CUEmu - Thread Posts

Hakai

Sat Feb 21, 2004 12:26 pm

whoa i just had a smidget of an idea.....

I realized how much we all are able to zoom in and out our radars. I mean it's quite useful to be able to see on your overhead map, as well as on the radar for a good 512 m all around.

There are many ideas to stop the usage of radar (and mostly everyone says there will be hacks to eliminate any changes).

What if the radar range was based off of the skill or equipment that a player possessed?

Basically the idea is that Scouts and rangers will be more effective in the usage of their radar because of their increased tracking and hunting skills. In all sense the radar isn't really a personnal doppler like we would like to believe. It is more of a representation of our character's visual awareness. (and a virtual method of reperesentingour situational awareness).

The proposal is to make it so that on the gaining of certain skills, your capability for radar ranges increases. If you don't have any inherent skills, then you would only have a small situational awareness.

Let them keep the overhead map (ctrl-m) but take off any aggro or character dots that are withing your range. That way you can still find your way through the city, but can't use it to recognize where characters are.

If you don't want scout or ranger skills, get a droid with tracking capability. Would also be nice to have a one shot droid that would show you the location of EVERYTHING within a radius.

Only half baked, but would anyone want to add?

Message Edited by Hakai on 02-21-2004 07:29 PM

Hakai Youkai
==================================
Hakai's Hardware
(-211, -5812) (6197, 4326)
Hunting outfitter since 9/22/03
Anchorhead, and Mos Tyrenia, Tatooine
==================================

DeltaXi65

Sat Feb 21, 2004 12:31 pm

#2

Hak,

This was the goal of our "binoculars" idea. Give us something that lets us see a bit farther.

I just don't know if we this is techincally possible.

B

BRISC RUBAL
SCOUT CORRESPONDENT EMERITUS
Jedi w Politician w Epic Roleplay Carebear
Tarkin Memorial Brigade Founder w Fight Club Propagandist
AXIS Meatshield w RIVAL Glow Stick Waver

Hakai

Sat Feb 21, 2004 12:42 pm

#3

what i was proposing...in stead of letting us increase the ranges we can see....why not decrease the available ranges the "average" player can see? if you notice while using the radar you can use 32m, 64m, 128m,512m or whatever......which basically takes away any advantage of surprise.

What i propose to do...is make it so that a brand new player, fresh from rolling will be able to see only up to 64m on radar.

As your skill in scout/ranger increases, or you have a droid with a form of module to increase ranges, so does your situational awareness.

People will say, oh well i can use my overhead map zoomed all the way out. I say, make your detection range on the map the same for the radar. if your max is 64.....you can only see other players, NPC's and Animals on the map in a 64m radius around you.

I think the problem with our ranges now, is that the radar actually sees PAST the spawn line (the termius of where the objects in the world are actually created in the player's screen).

Lower the base ranges, and suddenly a scout or ranger is a valuable part of a base raid. They can go ahead and view what the locations of the enemies are (lets say for example, they have a 512m radar) while all of the enemy (who will be normal players) will only have a range of 64m.

If a group would like to negate this penalty, buy a droid with a scanner module installed. Gives them more visibility.

It's half baked but i would like to see where we could go with this....

Note: add in the bonus with Binoculars, we suddenly become *drum roll* SCOUTS!! like we always dreamed of. reporting locations, surviving over others because we can see the aggros groups WAY ahead of anyone else.......

Ranger's areatrack would become VITAL in tracking down specific types of meat as well.

Message Edited by Hakai on 02-21-2004 07:43 PM

Message Edited by Hakai on 02-21-2004 07:45 PM

Hakai Youkai
==================================
Hakai's Hardware
(-211, -5812) (6197, 4326)
Hunting outfitter since 9/22/03
Anchorhead, and Mos Tyrenia, Tatooine
==================================

Szordin

Sat Feb 21, 2004 3:53 pm

#4

Hakai, I like the idea but nerfing others so that you are more powerful is never the answer no matter what the question.The best thing would be to increase a scout's radar range slightly via a certain skill tree.

The problem that you run into with this or any other radar range increasing scheme is that the radar only shows spawned creatures. Basically, if there's a lair lurking out there that no one has come into range of...you won't see it on your radar. Rangers have this same problem with the area track skill...if it's not spawned, it wont show up on the tracking screen. Since track works this way, it only stands to reason that this wouldn't be possible without a serious revamp to the spawning code. I'm guessing again here, but the spawn code is probably setup that way for server performance...so it's not keeping track of hundreds of thousands of spawns in the middle of nowhere that no one is going to see.

