Spring RTS Engine

Um, as you all probably know, I have an aversion to teamcolor on my models, and prefer to use a chunk of teamcolored model sitting above them. This has lots of disadvantages, starting with the fact that the object doesn't scale, obscures the model somewhat in a top-down view, etc.

I'd much rather use a custom icon, billboarded and slowly rotating on the Y axis, implemented in LUA. Then players could zoom out, and fade from the billboard to the unit's icon- a smooth visual representation.

Here's how I'd like it to work- it's pretty simple, but I'm not quite sure how to do a couple of things, so I'm stuck:

1. It should start growing in size after some threshold is reached- ideally, half to three-quarters of the icon distance defined by the player in Settings. So, basically, it stays nice and small and doesn't obscure the action, but then smoothly grows once the threshold is reached, until it is the icon. This might be a bit easier to show with some screenshots, frankly.

2. It should then become the icon.

I dunno how to get the teamcolor, I'm not sure how to project a billboarded sprite that rotates, and I don't know how to relate to the camera- long and short of it, I have no idea how to go about this, but it seems like this should be fairly easy to do, really. Anybody willing to take a jab at this, if I provide some screens showing what I want it to do?

Tried the team platters widget?

Yeah, and it's great, but not what I want.

Ideally, when you're at screenshot ranges up to "I'm microing this to the exclusion of all else right now", the icon should be small- barely perceptible, even, aside from the rotation of the billboard, which is a good gimmick for making sure that it attracts the eye without having to be big. A sea of your units shouldn't be a sea of teamcolor, but rather a sea of units with sparkling dots of animated teamcolor, imo.

I should probably look at the code, though, huh, since it contains about half the things I need...

I would argue that a small icon is quite bad user design and that the team platters, or a flag attached to the model would be more appropriate.

The icon would have to be as large as the unit to be effective, at which point its obscures the unit

The only problem I have with the teamcolour pallettes is that grass keeps frakknig them up

The platter widgets flashing border shows through terrain and when aircraft fly over refractive water the platters refract and distort. They also clip terrain.

I would argue that a small icon is quite bad user design and that the team platters, or a flag attached to the model would be more appropriate.

You're misunderstanding what I want here. I want a small icon when you're up close, that gradually grows as the user zooms out, until it's time to quit rendering the unit entirely. That way it interferes less with the visual experience, yet serves its function correctly. Basically, I'd a better version of the current icon system, which has the following problems:

1. It's presented from the center of the model. Can't make it coincide with a model, because then it just clips through, looking stupid. I still think it'd be better if it were just projected from a point defined in the model or TDF.

2. User settings can mean that either everything becomes an icon immediately, or never. I want to have an icon setup where the vast majority of users will want to keep it in the middle, because unless you just have a crappy comp, you're going to use the icons for their intended function.

3. The icons aren't animated, so keeping them small isn't a very good option, yet they tend to stack upon each other at farther zoom distances. Rotating them, or better yet, using a series of bitmaps to animate the billboards, would really make it instinctively obvious- "oh hey, that's that sparkly thing that occasionally vibrates- must be my Fusion Plant"... or whatever.

UI design is about taking advantage of the human brain, and the unique abilities we inherited from our genes, such as pattern recognition, the ability to process visual information with the edges of our vision, etc. What tells a user more instinctively-useful information- a blob of green teamcolor icons moving in the left corner of the eyes, or a blob that's mainly green, with bits of purple and gold, with significant meaning behind the ancillary color choices?