Multi-Level Maps and the Problem Commanders Face
lilboy98
Join Date: 2009-05-15 Member: 67414Members
Join Date: 2009-05-15 Member: 67414Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Some solutions</div>The problems commanders face on any map is the problem of multiple floors in an area of the map. Mappers had to design a map almost linearly to avoid problems with commanders dropping structures/ammo packs/med packs in the location they want because a floor above is blocking them. Sometimes the commanders had to change their viewpoint just to get an angle under the floor to place the item/structure.
Solutions:
Free-roam camera. (Probably the best solution)
Using the mousewheel to change the 'depth' of the layers to make levels transparent.
Have all floors transparent except the floor a marine is on that the commander can see.
Side note: The free-roam camera gave me another idea. A mobile sentry robot that the commander can control for scouting purposes and very light offensive capabilities. This would help by not making the commander jump out of the chair to fight off a single skulk biting down all your structures, and not risk losing the commander, or to look around and vents for any ambushers. The sentry itself would be extremely vulnerable and can be destroyed in 1 hit.
Solutions:
Free-roam camera. (Probably the best solution)
Using the mousewheel to change the 'depth' of the layers to make levels transparent.
Have all floors transparent except the floor a marine is on that the commander can see.
Side note: The free-roam camera gave me another idea. A mobile sentry robot that the commander can control for scouting purposes and very light offensive capabilities. This would help by not making the commander jump out of the chair to fight off a single skulk biting down all your structures, and not risk losing the commander, or to look around and vents for any ambushers. The sentry itself would be extremely vulnerable and can be destroyed in 1 hit.
Comments
So ya right now commanders set the entire team to team 1 so everyone looks green in the minimap... maybe they do this to make it easier for the marines to see their characters when walking around with the minimap open...
So all we gotta do is make it where the commander sets up some squads... and regardless of what floor the squad is on, that you click the icon and the camera zooms to the location and "floor"... This should be possible for targeting pieces of equipment also... like phase gates and when something is under attack... (maybe the commander needs a treeview on the side of his screen listing equipment he dropped, grouped by the room it is in... this gives them a familiar 2D way of accessing the 3D multi-floored maps via shortcuts) (taking that idea further, the commander has a treeview listing the rooms of the map in alphabetic order, and when something bad happens in one, the room-entry-starts blinking,... they click it and they can zoom to the room... if he expands the treenode it tells the commander what is dieing with a progress bar next to each item/person in that room representing its health)
Actually we need to use the word "floor" carefully... i mean it's not like we're supposed to be fighting in office buildings all the time with explicit "floors"... instead we just have the commander camera "hover" at the appropriate Z-altitude over what they used a shortcut to fly to. And maybe some mapping guidelines that a room "should" have a certain MINIMUM amount of ceiling height. But it's not a requirement because we can just do like they do in the hl2 zombiemaster mod and use the mousewheel for fine tuning of the Z-altitude of the eye-in-the-sky. Or maybe the engine can be smart enough to infer from the "floor" that the commander is trying to watch, what is the appropriate height the camera should initially be at.
OK LETS MAKE THIS EASY... WHEN THE COMMANDER WANTS TO VIEW ONE PARTICULAR FLOOR, ALL THE OTHER ONES BECOME TRANSPARENT LOL
But he still needs to be aware of what is happening on all floors at all times, in some small way at least to know when something bad is happening to his team/equipment. And an easy way to go back and forth from where he was to where his current attention has shifted.
Press a button to switch to free look, and press another button to switch back to a locked viewmode from the top-down.
The Zombie Master mod for HL2 did this very well, and I think this would work just fine for a game such as this.
<!--quoteo(post=1672814:date=Mar 10 2008, 12:51 PM:name=locallyunscene)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (locallyunscene @ Mar 10 2008, 12:51 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1672814"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->When I started listening to the podcast I thought the devs were going to go with a controllable camera because that's what all 3D RTS do and had started rationalizing the decision in my head. After they stated they had a fixed position I gave it some thought and realized that this decision had to do with giving the player the best option and not having him/her choose his/her preference. Any benefit of changing the camera view would be negated with the time spent fighting with it when the comm needed to move somewhere else. Instead of forcing a player to memorize the "best camera views" on a map that stuff is all ready preset. This allows a player to focus on what is really important: the strategy of the other team. If a player is messing with the camera they're fighting the game and not his/her opponent and by removing these obstacles they're setting the stage to add real depth to the game. That's why I said they were taking the time to do this "right".<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I believe they said they were not going to support level-over-level maps, but I'm having trouble finding the quote.
Basing off of NS1 the commander height could only be set to one height and the idea of being able to flip between multiple floors is cool however when mapping you will not judge scale across every single floor in every room and hallway in the editor, you will just estimate and make sure nothing is too big and nothing is too tiny for the commander to see. The real problem comes in which making the game engine able to recognise which bumps and dips are multiple levels across multiple rooms and hallways. I'm no coder, how ever I don't think it will be anywhere near easy or quick to implement.
A solution around it could be scaling zoom by 'x' amount of units which is outsourced to interact with the engine from the default commander view level, although again with various heights it could be awkward to fit in and to see stuff and could be making it complex to quickly manage your commander game.
The idea has a good basic grounding and there may well be a simple idea already employed by the development team. Although the mechanics of the idea will need to be tweaked slightly.
Think of it this way. The commander's camera is at a fixed height. Maybe this is dynamically chosen by highest point in his view. However, the area that is in focus is a set range that he can move up and down with the wheel. So, to see the lower area, scroll down and the upper levels fall out of zoom (or become transparent) and the lower ones come into view more clearly. The range of view is set based on typical model height, and thus typical hallway height. If you "miss" the floor by going too far down, no problem. The floor is still in the range so all the major info is still there, you just may not see something on the ceiling. Actually, this would make seeing nearly anything on a ceiling more difficult, but this is a top-down view after all. Actual movement of the camera is still retrained to a 2D region, making life easier to navigate instead of having to fly the camera around.