Allow Manipulation of the LOS Map

[Argh]

Pretty simple, really. Let us mark areas of the LOS map as blocking for all Units regardless of their position. This can be made fairly cheap by storing it as a secondary object and combining it with a final result during each update of a given Unit's LOS map (treat the squares affected as being incredibly high, basically), but it'll be expensive so I'd leave it off by default.

Double bennies if can use more than one category.

Use case? Buildings and other forms of ground obstacles that actually block LOS, which would make ground combat less crummy-feeling immediately... and there are a host of arcade-game applications if we can get tighter control over what the unit sub-AIs can perceive.

[lurker]

Your feature request is to be able to block LOS with things, not to actually change the LOS map. You should change your title to reflect that.

[Argh]

It amounts to the same thing, really. I don't care whether it's being manipulated directly via a Unit's existence or whether it's exposed to Lua (which would be more flexible and probably more useful). It'd be equally interesting, frankly, to be able to make all of the LOS map visible to all Units as well, for certain purposes.

[lurker]

Not really. Putting in blockers is far more limited. Direct manipulation is very slow to simulate blockers. The two features go hand in hand; are you asking for one or both?

[Argh]

I'd take the faster method over the slower one, naturally.

Various hack-arounds are possible at that point whether or not the slow one ever exists.

[lurker]

It's not fast vs. slow. One is fast at one thing and the other is fast at a lot of things, but not that particular one, and is much more flexibile.

[yuritch]

We'd probably use that for smoke shells and smoke screens in S'44. Might add a new tactical element to the game.

[Argh]

Then let's have the more flexible method, then.

It doesn't matter if this won't operate more often than the current LOS update cycle, basically- the primary uses are for blocking LOS where it's convenient for gameplay, and that's not something that needs to be done often.

But... if you guys can swing that fairly soonish, then among other things we can have Gauntlet clones and other Flash-game-esque stuff.

[lurker]

When I say both I say it for a reason.

[Argh]

Well, I'd have to say that whichever of "both" is the easiest is the one I'd prefer first, simply because I'll need to test it (probably a minor revamp to Merc Squad to demonstrate the use case).

[Argh]

Did this get done?

[Nemo]

I don't see anything in the code (LuaSyncedCtrl or LoSHandler and LoSMap) to indicate that it has been done.

Sorry for the double thread though, should have searched first.