Trying out some stuff to make it easier to aim but without taking away any of the current elements. Along the right lines?

I'm not sure I even understand what's going on in that screenie.

Do you have plans on eventually making a branch build for us to test out?

I like the look of the angle spans around the tank, nice effect.

I'm not sure how much we need easier aiming tho. Most who have played
more than a few basic games can already determine how to reach the target
without removing the water or land from view. Those that still do are only
punishing themselves.. refusing to learn basics.

For the few of us who use beam weapons or sniping attacks, the risk of
being a micron off target is half the challange. If there is no chance of
failing a shot, then it loses the adventure of learning.

The 2D representation is interesting; however, I don't see it as really being
a step forward. I'm also unsure how it would be able to perform over the
larger distance maps that exist. Not all maps are still 256x in size. The
bots themselves cannot percieve distances over 512x well enough to
stop shooting straight up or skipping thier move.

The 2D view is merely what information you can get by moving the main camera. Don't think I've added any extra information, its just presented in a different way. With this new view you dont have to move the main camera all the time to check the elevation. You could perhaps even just leave the main camera in shot/gun mode now.

Dunno was just something I was trying out to see how useful it was.

I've commited it to SVN so you can play with it. The new aiming sight is there too, you can enable it under the hud options (i key). Any feedback on these things are as always welcome.



That's probably just a bug on my part there shouldnt be any issue with this asuming the configuration is correct.

Did you commit it as a branch or just part of the trunk?

EDIT: NVM, I got it.

So I tried it out and found it very interesting. I dunno how much of a help it would be but it may help. Really, I don't think we will know until we let someone test it who is completely new to Scorched 3D.

I'm gonna go ahead and give my suggestions on it even knowing that you don't even know if you're gonna go with this or not.

The one thing I wished was if the terrain was a solid color so it stands out around the background. Then I came back on the forums to make this post and noticed that's the way you used to have it in that picture. I'm also wondering if it would run faster this way because on my system, I went from 130 FPS to 120 FPS with this enabled. I could only imagine the difference is greater on slower systems.

When I first started a match, my very first interpretation when I saw that view was, "Is this a bug?" because there was nothing to differentiate the view from the playing field so it all mixed together and then when I played with it, I of course understood it more. My suggestion to help fix this is add a very subtle transparent texture for that window. Something like a light blue or something.

Another suggestion for the window resizing is have the width and height relative to each other when you size it because if you just change the width, the image becomes skewed and enemy tanks will appear closer or further away which will inhibit a player's ability to determine the correct power needed.

As far as bugs go with it, it's still pretty early in development and I'm pretty sure you are already aware of what it's doing and what it isn't doing, so I'll let you flesh it out a little more first.

Thanks DS, made some changes with that in mind. Still not optimized it though.
Looks very much like the original game in many ways.
Also I've now textured the more visible sight option.
Changes are comitted if anyone wants a go.

I definitely think that's a step in the right direction. I like that much better. The new zoom option makes a lot more sense too. I also think the new site is cool. It's less obstructive than the last one.

One thing I was thinking about when playing--and I'm sure you've been thinking about it too--is how to make the display of tanks less of a jumbled mess (as seen in the pic).

My thought on this was perhaps to make the tanks fade as your direction moves away from them. I also thought about them becoming smaller as an alternative method but I don't think this would work as well. It's hard to tell without actually testing it.

Ah.. thought i was going blind for a moment.

a bunch of my weapons seemed broken.. You changed the RingRenderer to
instead be an Explosion switch of Ring. Which looks totally wicked by the way

Take a moment to rewrite them, but thanks! this will be vary usefull once i
sort it all out.

Any other secret alterations you'd like to report? i know you like to hide
new tricks for us to discover, but could i at least be given a hint.

These are the most recent commit changes:

Tried the fading and making smaller. The problem is that due to wind the small tank may be the tank you are actualy aiming at.

I've removed the names of the tanks except for the one you hover over to make it less cluttered. Also I've added the aiming marker to the profile so you can see where that is.

Not sure there is much more I will do to it now until people actualy try it.

How is the performance of it these days?

You have a point there. I'm gonna try to put more thought into how to make it look a little neater though.



Performance is definitely better than it was. It was 5 frames less this time as opposed to 10 frames before.

I like the very first elevation display version. It might be a very nice presentatin for the casual player that is learning the game, or for anyone who is fond of the old school artillery games.

At least that 2D representation is optional.. most will probably prefer to play
as usual. I actually found it more confusing to try aiming sniper-shots with it.

The new directional display is very slick. Definately a keeper. The re-drawn
aiming wedge is a lot easier to see from 1st-person. And even looks the
same from both sides..

I think with these last few bits in place, we should be ready to show the world.

I was thinking about this a little more about the issue of the wind factor because it does present a challenge with its third dimension.

It's up to you whether you think the display is fine the way it is or not but I'm just throwing out ideas on this.

What if you could select the tank/s on the 2D map that you want to aim for? This will bring the ones you want to aim for to the forefront and everything else disappears. Just deselect all of them to show all tanks on the map again.

The only two issues I see with this are, 1) It will take a few seconds to apply this in-game and it may be an issue for timed games (but it is optional anyway) and, 2) If the other tanks disappear while you are selecting the ones you want, how do you add more tanks--maybe a time delay before they disappear?