Home » MODDING HQ 1.13 » v1.13 Idea Incubation Lab  » New Cover Display System *RELEASED*
New Cover Display System *RELEASED*[message #209832] Fri, 06 March 2009 18:13 Go to previous message
CptMoore

 
Messages:224
Registered:March 2009
Download(s):
Cover system is now included into the main SVN branch. Changes to will still be made available here.
Features for gamers:
  • Cover display shows now the enemy sight range, with sight adjustment based on how good your cover is!
  • Camouflage is a flat but context sensitive change to sight range. the more camo the less sight range for the enemy. Based on your characters camouflage, the terrain and the characters stance.
  • Stance is important too, prone will make you less visible, standing more visible. enemy colors show how good you can be seen at each stance (green = you can't be seen even standing, yellow = you can crouch, orange = you need to be prone, red = got ya).
  • Stealth does the same as camo but is stance independant and effective only when it's dark (but still helps to a very small amount at day).
  • Movement will now give you a flat penalty, the more you move the more visible you are (moving near enemy sight range limits is very dangerous). Movement speed does currently not influence this, running 10 meters or crawling 10 meters is a like. Darkness will negate the effect.
  • The "F" key will show your cover on the spot you are pointing next to the brightness. the cover value is the percentage of sight distance that's removed because of your properties (stealth, stance, camo, movement).
  • The vegetation coverage is based on the density and fill of the vegetation. Tree's and dense bushes cover good whereas transparent small bushes will only help at long distances.
  • You don't get a bonus being behind vegatation if you have camo. I don't think this would make sense to give you camo for stuff you are behind but not for stuff that is behind you. This is more a change than a feature. But now trees hide you much more anyway (you don't require the old stuff).
Features for coders:
  • Modular build (every type = one function) and single point functions (get all changes in one) allows you to use, modify and add to the new cover system directly and easily.
  • Made everything adhere to ja coding standards as I have seen them in the code.
  • Deleted unnecessary code, and every code that repeated (manually copied several times) was put in either a function or loops. (not sure if my changes add or delete more code because of this)
  • Written some comments for my stuff (in doxygen style which isn't supported in VSE08 it seems).
Features for modders:.
  • Stealth influences the sight range of the enemy at night
  • All ground values (stealth etc) should be able to have a negative value for my stuff (don't know if it's allowed elsewere, may crash your game Wink), lamps will make you more visible at night, so make the stealth value of a tactical lamp -30% (for example) (yes bad, a lamp lets you see where you are going, meaning you should make less noise, but noise is dependant on your stealth too.. oh well)
  • Sorry, no snow camouflage support yet!
  • Some basic variables are externalized so you can adjust the effectiveness of the new cover system. (needed so you can play wildfire maps)
  • Localization available for English and German
Negative stuff / Important Todos:
  • Destroyed the original cover display (sorry were to lazy to make my own, have just overwritten it)
  • Add different colors for cover display. (User Request)
  • Add a better END / DELETE toggle for cover display. (User Request)
  • idea: shift modifier to stick selection, delete to have merc view, end to have merc cover
  • idea: end stays toggle, shift-delete will be save view, delete will be show view
New Options
; For every level of the stealth trait, X points (to your standard stealth value + equipment) gets added.
COVER_SYSTEM_STEALTH_TRAIT_VALUE = 15

; This tell how much a stealth value of 100 will decrese the sight range of an enemy. 
; 50% means that at 100 stealth level you have reduced the enemies sight range by 50%.
COVER_SYSTEM_STEALTH_EFFECTIVENESS = 50

; This is similar to STEALTH_EFFECTIVENESS.
; 100% wood camoflague will reduce the enemies vision if you are on wooden terrain.
COVER_SYSTEM_CAMOUFLAGE_EFFECTIVENESS = 50

; How much the stance influences the view range reduction. Prone will give you 10% (default) view reduction / cover.
COVER_SYSTEM_STANCE_EFFECTIVENESS = 10

; Dual welding the longest sniper rifles with full attachements, having a third backup sniper rifle, 
; one combat pack and one backpack will give a 20% (default) sight penalty with the default settings.
COVER_SYSTEM_LBE_EFFECTIVENESS = 20

; Running around crazy will give you a penalty of up to 20% (default).
COVER_SYSTEM_MOVEMENT_EFFECTIVENESS = 20

; The cover system automaticly calculates how dense an object it. 
; This will tell you how much percent of vision should be decreased if the object is 100% dense, 
; and the object is between you and the enemy of course, and is something like a tree or a rock (walls will always block full). 
; If you put it to a realistic setting, where solid stuff always blocks enemy views, 
; view ranges are too bad and on certain maps it gets hard to find people, so default is only a 30% vision decrease.
COVER_SYSTEM_TREE_EFFECTIVENESS = 30

; If you let the display cover refresh via the 'END' key toggle, this is the refresh interval (in ms) used to redisplay the cover. 
; The cover calculation is relativly hard on the cpu, so default are only two refreshes a second.
COVER_SYSTEM_UPDATE_DELAY = 500

Future features I like to see but probably will never be implemented (by me or someone else):
document everything so simple gamers can understand their cover value
  • either through additions of display information (tell them how much cover what gives..)
  • either by giving them good guides of the algorithm used
  • last thing probably will require to simplify the current algorithmes used, otherwise only people who can code will understand the stuff (then we wouldn't have to write guides in the first place!)
  • externalize algortihmes used altogether, based on lua
add an externalized texture id to camouflage associative xml document.
  • that way modders could add snow textures for their mod!! (currently not possible since it's hard coded what texture id is what type of texture and each type of texture is associated to one camo type)
  • and we could finally make brown ground only help desert camo and green ground only jungle/wood camo
make the camo percentage view better
  • only show camo percentage of highest camo at display
  • make a tooltip displaying the camo of each type
make a second interrupt just before the enemy would see you (tile says red, but aware is false)
  • so trying to stay in cover is much more rewarding, as you can stay in cover. (if you have a green tile next to you, you should be able to jump on it)
  • that would be awsome, but that would require some heavy AI work I guess
  • ( the main idea i have here is that I should be able to go around a tree while the enemy runs near the tree but still out of range to see behind the tree )
let wisdom influence sight range.
  • i've though about it but i don't know what it would do to enemy soldiers. meaning the balance could be totally off. for mercs however it could be easily understood. (<50 wisdom = sight reduction, >50 wisdom sight increase)
make the stuff you are wearing influence the ability of the enemy to see you.
  • what? isn't that camo? no this time I dont mean colors, but I mean volumn.
  • backpacks should make you more visible ALOT
  • small backpack still makes you more visible.
  • ammo and stuff is too small (and will prob. be hidden inside pockets which have camo)
  • but new pockets could make it worse only a bit, like on your legs.
  • probably we would make this dependant on camo of the stuff you are wearing too..
  • the last thing would work good if modders would be able to use negative camo/stealth values
GetSightReductionCamouflageInFrontOfStructure and GetSightReductionCamouflageBehindOfStructure
  • real 3D feeling, camo is worse currently when you are standing.
  • but if you are standing in front of a building (as seen from the enemy) and you have urban camo.. that should give you the same camo effect you already get
  • same goes for trees, which could also be in front of you (and still give you a bonus)
Being able to peek around corners
  • make it so that items can tell you where you wanna peak (from and to). (use the SoldierToVirtualSoldier line of sight functions)
  • can we display the enemy even if no direct contact to merc? check it out, maybe the function is simple to write (implementation with item still difficult)

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