aliens

Author Topic: Make it obvious which tiles are lit at night  (Read 1284 times)

Offline Vakrug

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Make it obvious which tiles are lit at night
« on: November 24, 2022, 02:04:58 pm »
Make it obvious which tiles are lit at night.
As everyone probably already know, units at night has reduced visibility. But if an enemy unit is standing near a light source, then it is visible as good as during daytime. In a base game aliens has the same night vision as day vision, so it is useless to hide player's soldiers in the dark. But in modded games (like XComFiles) putting your troops in a dark place is a matter of life and death. And here is a problem: right now it is very hard to figure out which tiles are actually considered to be lit. (Slightly lit tiles often are considered as dark tiles.) I see 2 possible fixes to this problem.

First is to make a color gap between lit tiles as unlit tiles bigger. Right now there is a linear gradient between fully dark tiles and fully lit tiles. If only there were more contrast between minimally lit tiles that are considered lit and maximally lit tiles that are considered dark.

Second is to make something similar to "night vision" mode (space or scroll lock). In this mode it is very well visible your unit visibility range. It would be great if another mode would exists to see lit tiles.

Offline Meridian

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Re: Make it obvious which tiles are lit at night
« Reply #1 on: November 24, 2022, 04:31:49 pm »
This feature was discussed several times over the years, with the same outcome each time.

We explicitly do not want this feature in OXC/OXCE.

Maybe some other fork...

Offline Vakrug

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Re: Make it obvious which tiles are lit at night
« Reply #2 on: November 24, 2022, 09:04:42 pm »
Well, sorry for repeating, but I spent some time searching on this forum and found nothing about this topic.
Where are those discussions? I really want to know who is "we", and what can possibly be bad about this feature. I hope this is not "more obscurity -- more fun" nonsense.

Offline Meridian

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Re: Make it obvious which tiles are lit at night
« Reply #3 on: November 24, 2022, 09:43:45 pm »
The longest discussions were on Discord.

It pops up on the forum also from time to time, but it's hard to search for because there are no clear keywords.
But here's a random question for you from last year, just to provide some evidence: https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,10076.0.html
And even some small discussion: https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,6869.0.html
I'm lazy to search for more.

As for who is "we", it is SupSuper and Warboy for OXC and Meridian and Yankes for OXCE... there is nobody else who can decide whether a feature is implemented or not.

If the question was more about who was discussing it, then the answer is "a lot of people", including devs, major and minor modders, and players.
The biggest mods/modders at the time were included for sure: XcomFiles, XPiratez, 40k, etc... feel free to ask the modders themselves for the feedback they gave.

Offline The Reaver of Darkness

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Re: Make it obvious which tiles are lit at night
« Reply #4 on: November 24, 2022, 10:23:39 pm »
You can use night vision mode to be able to see where your units are.

I have also made a color improvement for vanilla terrain which makes sure that some color is visible as long as it is light enough for your soldiers to see. I have not released it as a standalone mod yet but it is available in Harmony.

Offline Vakrug

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Re: Make it obvious which tiles are lit at night
« Reply #5 on: November 24, 2022, 11:48:00 pm »
This was requested and discussed many times. The outcome was that it is considered cheating.
Cheating??? Seriously?  :o
After seeing this picture https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/File:FlarePattern.png I was 100% confident, that lit/unlit tile is a common knowledge, just requires good sight or tile counting! I have no words...  :-X

Offline Meridian

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Re: Make it obvious which tiles are lit at night
« Reply #6 on: November 25, 2022, 08:35:34 am »
I don't judge, I've just summarized the outcome of the discussion.

I was 100% confident, that lit/unlit tile is a common knowledge, just requires good sight or tile counting!

Btw. flares aren't the only things producing light and each object can have a different pattern (unknown to the player). Even flares can be modded to have a different pattern.

As for good sight... just try some of XcomFiles famous black terrains... to me they look almost identical when fully lit and in full darkness. If it required only good sight, you wouldn't even need to ask for this feature.
« Last Edit: November 25, 2022, 08:39:43 am by Meridian »