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Request: Smoother (fake) LoS updates

Posted: 13 Aug 2009, 06:27
by Caydr
Spring's LoS updating is slow and ugly, by necessity. Could a fake LoS be drawn which is more frequently updated?

It would function sort of like defense ranges, except swap the ranges with LoS and shade everything outside the circles with gray. Looking the defense range widget over, it looks like it's currently set up to shade the inside.

It could also dynamically adjust the update frequency by seeing how busy the CPU is.

Real, functional LoS calculations would go on as normal, units would show up and disappear exactly as they do now, it would just be nicer-looking because the range circles would be smoother and more frequently updated.

Finally an idea CA hasn't beaten me to? I can't search for "LOS widget" since LOS is under the minimum search size.

Re: Request: Smoother (fake) LoS updates

Posted: 13 Aug 2009, 08:01
by lurker
Are you just talking about the visual LOS overlay? There's no reason it has to update nearly as slowly as it does.

Re: Request: Smoother (fake) LoS updates

Posted: 13 Aug 2009, 09:01
by Caydr
Even if it updated faster, it's not very attractive compared to other RTSs. Rather than bothering the developers with something so trivial I figured there'd be a better possibility a LUA widget could be made to improve this.

Re: Request: Smoother (fake) LoS updates

Posted: 13 Aug 2009, 09:44
by Google_Frog
SA has something like this but it has the side effect of disabling the radar view.

Re: Request: Smoother (fake) LoS updates

Posted: 13 Aug 2009, 14:04
by lurker
Rendering something as large as the entire map is tough to do fast, and I don't think lua has any fast calls to get los data either. But it would be nice to have a good-looking visualization. SA just has normal LOS view with different visual settings, screwing radar view is a side-effect of only being able to change coloration in advanced mode. It could be worked around, but that was up to Basic.

Re: Request: Smoother (fake) LoS updates

Posted: 13 Aug 2009, 15:26
by Gota
Indeed,it was.
I decided that having no radar coverage will not hurt gameplay since you can always estimate the radar coverage or hover over it and press shift to see where it extends to exactly.
The trade off was a nice looking los circle.
I'd still want it to be like in ota where the non los area is black and white and not just darker,which is disruptive and makes dark maps less pleasant to play on.

Re: Request: Smoother (fake) LoS updates

Posted: 13 Aug 2009, 15:44
by lurker
Except on moon maps. But it would be nice to widget that up.