Make selected soldier sighting line top & vertical automatically

[krilain]

Hello.

As I was invited to, I tried to make a ticket on the forge site but failed for any reason. So I'll post this little feature proposal here. A detailed discussion was made in the forum before so I will be brief.

Today when you select any soldier the view is not really optimized for having at each turn tactical fast analyse and so decision. For that the best would be to get the same view always set for the soldiers (at least the choice of this standard view should be fast activated at any moment) - I joined a pic. Align automatically the soldier sight with vertical and top of map seems good. Why so ?
For 2 reasons :
1 - that's the best way in most cases to evaluate soldier position if we considere obstacles (can we fire? are we hidden well enough?) or if we want to ensure we aren't uncovered in our back. With the position I suggest, the back is just in bottom side, that's simple. Simple also comes the thinking about the need of rotating our soldier to avoid undiscovered part of map. The point is to make each turn, each soldiers decisions faster and efficient.
2 - the second thing is that automation for map rotation may avoid manual rotation, less accurate, and slow for some computers. In this case we would just have to translate the view in most cases. Here again we save time by saving not necessary manual rotations. 



I hope I had been clear. And hope I dont ask for anything hard to make. I think about a button toggle to set this constraint to on or off. Thanks for reading

[geever]

Reminds me to the Battlescape Radar.

-geever

[H-Hour]

I think he's talking more about camera rotation. It's not a bad idea (I too suffer sometimes from slow performance and turning the camera can become a pain). But it's probably a very-low priority feature even if it was accepted, so I doubt we'd see it soon. (And definitely tied to a key/button -- not automatic).

[Triaxx2]

I think he means a toggle of select a soldier and have the camera lock, then select a different soldier and have it lock to that view, instead of having to lock to one, pressing button, and then repeating for another soldier.

[krilain]

I think he's talking more about camera rotation. It's not a bad idea (I too suffer sometimes from slow performance and turning the camera can become a pain). But it's probably a very-low priority feature even if it was accepted, so I doubt we'd see it soon. (And definitely tied to a key/button -- not automatic).

Yes. As we discussed, that was initially the slow performance on my computer that made me tired with rotating the view for each soldier. Because a good view for one becomes a bad for the following, most often.

I think he means a toggle of select a soldier and have the camera lock, then select a different soldier and have it lock to that view, instead of having to lock to one, pressing button, and then repeating for another soldier.

True. That's a more general way to see it. Choosen view for a soldier not being necessarily the good one for the other, being able to lock it would meet my exceptation. Personnaly I think that it's good enought to be able to get the vertical view set by default for each soldier, when needed of course and so when togglable option set to on.

Reminds me to the Battlescape Radar.

-geever

Here again it's right. The first times I played, I was looking for a minimap to get a tactical view witch would give you more analysis capability and more independance with the real ground map. But as far as I have a little screen, it was finally not necessarily a so good idea, because I would have the need of a full screen minimap

But you point here another of my wish slightly different. It is about a tutorial campain, where would be allowed some graphical helpers, like I see in your picture, and maybe in mine (my poor one:)). In order to make new players able to understand visibility questions in this game (and tactical games in general), it could be interesting to allow frog of war, or, vision frontier lines (in addition to main sight line, and already existing helpers like obtained by pressing T key), and this at least in a tutorial or easy mode, and once again in order to help that each soldier must really discover the map unless you love surprises as being shot in the side. The idea here is that making people understanding well the mechanic in battlescape would make them more addict. Some are disappointed when an ennemy seems to come from nowhere at 3 meters, but it makes sense.

[geever]

But you point here another of my wish slightly different. It is about a tutorial campain, where would be allowed some graphical helpers, like I see in your picture, and maybe in mine (my poor one:)). In order to make new players understand visibility questions in this game, it could be interesting to allow frog of war of vision frontier lines, at least in tutorial or easy mode, in order to help to understand that each soldier must really discover the map unless he loves some great surprise like being shot in the side.

Ah, don't spoiler my secret plans, please! For some time I'm thinking about the way of implementing in-game tutorial for the campaign. Not as a different campaign mode but hints in floating windows and highlighted items. It will need quite some time. There are many missing feature to it unfortunately.

-geever

[H-Hour]

Ah, don't spoiler my secret plans, please! For some time I'm thinking about the way of implementing in-game tutorial for the campaign. Not as a different campaign mode but hints in floating windows and highlighted items. It will need quite some time. There are many missing feature to it unfortunately.

When you do, I want to build a special training-center map to put the player through.

[krilain]

Ah, don't spoiler my secret plans, please! For some time I'm thinking about the way of implementing in-game tutorial for the campaign. Not as a different campaign mode but hints in floating windows and highlighted items. It will need quite some time. There are many missing feature to it unfortunately.

-geever

Ahah
Not an easy task but would be great, and make much for game addiction. May I add that you reassure me about the tutorial when the one implemented today is quite minimalistic !

When you do, I want to build a special training-center map to put the player through.

The advantage of a specific map is that you can choose by advance the set of cases you want the player to encounter. For instance the advantage of the map relief. I think about the difference for your soldier life between an alien throwing a grenade at him when he stands at top of a slope or at bottom. In the first case he will probably have a long life, in the second case you can write a letter to his familly

[geever]

When you do, I want to build a special training-center map to put the player through.

I don't see how it would fit into the normal campaign...
As I said I don't want a short demo-campaign for the tutorial, but hints for the main.

-geever

[Triaxx2]

Perhaps a first mission on a new recruit training course? Or implemented separately on the main campaign screen?

[geever]

Or implemented separately on the main campaign screen?

Did you miss my point?

-geever

[Triaxx2]

That wasn't all directed at you. But honestly, I really hate games that keep nagging at the point.