting OOC HuD effects to all watchers in most cases because it adds visual clutter, but adding them for things like this to display specific, critical information to the person performing the action to that one person is more than fine.

[NotDucc]

Yeah, this is something I added years ago for OP's exact grievance. The sound and blood splatter effect IIRC. But I still do not think that they are noticable enough; as is clear by people not noticing. I didn't want to make the bloodsplatter larger (and therefore more obvious), but it would have been too much for onlookers and looked overexaggerated.

I would like to see something to make it clearer to the surgeon, moreso than onlookers though. I think the first thing I'd reach for now is some sort of HuD or effect appear broefly over the patient, visible only to the surgeon to clearly show your mistake. Like the red-flashing "KILL" HuD sprite when strangling someone, maybe it could say "OOPS" or other silly words you'd associate with making mistakes. Not that it needs to be text like that, just the first thing that came to mind.

I don't like broadcasting OOC HuD effects to all watchers in most cases because it adds visual clutter, but adding them for things like this to display specific, critical information to the person performing the action to that one person is more than fine.

Yep, I never even noticed the blood splatter until I talked about this yesterday and someone pointed out it existed a little after I posted this. Though I do like the silly text idea!

[Snowy :D]

Wait people actually look at chat to see if they messed up? it literally make a separate noise when you make a mistake and makes them have a very clear indication with the cut causing red particles to emit from the person. And (not sure about this que or if its just me being dumb) but if the sprite of the tool your using goes over the person as if you were hitting them it also means it isnt correct or that you messed up.

Idk, personally when I mess up its quite obvious to me, both visual and auditory ques seems fine to me. Ive never had to read the chat to figure out if I screwed up or not

I thought the blood splatter and knife sound effect only occurred when you performed the wrong step rather than messing up on the right step. The only indicator that you messed up the right step that I have seen was the one in the chat bar.

[Kotlol]

Wait people actually look at chat to see if they messed up? it literally make a separate noise when you make a mistake and makes them have a very clear indication with the cut causing red particles to emit from the person. And (not sure about this que or if its just me being dumb) but if the sprite of the tool your using goes over the person as if you were hitting them it also means it isnt correct or that you messed up.

Idk, personally when I mess up its quite obvious to me, both visual and auditory ques seems fine to me. Ive never had to read the chat to figure out if I screwed up or not

Yeah, this is something I added years ago for OP's exact grievance. The sound and blood splatter effect IIRC. But I still do not think that they are noticable enough; as is clear by people not noticing. I didn't want to make the bloodsplatter larger (and therefore more obvious), but it would have been too much for onlookers and looked overexaggerated.

I would like to see something to make it clearer to the surgeon, moreso than onlookers though. I think the first thing I'd reach for now is some sort of HuD or effect appear broefly over the patient, visible only to the surgeon to clearly show your mistake. Like the red-flashing "KILL" HuD sprite when strangling someone, maybe it could say "OOPS" or other silly words you'd associate with making mistakes. Not that it needs to be text like that, just the first thing that came to mind.

I don't like broadcasting OOC HuD effects to all watchers in most cases because it adds visual clutter, but adding them for things like this to display specific, critical information to the person performing the action to that one person is more than fine.

Simplest incidicator, you slip up and drop the surgical tool you were using.
One fail text is litterly: "Slips and drops the item" but not drop it.

If you drop the item, you know when it messed up and wich step.. since now you stop surgery all together...

Surgery is very stressful under the time pressure, blood loss and damage.
I still recommend to this day a "Surgery" machine to make surgery more accesiable. And not something that flat out removes surgery... hand surgery will be HARDER but FASTER then the machine. Wich each surgery step in a surgery machine taking time.

But some sort of clear signalling would be nice. I picked up on mess ups before.. but even then.. messing up should be more clear as it's rare.. unless it's Clown McSurgeonPants.

[unfunnyperson]

Wait people actually look at chat to see if they messed up? it literally make a separate noise when you make a mistake and makes them have a very clear indication with the cut causing red particles to emit from the person. And (not sure about this que or if its just me being dumb) but if the sprite of the tool your using goes over the person as if you were hitting them it also means it isnt correct or that you messed up.

Idk, personally when I mess up its quite obvious to me, both visual and auditory ques seems fine to me. Ive never had to read the chat to figure out if I screwed up or not

Yeah, this is something I added years ago for OP's exact grievance. The sound and blood splatter effect IIRC. But I still do not think that they are noticable enough; as is clear by people not noticing. I didn't want to make the bloodsplatter larger (and therefore more obvious), but it would have been too much for onlookers and looked overexaggerated.

