another idea - radar range on geoscape

[Volutar]

Joining these ellipses could also be done less CPU consuming way.
But anyway I belive this feature is not that necessary to spend such CPU and human resources on "temporary" version.

[SupSuper]

Geez guys, are you really sure it's worth all this effort and resources just to draw radar ranges?

I mean, radar ranges aren't even that accurate given detection isn't deterministic. If it was me, I would just draw some lines around bases with little code and CPU cost, seems to be clear enough.

[Yankes]

This probably will not end up in master branch, but I will still try

[moriarty]

Volutar, I agree that it sounds like too much effort, but I consider this the defining part of openxcom: we can try to implement small changes that make the game a little bit nicer.

I don't want higher resolution graphics, for example, but I'd like to see perhaps some additional armor types and weapons. Or armed civilians. Stuff that doesn't change the game completely, but still improves it.

I think that radar ranges on the geoscape is not that important, but it's kind of symbolic: a few people think that it would be nice, and now we want to do it to prove that openxcom is just that little bit better than the original.

I guess you should just leave us to it, and once we're finished, post it on the main page as an example of what the ox engine is capable of :

[Amunak]

Volutar, I agree that it sounds like too much effort, but I consider this the defining part of openxcom: we can try to implement small changes that make the game a little bit nicer.

That's exactly how I see it too. Actually, there are already some improvements (like infinite number of saves).

[pmprog]

SupSuper's screenshot is pretty much what I was thinking in this whole thing; Though Yankes' looks pretty cool.

I'd like to see perhaps some additional armor types and weapons.

TBH, I would like to see some armour available at the start too. I find it odd that you'd have a combat-based association that doesn't have a single type of armour. I did like XCOM:Apoc for that reason (also the mixing and matching of armour, though I don't know how necessary that was). But this is for a seperate topic

[moriarty]

TBH, I would like to see some armour available at the start too. I find it odd that you'd have a combat-based association that doesn't have a single type of armour. I did like XCOM:Apoc for that reason (also the mixing and matching of armour, though I don't know how necessary that was). But this is for a seperate topic

https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,511.0.html

[Volutar]

The thing is, rendering circles as lines could cause number of small visual uglinesses, when circle is devided by number of linear sectors, which coordinates are rounded. Though there are ways to make them smaller, but it requres drawing them pixel-by-pixel (in order to implement floating-point version of drawline).
That's another reason of not trying to do that before 1.0+OpenGL.

[moriarty]

but I don't want to wait until v1.0+ ! 

sorry.

no, seriously, if it's at all feasible without having to write several pages of code (and I assume that it's really not that hard, since there are already several functions that calculate circular things, and also functions for drawing lines as far as I've seen), I'd say let's try it and see how it looks. of course it will be prettier in openGL. but I think it will be o.k. with 8bit graphics as well.

[Volutar]

OKay, but what about multiplying ranges of multiple radars? Isn't it illogical?

[moriarty]

multiplying ranges of multiple radars is highly illogical. who brought that up, anyway? did I? if yes, I never meant it. 

of course, building additional radars only increases detection chance, not range.

[Volutar]

So multiple radars increases detection chance, and how it will be shown? Let's imagine radar circles already there, but how "power" of these radars will be shown? like colored dots near base itself?

[Amunak]

So multiple radars increases detection chance, and how it will be shown? Let's imagine radar circles already there, but how "power" of these radars will be shown? like colored dots near base itself?

We don't need that, do we? I think that the range is most important.

[Volutar]

Well range border doesn't mean any alien craft crossed it will be immideately detected, it can even pass through whole radar range withoug being detected, so I suppose power of radars is quite important.

[moriarty]

I'm not sure we need to show it at all... for me it would be enough to see the area that is covered (even if it doesn't mean that all UFO's are detected within).

if we do want to include a visual cue, how about putting those palette-based gradients to use and making the line pulsate? start with the highest saturation, then decrease saturation step by step over time. if I understood correctly, the detection is checked against a fixed probability every x minutes, with x decreased by additional radar facilities? if so, make one pulsation every x minutes, and you have a direct visual representation.

it gets complicated when you are mixing small and large radar facilities, though... perhaps draw one circle for each type of installation, to give a direct representation of the different areas of detection probability?