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Author Topic: A Few UI Mod Ideas  (Read 2000 times)

Offline Quarot

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A Few UI Mod Ideas
« on: November 27, 2022, 06:38:35 am »
BATTLESCAPE
Drop Shadows for Hovering Units: This may be a bit on the conditional side, as it calls for the mission environment to be well-lit and/or daytime, but can make it much easier to keep track of your units, in the later stages of the game. Simply put, if a unit is airborne, then on the ground directly beneath them, there will be a small shadow. This can help you to gauge where exactly they are, without having to constantly scroll up and down, and memorize exactly where their position vertically traced to. It can also be used for locating hovering enemies, like floaters, cyberdiscs, and tentaculats.

Melee Miss Indication Effect: This is fairly straightforward. There is no feedback that can distinguish landing a melee hit, and missing one--except for when the unit goes down. A separate sound effect and/or visual indicator will make things much clearer.

Mid-Mission Kill Count: Admittedly, this is more for training rookies, but it can help to remind the player which of their units got a kill on the mission and which didn't--without leaving the mission.

Mind Control/M.C. Control Glow: Putting a little colored outline around units that have been put controlled by the other side. Easier to avoid shooting the one you don't want to.


GEOSCAPE
Mark Sellable Items when you have Researched Them: This is to help with making room, and selling off materials that you know you don't need--without having to check back at ufopedia if you've finished researching them or not. It can be clunky, and impossible in some cases, otherwise.

Pre-Intercept Craft Quick Check: Allow us to quickly review a few more details about crafts we send against detected UFOs/USOs, before doing so. At least display what kind of craft, and what the weapons are. This mainly when we have multiple bases, with a lot of crafts, and tend to rename them. Essentially, statstrings, for crafts.


OTHER
Show when Soldiers have reached Stat Caps: When we check a soldier's stats, show what stats have reached the limit, and won't increase any further. Thus we don't have to redundantly train them.

Offline Meridian

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Re: A Few UI Mod Ideas
« Reply #1 on: November 27, 2022, 09:59:13 am »
Melee Miss Sounds and Melee Miss Animations exist already in OXCE: https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Ruleset_Reference_Nightly_(OpenXcom)#Sounds_and_Animations

Ctrl+E to show which soldiers don't have any mission experience, OXCE.

Online psavola

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Re: A Few UI Mod Ideas
« Reply #2 on: November 27, 2022, 05:31:01 pm »
Wrt. "Pre-Intercept Craft Quick Check" I use right-click on OXCE in the intercept screen. That way I can verify for example which weapons are equipped on the craft and whether it's all armed up. Because the length reserved for craft names is rather short, I doubt any statstrings like functionality is feasible (unless the caps are raised significantly).

My method works rather well, but if you really wanted to make QoL changes to the intercept screen, I suppose one could try to embed more info on the screen (now it has the name, status, base, Weapons/Craft/SWS count). At least on higher resolutions, there would be space for example to display the percentage of fuel on the craft, which weapons it has (I wonder if that would require some abbreviations) and how much ammo those weapons have. In the end, the interception screen would look quite a bit different and would deviate from the original X-COM feel. So I'm not really sure if it would be a good thing.

BTW. is there a way in OXCE to change the order by which the craft a) repairs, b) rearms and c) refuels. If you have force craft launch possibility (most players do), I would usually like to refuel first (and in some cases rearm first), repair last.

Offline Meridian

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Re: A Few UI Mod Ideas
« Reply #3 on: November 27, 2022, 05:41:53 pm »
BTW. is there a way in OXCE to change the order by which the craft a) repairs, b) rearms and c) refuels. If you have force craft launch possibility (most players do), I would usually like to refuel first (and in some cases rearm first), repair last.

No, and I'm not planning on adding it.

There is a PR for it for OXC: https://github.com/OpenXcom/OpenXcom/pull/1396
So you can build your own version with this option if you wish.

I don't know if SupSuper is planning on merging this PR, but even if it is accepted into OXC, it won't be accepted into OXCE.