I would like to see something to make it clearer to the surgeon, moreso than onlookers though. I think the first thing I'd reach for now is some sort of HuD or effect appear broefly over the patient, visible only to the surgeon to clearly show your mistake. Like the red-flashing "KILL" HuD sprite when strangling someone, maybe it could say "OOPS" or other silly words you'd associate with making mistakes. Not that it needs to be text like that, just the first thing that came to mind.

I don't like broadcasting OOC HuD effects to all watchers in most cases because it adds visual clutter, but adding them for things like this to display specific, critical information to the person performing the action to that one person is more than fine.

Simplest incidicator, you slip up and drop the surgical tool you were using.
One fail text is litterly: "Slips and drops the item" but not drop it.

If you drop the item, you know when it messed up and wich step.. since now you stop surgery all together...

Surgery is very stressful under the time pressure, blood loss and damage.
I still recommend to this day a "Surgery" machine to make surgery more accesiable. And not something that flat out removes surgery... hand surgery will be HARDER but FASTER then the machine. Wich each surgery step in a surgery machine taking time.

But some sort of clear signalling would be nice. I picked up on mess ups before.. but even then.. messing up should be more clear as it's rare.. unless it's Clown McSurgeonPants.

Hard no, dropping an item would make surgery incredibly tedious for no reason. A visual indicator would be far better at signaling failure than dropping your item.

[kyle2143]

Dropping the surgery tool was also something I considered for that exact same reason actually. I tried it out, but it felt bad to me. I do generally like adding those sorts of negative effecrs that can hamper your progress slightly like that; but in that case it would have detracted from my extremely simple goal, which was to make surgery missteps clearer.

It's a decent visual indicator but felt too onerous to add onto surgery missteps, which are basically just a random chance based on a few specific factors. I think it could work if your misstep-chance was clearer to the surgeon before he makes a cut.

As an aside, I don't particularly like the idea of making a "surgery machine" to make surgery more "approachable", the whole system could use a rework to focus less on pathway memorization. But even so, making a machine that does it for you would need to be very carefully considered, doing surgery slower than done expertly by hand is not much of a downside and it definitely needs something else, but you can't just keep slapping on downsides. I once had the very same idea as well, a sort of addon to a cryotube to let you di surgery or something like that, but in the end it felt like I was just designing a new, alternative, surgery system so I figured that a better approach is to rework surgery than trying to shoehorn in something like this to alleviate the "problem" with surgery.

[Kotlol]

Dropping the surgery tool was also something I considered for that exact same reason actually. I tried it out, but it felt bad to me. I do generally like adding those sorts of negative effecrs that can hamper your progress slightly like that; but in that case it would have detracted from my extremely simple goal, which was to make surgery missteps clearer.

It's a decent visual indicator but felt too onerous to add onto surgery missteps, which are basically just a random chance based on a few specific factors. I think it could work if your misstep-chance was clearer to the surgeon before he makes a cut.

As an aside, I don't particularly like the idea of making a "surgery machine" to make surgery more "approachable", the whole system could use a rework to focus less on pathway memorization. But even so, making a machine that does it for you would need to be very carefully considered, doing surgery slower than done expertly by hand is not much of a downside and it definitely needs something else, but you can't just keep slapping on downsides. I once had the very same idea as well, a sort of addon to a cryotube to let you di surgery or something like that, but in the end it felt like I was just designing a new, alternative, surgery system so I figured that a better approach is to rework surgery than trying to shoehorn in something like this to alleviate the "problem" with surgery.

Fair, glad we had the same ideas of dropping the item. (Tedious)
OR having a "Surgery" machine.

Another "slap" on fix is having surgery tables have a window that shows the steps needing to be taken as long as the patient is on it.
And if you fail: The table will beep so you have to redo that step.

But otherwise... maybe a rework is in order.

[Garash]

The surgery slip ups being text alone really confuses new doctors (including myself when I started).  An action bar like the claw machine would be boss, though I'm not much in favor of slowing down surgery.

That actually sounds like a great idea, action bars don't have to be long, a half/quarter second action bar wouldn't slow things that much, plus if you're doing surgery properly, you should have a hemostat in your off hand, and the action bar would give you time to hover the next tool you're gonna need to use in your inventory and the empty slot next to it.

[Bartimeus]

Yeah sure why not. Here's my attempt :
https://github.com/goonstation/goonstation/pull/14757

[PHLiao]

Was thinking, what if the surgery computers by each of the surgery tables lets out beep sound when a slip-up is made? It might make it easier for doing surgeries while also avoiding adding additional visual clutter.

[Kotlol]

Was thinking, what if the surgery computers by each of the surgery tables lets out beep sound when a slip-up is made? It might make it easier for doing surgeries while also avoiding adding additional visual clutter.

I suggested that here too but on the surgery tables and such.