Hello guys,
Here is a little question. I tried to solve it by myself and failed, so here it is delivered to your wisdom. I think that it is finally a mapping topic for a reason that will appear below (spawn). But first, lets take the facts:
Today at any moment of the battlescape playtime, when the soldiers have finished their turn, comes automatically the alien turn, and the civilian one (in what order? I would have to check). Both, aliens' actions, and civilians' actions, take time. And if aliens and civ. were not given a turn for action it would of course accelerate the game, the soldiers turn would come faster for the greater player satisfaction. Ok, so the question:
As written in the topic title, is it really necessary to let the civilians move before they are actually sighted by our (or aliens) troups?
The argument is the following : what the player doesn't see is not important at all. You will maybe agree with me that the game has not to be a simulation ("agent based" or so on). So, if the civilians spawn randomly enougth on the maps, they dont need at all to be moved before they get really detected. If detected by aliens they will be killed unless they run, and if detected by soldiers, the player will expect to see them doing anything.
It is all about saving CPU time, and about accelerating the game at early battlescapes. In one other side, to apply this trick there would be to multiply the civilians spawning possibilies to make impossible for the player to say that they never move before they get detected. Did this civilian move? Did he just stand waiting? ... So, doesn't the spawning range finally balance the *first* moves?
