[DONE][Suggestion] Keyboard Shortcut to Add Indicator over a Soldier

[NineCoronas]

Apologies for title sprawl.

Basically, I'd like to see a hotkey that you can use to trigger a colored arrow to point down at a soldier. Maybe you could select a variety of colors in Extended Links. Anyways, I want to use it to mark soldiers that have active, dangerous explosives to be thrown, but I can think of a bunch of other uses for such a key.

Thanks for your time!

[Meridian]

Done.

Focus (no need to select) a soldier (or any friendly unit), and press Alt+C.
It will cycle between a red indicator, blue indicator, green indicator, white indicator and no indicator each time you press it.
(red indicator looks orange in TFTD)

Press and hold Alt to display the indicator overhead.

Indicator is only displayed for standing (i.e. non-unconscious) friendly units (incl. alien under MC).

Indicator is saved and persists after save/load.


PS: the facing direction indicator is now NOT displayed anymore when holding just Alt; it now requires holding Alt+Ctrl

[Delian]

it now requires holding Alt+Ctrl

Direction indicator is a commonly used function, so I think it's not a good idea to make it harder to use. Is there perhaps some other key that could be used for the Direction indicator, or perhaps for the new soldier earmarking, so that the players wouldn't need to hold two keys to access the Direction Indicator?

[Solarius Scorch]

I am very sorry to say this, but this makes for a terrible change for my playing experience. I did not realise how much I relied upon pressing Alt for visual orientation around the battlefield, but now I understand that it's literally the most used key on my keyboard when playing X-Com (maybe next to Ctrl for running). I use it all the time, and not having it easily available is seriously cutting into my playing ergonomics.

I won't use big words like "this is unplayable now!", because it's not true, but it is significantly harder to play. I would be very grateful if this change was made optional in some way.

[Akamashi]

A terrible change. The colored arrows look foreign to this game. I used to use the alt hotkey all the time, and now I'm very upset because I don't need the new feature at all.

[TheQuinch]

I echo the general sentiment - I am always down for extra features {and the custom markers are pretty cool}, but any chance of remapping alt back to its default function and using ctrl-alt for the custom markers? Or, if it's possible, have both of them be remappable?

[Meridian]

A terrible change. The colored arrows look foreign to this game.

That's why suggestions are publicly visible here and open for community discussion.
Why did nobody comment between March and August that this suggestion is useless?

I used to use the alt hotkey all the time, and now I'm very upset because I don't need the new feature at all.

It would also help if you didn't just say "I use it all the time", but said clearly when and why you use it.

I don't use alt at all, maybe once a month on an odd Celatid or something.
In the other 99.99% of cases the unit facing direction is clear without any help (or irrelevant).

How am I supposed to know that you're using it all the time for something?

[CrazedHarpooner]

I would not consider this feature useless, while I haven't given it much time in actual gameplay I can see that this can be used to easely identify units that are carrying specialized items, medkits, stunrods, BLs and anything else when you don't want to play with cookie cutter loadouts for all soldiers. Could also easely mark units that have low health / armor, have shown MC weakness, etc... It's very new and people just haven't found their use of the feature. It does make it easier to tell appart your currently selected unit from motion scanner arrows indicators.

Now for the facing indicator, I have used it with relative frequency, the most common case is for "aliens in the dark" where an enemy unit has been spotted, but the tiles it's standing on haven't been revealed. It helps in both determining the facing AND where on the map it is if I want to try to take a shot at it, instead of having to cursor scan every dark tile.

I believe the issue comes from the fact that the new feature has "pushed" the older one into requiring 2 key holds instead of the 1 and muscle memory has not adapted. I don't find the new method particulary problematic, but that's my opinion on it.

[Solarius Scorch]

That's why suggestions are publicly visible here and open for community discussion.
Why did nobody comment between March and August that this suggestion is useless?

Because:
1) Like I mentioned, I did not realise fully how important this was;
2) I had no idea it would be forced on me with no way out;
3) I probably didn't care to think about this feature back then, because I wasn't interested in it, and therefore didn't consider possible repercussions.

No huge deal, I can live with it, but I honestly would rather not. This function is like a complementary minimap to me now, so not having this easily available is pretty annoying.

I believe the issue comes from the fact that the new feature has "pushed" the older one into requiring 2 key holds instead of the 1 and muscle memory has not adapted. I don't find the new method particulary problematic, but that's my opinion on it.

Unfortunately I do. I use this often enough that having to press two keys now is very awkward.

