Spring RTS Engine

thesleepless wrote: also, is it possible to adjust the appearance of the marker points with lua?

Arrows falling from the skin and plunging themselves into the ground would be awesome.

Arrows falling from the skin and plunging themselves into the ground would be awesome.

Dunno about that but there could certainly be some way of animating those map markers. If you redid the whole thing you could add some way of telling who placed it, how old it is and maybe some fancy animation. If it had some eyecandy glowing around it for a while after placing you'd know it's not some 30 minutes old marker. That's quite unimportant shit for developers to use time on though, just giving more ideas.

Not unimportant at all, but post your suggestions and requests in the lua forum because it's doable with widgets rather than engine changes.

CarRepairer wrote:Not unimportant at all, but post your suggestions and requests in the lua forum because it's doable with widgets rather than engine changes.

Dare you attempt to stop our chinwag!?

CarRepairer wrote:Not unimportant at all, but post your suggestions and requests in the lua forum because it's doable with widgets rather than engine changes.

well this is the "feature request" forum and this is a "feature request" so it seems silly to put it elsewhere. it doesn't matter to the requester HOW it gets implemented, they just want the feature. it's up to whoever decides to implement it whether it should be in the engine or done with lua or something else. most things CAN be done in lua, but doesn't necessarily mean they should be.

Actually this forum is specifically for engine feature requests, although I don't blame the OP for not knowing that.

Unless there's a performance hit, it's better to lua the solution if possible because most of these sorts of visuals are mod specific. Even this one.

We recognize thigns by serveral means:

• Colour
• Size
• Shape
• Contrast

Since shape is a factor fo the unit, and colour is ruled out by the request, contrast is the main means used to tell them apart, so I proposed shape.

Another idea would be for each platter to have a border containing a black and white patter or stiple that moved. So black and white or zigzag etc.

Other options would be that when the platters are selected instead of changing colour they pulsate larger and smaller. Some platters could rotate

AF wrote:Another idea would be for each platter to have a border containing a black and white patter or stiple that moved. So black and white or zigzag etc.

Other options would be that when the platters are selected instead of changing colour they pulsate larger and smaller. Some platters could rotate

hmm then i'll just think i'm on acid...

I think AF's idea is best but then he overcomplicated it. We can still use a few colors and the shape platters in combination with a small set of very different colors is simple enough. Circle, triangle, square, pentagon, hexagon, maybe a star. These platter shapes multiplied by a small set of distinguishable colors is enough to reach a fair number of players. This of course depends on the user's level of colorblindness but I believe there are enough distinguishable colors, when multiplied by six shapes, to give more than enough pairs. The platters could slowly rotate for selected units.

if there are 4 colors, 6 shapes, and each shape consists of 2 different colors, then we'd have 4*(4-1)*6 + 4 = 76 different styles (if i am right). that would be enough, and we should be able to pick 4 very different colors, i hope. the question is just, if this works with human perception... i think not well/fast enough.
I Think it would be better to have two colors per team, and use only 6 colors. That would be 36 different styles, and once you learned where each unit has color 1 and where color 2, it will be easier for perception.

hoijui wrote:if there are 4 colors, 6 shapes, and each shape consists of 2 different colors, then we'd have 4*(4-1)*6 + 4 = 76 different styles (if i am right).

Why 2 colors per shape? 4 colors * 6 shapes = 24. If 12 vs 12 is games are not large enough for you, then too bad

CarRepairer wrote:Why 2 colors per shape?

Because some players, such as the OP, are lacking the third kind of cone.

zwzsg wrote:

CarRepairer wrote:Why 2 colors per shape?

Because some players, such as the OP, are lacking the third kind of cone.

If you read his first post, it sounds as though he could distinguish at least four different colors.

o_O
a shape, lets say a triangle, can have two different colors. the trianlge is one color, the rest (area around the triangle, filling a square for example), has an other color. this has two pros over using full alpha for the area around the shape:

• we get more combinations with 4 colors (eg 76 instead of 24)
• the platter will look more unified among units, and does not depend uppon the background/sourounding texture of the unit being different.

The whole point of using shape si that they do NOT look unified. This means that they are more identifiable. Making them look more consistent/similar defeats the point of the exercise

aehm.. more unified within one team, on different unit types, not unified inbetween teams.

as it seems to be hard to imagine, and i am bored, i made a sample.
note that i did not put though into the colors or shapes used here, its just the general abstract idea i want to show.

You could just add a texture to the player who is using a colour similar to someone else's. For example, some diagonal lines, a grainy fill or crossing lines.

You could set it so it only applies to players who are within 5 Hex Colours either way to another player.

If one player has blue circles inside red squares and one has red circles inside blue squares, it will hurt my brain.

will it hurt your brian more hten when htere are 4 players with only very slightly different pinks?