Pathfinder

[SupSuper]

Suggestion.

How about having it so that holding down SHIFT makes the pathfinder appear after you have selected a unit?

This lets you preview the path without clicking; an important consideration if OpenX-COM is going to be played on laptops with badly laid-out mousepads.

What if you're playing it on a device without a SHIFT?

[kkmic]

What if you're playing it on a device without a SHIFT?

There could be one user defined setting that will activate the path preview - this should work on all platforms

[Daiky]

Hi, for the people that don't like two clicks for every move, Volutar thought about adding a option of the path preview appearing after staying with your cursor on the same place more than 0,5sec. So this can be an alternative to the shift-click.

PS. This is the method use for JA2 as well.

The extra safety for the two-click movement is that if you clicked the wrong place by accident, you can correct. Which is what happens to me a lot, and a wrong click can mean sometimes the loss of a soldier or a whole mission. I got used to the two clicks very fast.

[hsbckb]

I think the two click proposal is more feasible for device without mouse e.g android, tablet, iPhone.

[Volutar]

So what? Just because someone wants to port OX to android, we've got rid of nice features, like hover path hightlighting? Everything should be optional. And no feature should be denied because of platform limitation.

[hsbckb]

so what??

I only provide suggestion and hope you take this into consideration.

to be optional is good

I am not sure  whether it is nice feature or not but I prefer Daiky's suggestion.

PS.  I like to play this game on PC instead of android, iPhone, tablet, etc

[Volutar]

BTW path highlighting is almost invisible on the grass, because of green palette. I think it will eb better to have kind of "foot" overlay sprites for path.

[SupSuper]

Chill out guys, I was just making a joke. An option isn't as needlessly complex as you make it out to be.

[michal]

What about flying units? How it will work?

[Daiky]

Michal, currently it doesn't If there is no floor tile, it can not be colored.
But the feature served it's purpose for me, to debug that straight path issue.
The large unit pathfinding is starting to work, just some glitches on the stairs still left to do...

[Yankes]

I find interesting article about path finding:
https://aigamedev.com/open/tutorial/symmetry-in-pathfinding/

[Volutar]

About door opening. If manual opening with right click cost 0TUs, so automatic opening when going through it also should cost 0TUs. And let them open/close doors infinitely if they wish.

[redv]

Pathfinder exploit.

Pathfinder is perfect! My respect to developers.
But, pathfinder can be even better.

The problem.
1. If alien stand behind door, pathfinder can't get direction for my unit. And I know, alien behind closed door.
2. If my unit stand at the door, alien unit never try to open the door.

The suggestion.
When pathfinder calculate the path, it should not be taken into account undetected enemy units.
For example, if pathfinder calculate the path for alien unit, it not be taken into account undetected my units and civilian units.
On the other side, if pathfinder calculate the path for my unit, it not be taken into account undetected aliens and civilians.

This will give the dramatic into gameplay. Casual meeting will be possible at the doorway, on the stairs, around the corner.
In original Xcom rencounter were possible.

[Volutar]

could you please shrink screenshots to 640x400 before posting? thank you.

[Daiky]

I love screenshots with speech bubbles
About the exploit:
it was first brought up here: https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,586.msg5524.html#msg5524
and I fixed it.
but after this bug: https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,678.0.html
I removed the fix again, as it was causing this bug
I was reminded again here: https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,820.0.html
and here
If I get reminded enough times, I might even get out of my lazy chair and get in my working chair and try fix it :p someday