Commander view control ideas
Hyperion
Hyperion2010 Join Date: 2003-10-06 Member: 21477Members
Hyperion2010 Join Date: 2003-10-06 Member: 21477Members
Long ago I posted a post with many ideas for NS2 (must have been over a year) and this one was one of my favorites.
Have the commander view be rotateable in 3d space, but not be the actual map while being rotated but instead a model that is the blueish white color of the current minimap except now with transparency and multiple levels.
With this 3d model you can do stuff like turn off certain floors, your troops, show structures, show aliens, show important map locations, use filters to detect heat, show where marine placed cameras are (by the fact that their feeds could play directly where they were on the map), view station security systems, visual representations of sounds (this could be REALLY cool to watch w/ mg fire and alien running <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin-fix.gif" />), and much much more.
When you clicked on a soldier (really more a point in the 3d model) you could get a video feed of his view (multiple soldiers, multiple views) that would appear at the top of the screen.
I think that having a really fun interactive, immersive and highly functional commander view and by having it be a separate set of 3dmodels it would allow the detail of the map to be much higher.
An alternative of course would be to make a brush based entity similar to func_detail that would not be rendered for the commander view and a commander LOD level for models, greatly improving commander performance and still allow the view to be rotated in 3d where applying simple shaders could turn things on and off.
Feel free to post any thoughts on improving the commander experience and making in more fun for the average player <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" />
EDIT: Also, I just realized this: given that it seems the levels my be more "dynamic" one could in theory "generate" this 3d model every time by using the output from the .vmf file by choosing faces that had a "ground" material flag and a "wall" and a "detail" flag to generate the map <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" />.
Have the commander view be rotateable in 3d space, but not be the actual map while being rotated but instead a model that is the blueish white color of the current minimap except now with transparency and multiple levels.
With this 3d model you can do stuff like turn off certain floors, your troops, show structures, show aliens, show important map locations, use filters to detect heat, show where marine placed cameras are (by the fact that their feeds could play directly where they were on the map), view station security systems, visual representations of sounds (this could be REALLY cool to watch w/ mg fire and alien running <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin-fix.gif" />), and much much more.
When you clicked on a soldier (really more a point in the 3d model) you could get a video feed of his view (multiple soldiers, multiple views) that would appear at the top of the screen.
I think that having a really fun interactive, immersive and highly functional commander view and by having it be a separate set of 3dmodels it would allow the detail of the map to be much higher.
An alternative of course would be to make a brush based entity similar to func_detail that would not be rendered for the commander view and a commander LOD level for models, greatly improving commander performance and still allow the view to be rotated in 3d where applying simple shaders could turn things on and off.
Feel free to post any thoughts on improving the commander experience and making in more fun for the average player <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" />
EDIT: Also, I just realized this: given that it seems the levels my be more "dynamic" one could in theory "generate" this 3d model every time by using the output from the .vmf file by choosing faces that had a "ground" material flag and a "wall" and a "detail" flag to generate the map <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" />.