Simple suggestions

[Istrebitel]

Greetings.

I am new to the forum and a long time X-Com fan and i love that someone is actually making an open source implementation finally. Its so great. I hope project leads wont lose interest and we would see it finished and working.

I have some suggestions that are simple and aimed at just easing the game and do not change the original game.

1. Add an option to order all craft at once. For exampe, several Interceptors with blaster bombs could take down a BSHIP, but since the game requires you to manually send everybody in on the attack run, you very well end up with interceptors coming in one by one and dying. A simple ctrl+click issuing the order to every active window would go a long way.

1.b. Possibly, implement time still going on while interception window is open, so you could have new craft join interception without need to shrink window and wait, and you could never for sure be able to down ufo over land if its flying close to water (always bugged me). But thats a game change already...

2. Add an option to see where you have line-of-fire and where you have not. Preferably cursor should go black when you dont have a line of fire on the target, without a need to click. This would greatly ease tactical planning and simplify the interface. For example, often you kneel just to find out you dont have a line of fire!

2.a. Add an option to fire despite having no line of fire. A simple ctrl+ or shift+ to override "no line of fire" popup would go a long way! Of course it is arguably a game change, but i think it would be very nice to have and would just make the game less irritating.

2.b. Add an option to fire at the center of the tile or at the bottom of the tile. Right now the game fires at the bottom of the tile if there is no enemy there, and at the center if there is an enemy. Allowing the player to choose would be very nice addition, for example, when firing explosives you'd aim for the legs (as you do say in Quake and other games) to maximise your chance to hit.

2.c. Make it so your soldier wouldnt turn (spending AP) just to tell you that there is no line of fire. Or if you think its imbalancing and changing the game, then make it so if you aim a cursor outside the soldier's field of view, it would also be differently colored (or somehow else show that you have to turn to aim here). Possibly, add an indicator at all times of how many times your soldier needs to turn to fire at this location (or if he ever has to turn) - for example, less color saturated crosshair could show that you are not facing the point of fire.

3. Less imporatnt, but add an option to turn on an overlay (like they did in JA2 1.13 if you know what i mean) that shows your soldier's line of sight, at least approximately. For example, turn every tile that your soldier doesnt see darker or make it desaturated or just outline the tile border or whatever you wish.

4. Also less important, but add an option to see the trajectory used when throwing an object, and possibly and option to throw object using higher arc. This could be very useful when throwing around corners and obstacles - higher arc would make less chance for a grenade to hit a wall and end up in your face, but also would mean greater spread if your throwing accuracy isnt that well. Maybe add an option to choose an angle?

5. Also less important, but possibly, after you have studied an alien, add a tooltip option when you are aiming at it that would show how many damage on average would your weapon deal to it? Since you now know its armor values and resistances, it could show something like:
Type: Laser
Damage: 60
Resistance: 20%
Front Armor: 40
Approx. Damage: 16 (0-56)

6. Possibly add an option to change squad order in loadout screen? Possibly including option to move tanks around

PS: Btw, i have a question - why isnt some of the code of other projects re-used or experience incorporated?
I mean, we have PocketUFO which supposedly is a complete re-write of the game (since they changed interface and they have several differences and bugs not present in dos ufo - i think they must have written it from scratch)
We have UFO2000 which is a complete recreation of tactical game with additions.
Well, just wondering?

[Daiky]

All good points. I just have to add to point 2: if you kneel, your line of fire changes, so it is very possible you had a line of fire when standing up, but you don't have a line of fire when kneeling (if you are behind an object).

For the question : the fun of it is rewriting from scratch, even if pocketUFO would release their sources, it would not help us that much.
And the code of UFO2000 I know every detail of it (because I used to do some tweaking in it), but the code is not as organized as the openxcom code, and it would not help copy-pasting parts of it because it does not fit the logic of openxcom.
At the moment I have about the whole implementation of the battlescape already in my head, it is just a matter of writing the code.

[Istrebitel]

I know about kneeling changing line of fire. Had my share of annoyances with it...
Something could be done about that, for example, a key would needed to be held to check for kneeling LOF. It works in JA2 when you have to hold a key to see enemy sight and wether he can see you standing, prone or lying in an exact tile, but it uses color coding. If cursor has to stay close to original, some kind of key can be used to check line of sight.
Or maybe another approach - a notification showing that in OTHER mode, soldier would NOT have LOF. would be more reallistic too - since if you, say stand and see an alien head behind a wall, you could for sure tell that when you crouch, you wont see it anymore.

[hellblade]

For 1.  Why not just make "modes" of interception controllable by one click for all aircrafts?

Say you have 3 interceptors against a ufo with interception panels opened.  Ctrl-click on one aggressive mode and they all go agressive at the same time?

[Istrebitel]

Because for example if you attack some UFO with multiple craft at once and one takes heavy damage you'd like to only issue "back off" order to that craft, not all of them.

Plus since the goal of the project is a faithful 100% remake, users should expect the game to act the same way when same actions are repeated - i mean, any ui tweaks, commands or actions that were not present in original game should require additional input not present in original game, not the other way around. So if originally a button did action X on left click it should continue to do it - but its okay to add a different right click or ctrl+leftclick action

[hellblade]

Yes but you can still issue a single "back off" with the click as long as you're not holding the Ctrl button.  I only suggest adding the Ctrl click for simultaneous orders.

Ordering crafts to move out of a base simultaneously, is as faithful to the original as ordering the crafts to aggressive simultaneously.  The change you are suggesting not only involves adding a freeze time to the game, which is an even bigger change.  Not that I dislike the idea though, the original X-Com in a non-Pentium computer originally takes like 3 seconds to pass 5sec in game anyway.  It's close to stopping the game.

[Istrebitel]

Erm, it occured to me we are arguing about the same point. What i am proposing is indeed to make it available for ctrl+click to do make all open interceptor windows follow the order. I think this is what you also said "why not do this" and i misunderstood you since this was what i actually tried to propose in the op...

[hellblade]

Sorry my bad

Anyways great idea.  Because right now what I do is click aggressive mode for craft A, click aggressive for craft B, then back of on craft A and try to time aggressive again so both crafts attack at the same time.

Imagine what I have to do with 4 crafts, lol