You can actually see this phenomina when the server first reloads. If you use the ctl-v planetary map to look for vendors, you'll notice that most of them simply aren't showing up. The code they used to fix the "planetary map registration problem" for vendors (where you had to turn map registration in the vendor off and then on each day in order to show up on the map) seems to be very similar to the lair spawn code. The vendors only show up when a player gets within "spawn" range at which point the vendor's map registration subroutine kicks in and *poof*, they're on the map.

Given this, the only way a pair of binoculars or "increased tracking" would work, the only way to stick it in without revamping the entire code would be to do something like to temporarily project your model into the target of the binocs effectively placing your character into spawn range of the lairs and monsters there. You run into performance and other potential disasters such as rendering all of the terrain between the actual player position and the view through the 'nocs. Also, if you "project" a copy of your toon to the target point so the game thinks there's a player there...what happens if a mob aggros it? This requires a ton more work in the combat code to negate combat against a projection...on and on and on

Anyways, I'm making a lot of assumptions here, but all of this is just based on my own observations. Perhaps it's a lot easier than this, perhaps it's a lot harder than this. Rest assured, nothing is going to change for a loooong time due to the problems in so many other classes that have a much higher priority than a system that is currently working but not perfect.

----
Starsider - Tatooine - Mos Nevah -1029 65
Raurra - Master Chef
Guilt - Master BE

Hakai

Sat Feb 21, 2004 4:04 pm

#5

i was not trying to make us more powerful....i am trying to follow what everyone seems to be wanting. In the GCW everyone is crying they want more tactics. In a sense, what we're doing is calibrating what the actual ranges will be.

The US usally has the advantage in military strategy because of our intelligence networks. Satellite surveilance, GPS positioning.

If i were to try to make us the more powerful i would have said, take away radar, but i didn't.

What i was attempting to see was weither or not we could make it more balanced. Playingwith a brand new toonon another server, really made me understand just how much we've changed.

Not having avehicleshrinks your world into a small 512m circle. nothing more, nothing less because you're running around on foot.

What im trying to do, is give us an opportunity to add some atmosphere.Don't you remember the days when tripping an aggro was something to fearrather than an annoyance? I love vehicles, but they took a lot of life out of the game. You an literally zoom through aggro filled areas without fear.

Whatmy vision is, is of something that is still stable and usable, but our radars are so far out, it's basically nipping itself in the ass.....

you run into aggros out of nowhere because your radar won't show anything past the range of the spawn line.

In this sense, it makes visual identification useful, but if you are working in a close quartered area, you can still spot a large radius. Hell, even if they let you still use the radar up to 1025m in line of sight it would be nice.

Hakai Youkai
==================================
Hakai's Hardware
(-211, -5812) (6197, 4326)
Hunting outfitter since 9/22/03
Anchorhead, and Mos Tyrenia, Tatooine
==================================

DeltaXi65

Sat Feb 21, 2004 9:36 pm

#6

Hakai,

I understand what you are saying - but generally, your radar doesn't work for objects up past 128 meters anyway, so giving us the ability to see farther may not be techincally possible.

I'm going to try and find out if it is.

B

BRISC RUBAL
SCOUT CORRESPONDENT EMERITUS
Jedi w Politician w Epic Roleplay Carebear
Tarkin Memorial Brigade Founder w Fight Club Propagandist
AXIS Meatshield w RIVAL Glow Stick Waver

Hakai

Sun Feb 22, 2004 9:26 am

#7

that is what i was wondering, i mean it's all great and good that my spiffy radar has all these settings, but we can't even use the top 3! Hence the "Spawn RIGHT on top of me" deals that we usually hear about.

I have heard many people say why don't they INCREASE the spawn ranges. To my knowledge that would require some hardware or software overhauling that is just not reasonable with the type of setup we deal with here. If we limited it down a little, it would start bringing things more into perspective.

I honestly don't even care about being uber with the radar, i just think it would be interesting to make it so that if you know what you're doing, you'll have some really good situational awareness, but if you don't you're a blind duck.

I can see why it would be valid not to change anything, but if the spawn line is around 128m, why did they make it so you can see up to 1025m?

Then again...i alsoloved the challenge of IL-2 Sturmakov, but many other people didn't like the fact that you couldn't just point your nose in a direction and spray. (like otherflight simulatorswith severely unrealistic flight models).

Message Edited by Hakai on 02-22-2004 04:33 PM

Hakai Youkai
==================================
Hakai's Hardware
(-211, -5812) (6197, 4326)
Hunting outfitter since 9/22/03
Anchorhead, and Mos Tyrenia, Tatooine
==================================

Scout Archive

Thread: Radar.....