another idea - radar range on geoscape

[moriarty]

Do you see a possibility to show dynamic radar ranges when placing a new base?

as in: showing the actual radar range of the existing base(s), but also showing the circle(s) around the cursor while considering where to put the new base? (for starters, I guess having one circle showing the range of a Large Radar would be enough - of course it would be nice to have one circle for Small Radar, one for Large Radar and one for Hyperwave Decoder, which only shows up once the technology is available...)

[michal]

I've moved messages from high res graphic topic to this topic.

[moriarty]

thank you, michal.

Yankes, how much effort is it to draw a circle on the globe? just a circular line, 1 pixel wide, no shading or anything?

[Yankes]

right now I have tech to draw disc, trying to draw thin circle will take similar time like drawing full disc. To try using it do draw small lines is ineffective.
drawing dynamically new radar position will not be a big problem.

[moriarty]

oh, okay. disc is fine, then

I think the least game-changing implementation would be to display the radar range for a large radar around the cursor as well as around existing bases when placing a new base.

The next thing would be implementing it as a toggled alternative geoscape view. that is a bigger change from the original, but I think many people would like it.



Yankes, is it possible to label the radar border? that is, display "Large Radar Range" or "Small Radar Range" or "Hyperwave Decoder Range" at the northernmost part of the radar-range disc?

[pmprog]

Yankes, is it possible to label the radar border? that is, display "Large Radar Range" or "Small Radar Range" or "Hyperwave Decoder Range" at the northernmost part of the radar-range disc?

Surely it'd just be better, and easier to use 3 different colours

[moriarty]

better for us veterans, yes... but what about new players?

[pmprog]

better for us veterans, yes... but what about new players?

Maybe  have a geoscape toggle which removes the day/night on the oceans (but leave the land), and instead draw radar boundaries - 1 colour per base. That way it doesn't interfere constantly, but you can see when placing new bases.

Also, you'd only really need to see the "maximum" radar range, no? So wouldn't really need to differentiate the three types

[moriarty]

I thought about showing the "projected" radar ranges when placing a new base. your cursor would have rings around it that indicate your possible radar coverage if the base was placed at the cursor's location. for that, you would need two (or later three) rings for the radar ranges of the different facilities.

[Volutar]

Yankes doesn't try to draw circles, he simply modifies his shading which totally re-renders whole globe. And I was saying about colored lines drawn over globe, like borders between countries. There is already "tab" button which toggles border view, and we could add some other button for toggling radar circles.

Personally I'm against toggling between day-night and radars, because when watching UFOs flying through radar coverage zones, you just leave night/day line out of control. Specially when chasing ufo craft for some reason in background.

And actully this is unnecessary to get into full rerender just because of radar ranges. It would be a waste of resources.

[Amunak]

Since showing radar ranges doesn't affect gameplay (it doesn't change the "difficulty") and since it would be awesome (and probably toggleable, too), there's no reason to NOT have it (if you have enought time and enthusiasm to programm it and if it doesn't affect performance too much).

Personally I'd prefer a simple line-ellipse (without shading) showing the actual "vision range" of a base. As for drawing the three ranges while placing a base - I think that that's not necessary. You can save the game before placing a base, then you place it, build a radar (it should probably show the range even if theres a radar in construction) and if you are not satisfied, you can just load it. It would be better to see it while placing the base but as I read drawing the circles at cursor could eat way too much cpu time.

[moriarty]

you know what would actually be nice? wouldn't it be possible to have a toggleable "information layer"?

what I mean is literally another layer: instead of putting stuff like radar range or UFO flight paths onto the globe with shading and everything, you would draw it on an invisible (hemi)sphere with a radius of (geoscape earth radius + 1).

this second sphere could be used for a whole lot more: all of the content of "Graphs" could be visualized (coloring regions by alien activity, funding change etc.). most of the already existing functions for calculating stuff on the geoscape could be recycled, but since it's not shaded, it wouldn't use that much CPU time, and you wouldn't have to re-calculate the globe every time you toggle a display overlay. it would be like augmented reality goggles for the semi-realistic geoscape globe.

would that work? or am I misunderstanding some basic principle?

[Yankes]

you know what would actually be nice? wouldn't it be possible to have a toggleable "information layer"?

what I mean is literally another layer: instead of putting stuff like radar range or UFO flight paths onto the globe with shading and everything, you would draw it on an invisible (hemi)sphere with a radius of (geoscape earth radius + 1).

this second sphere could be used for a whole lot more: all of the content of "Graphs" could be visualized (coloring regions by alien activity, funding change etc.). most of the already existing functions for calculating stuff on the geoscape could be recycled, but since it's not shaded, it wouldn't use that much CPU time, and you wouldn't have to re-calculate the globe every time you toggle a display overlay. it would be like augmented reality goggles for the semi-realistic geoscape globe.

would that work? or am I misunderstanding some basic principle?

One thing, we dont have transparency. Second layer will completely hide every thing under.
To show graphs on globe simpler will be to replace land textures. We will need add new one that will be used for graph data.
OXC could in future store more accurate data, not only for continents but for regions too (UFO activity).  Only problem with this will be lot of more information that current is available in game, it will simplify a bit looking for alien bases.

[pmprog]

One thing, we dont have transparency. Second layer will completely hide every thing under.

Maybe just make it an alternative world rendering then.

To show graphs on globe simpler will be to replace land textures. We will need add new one that will be used for graph data.

That sounds pretty good

OXC could in future store more accurate data, not only for continents but for regions too (UFO activity).  Only problem with this will be lot of more information that current is available in game, it will simplify a bit looking for alien bases.

Make it scale on the game difficulty level. If the player selected one of the beginner levels, show them the most granular (per region) activity; with the hardest getting continent (because that's available to them in the original).

I think it'd look good, and probably use it more than the graphs, where sometimes it's quite difficult to distinguish all the lines and you have to keep flicking them on and off.

[moriarty]

oh, no transparency? bummer. how hard is that to implement, though?