Spring RTS Engine

A few ideas for changes in the spectating system arose during a chat in ze CA channel, and I thought I'd post it here to ask if they are possible and if they are likely to be implemented.

- Specs should be able to join during battles : I'm not sure if this is possible, but it would be really nice.

- There should be an option for specs to ally with a team, so they could only see that teams stuff, but in exchange, they could freely chat in the team channel, draw stuff for that team, and possibly take if someone drops. This would be good for a number of reasons: it would make the ever so frequent drops less lethal to a team, and it would encourage teamplay, as a spec teammate could give advice or warnings.

How do you guys feel about this?

The latter is sort of possible already using com sharing. Given a little lobby-side co-operation a gadget could then lock the ally specific spectator so they couldn't issue commands.

The first is not really possible, due to how the game works. All people run the same simulation, and all need to begin at the same time. Only user commands are sent across the network.

First is not going to happen, as LordMatt already said.

Second is for a part already possible, use /specfullview 0 and use number keys to change player. If I recall correctly it works like this:

"/specfullview 0" - Show everything from perspective of player you are watching.
"/specfullview 1" - Show everything from all players, but selection only works on player you are watching (the default in 0.75b2).
"/specfullview 2" - Show everything from all players, and selection also works on stuff from all players (the default in next release).

EDIT: read a bit better and it isn't exactly what you want, no .take'ing by specs yet and I don't know where ally chat ends up.

BaNa wrote:
- There should be an option for specs to ally with a team, so they could only see that teams stuff, but in exchange, they could freely chat in the team channel, draw stuff for that team, and possibly take if someone drops. This would be good for a number of reasons: it would make the ever so frequent drops less lethal to a team, and it would encourage teamplay, as a spec teammate could give advice or warnings.

+1

i think that should be the standard spectator view. in the lobby you choose to spec a special team and also if you play a teamgame and lose you should still only see your team. that would encourage people to stay ingame and prevent skype/TS cheating.

I think the standard should be fullview and the teamed ones should be chosen ingame. If I'm hosting for people, I don't want to have to pick between one team.

im very pleased to here that /specfullview 2 is being set as defualt, as its annoying to type it every time i spec (which is quite a lot)

Bind it to a key.

Lordmatt: sorry for the noob question but how would i do that? would it be (in uikeys.txt)

bind u /specfullview 2

is that correct?

I have u is already bound to unload units. I also have

caldera wrote:

BaNa wrote:
- There should be an option for specs to ally with a team, so they could only see that teams stuff, but in exchange, they could freely chat in the team channel, draw stuff for that team, and possibly take if someone drops. This would be good for a number of reasons: it would make the ever so frequent drops less lethal to a team, and it would encourage teamplay, as a spec teammate could give advice or warnings.

+1

i think that should be the standard spectator view. in the lobby you choose to spec a special team and also if you play a teamgame and lose you should still only see your team. that would encourage people to stay ingame and prevent skype/TS cheating.

Well, tbh this mode of participation should no longer be called spectator, but rather something like "adviser" or "assist". Also, this doesn't necessarily prevent all forms of cheating, as you could just go on team b while talking to team a over skype/ts. However, since you can't see both sides' unit movement simultaneously, you could only give limited help.

Great would be a "Blind-Cheating-Tom" Key, for the Players so that you can force the specs for about a Minute into a fixed Camera in a Unit - no more telling what is going to come through the Fog of War..