Please don't take it as thankless grumbling. It is a very rare case of me not liking some OXCE feature; I love 40% of it, 59% I'm indifferent about, and 1% I hate. This feature belongs with this 1%, unfortunately.

[Akamashi]

That's why suggestions are publicly visible here and open for community discussion.
Why did nobody comment between March and August that this suggestion is useless?

How could I know what would be sacrificed?

It would also help if you didn't just say "I use it all the time", but said clearly when and why you use it.

I don't use alt at all, maybe once a month on an odd Celatid or something.
In the other 99.99% of cases the unit facing direction is clear without any help (or irrelevant).

How am I supposed to know that you're using it all the time for something?

There are a lot of situations when the enemy is standing in the shadow of the fog of war, and visually it is not visible. This happens many times in each mission. Except by pressing the alt button, it is impossible to know the direction of these enemies' gaze.

[psavola]

I've gotten used to using ALT very extensively. If you have a scaled battlescape, as I suppose essentially everyone has now, it's not really many screens to scroll to see everything even on, say, 60x60 map (in contrast to OG). Usually I only use the minimap in bug-hunt mode or check how far I am from the borders of the map (also by pressing ALT on minimap to see the borders, if I recall correctly; easily checkable with scrolling as well). Instead of minimap, it's way more convenient to just  press ALT to spot the units (also scanned ones), including which way they are facing just to be sure (especially important in mods like XCF where at start you might have tons of enemies looking at some direction and sniper/spotter mechanics make it essential to know which ones have spotted you). This is also true for missions which have multiple levels and you want to quickly go up/down levels with PgUp/PgDown and check which level had the enemy units (that you see with PsiVision for example).

The problems with minimap are that
- it's slow to switch back and forth (multiple times per turn)
- it can be very difficult to spot the units with certainty, especially the blue dots can be really difficult to see if they are standing on top of some item
- the colors on it can be really messy and ugly, I suppose depending on terrain.
- you don't get the precise location so easily if you want to target some unit or its adjacent square (e.g. with a grenade)

It's no big problem for me to get used to pressing two keys instead of just one, given that CTRL and ALT are so close to each other so you can do the pressing with one hand (I have used little finger and thumb myself in my testing) in any case leaving the other, right hand free to do something else, like scroll the map.

I suppose it would have caused least surprise and thus would have been most logical to preserve the existing behaviour with ALT, yet add the new feature using a different keybinding, like CTRL+ALT. But whether it makes sense to change it back this way, or some other way, is maybe another question.

[Vakrug]

And nobody mentioned proximity detector? I am joining to this demonstration. This is mockery to blame us for not protesting earlier. No one could knew that new feature would break the older behavior.
Also I remember discussion about 'X' for 'removing soldiers from all crafts' and 'Z' for 'removing soldiers from the selected one'. Despite former being completely useless, Meridian said it is an old feature and will not change that. That is why no one was prepared for what was coming.

Although being able to mark soldiers on battlescape is somewhat useful.

[Delian]

The new feature can be useful in certain situations I suppose. But I don't understand why the Alt shortcut had to be changed. It's not like intercepting Alt prevents you from intercepting Alt+C.

[Meridian]

This is mockery to blame us for not protesting earlier.

I am not blaming anybody for the hotkey change.
That part was clear and closed for me already after Solarius' first post.
You can stop talking about it, I got it the first time.

I specifically and explicitly quoted and asked ONLY about the NEW feature and why he thinks it's useless.
So that I can decide whether to remove the new (useless!) feature, or whether I should find a different solution and keep the new (useless?) feature.

Why are you mocking me for trying to gather information?
Are you actually going to propose a solution/improvement or are you here only to complain?

[Meridian]

But I don't understand why the Alt shortcut had to be changed. It's not like intercepting Alt prevents you from intercepting Alt+C.

When I was playtesting it, the yellow motion scanner arrows (and the yellow current/selected unit arrow) were mixing with the yellow custom unit arrows.
I could not distinguish which is which.

So I started testing how to improve the readability of the situation.
1. One option was to have different shortcuts for motion scanner and for custom arrows.
2. Second option was to only allow custom arrows on friendly units.
3. Third option was to stop using the yellow custom arrows and only use other colors.

The current solution actually has all three of these, because they all helped with the readability and because I felt comfortable with that.

EDIT: option 1 was never released, you just made me believe it was... shame on you!

I see that not everybody is comfortable with that, so we should brainstorm, which of those three should be reverted, or replaced with something else.