[DarthWang]

I remember in TIE Fighter and games like that you could press a button and it would bring up a map of the battlefield, with all of the ships labeled and their distances and such. Would something like that be possible for FS2?

[Rodo]

wouldnt be difficult to make a 3d map?? maybe something like the homeworld map type you are thinking of?? also remember that freespace missions do not have limits on how far you can travell (unleast that's what I belive)

[Gregster2k]

Rodo, I remember the feature DarthWang is talking about. It showed a map similar to the FRED interface view. Ships appeared as dots with their names nearby. To show vertical position, ships in the map had dashed lines drawn from them to the FRED-like grid's surface. The entire view could be rotated with the flight controls, and zoomed using the throttle, if I remember correctly. It also paused the game while the player studied it.

[WMCoolmon]

Hmm...like this?



There seems to be a minor issue with the height lines (see the hostile freighters in the screenshot), but I'll leave those for people to play around with. It works extremely well if you map the script to a key that disables the HUD at the same time.

[attachment deleted by admin]

[Rodo]

ohh I see, well actually no I havent seen it before, nice feature, though it could be more helpfull if you could move the mouse over the dots and then show the ship type and actual hull status.

But that looks great, it's not included in released builds??

[WMCoolmon]

No, I just scripted it today.

[Gregster2k]

WMC, that's awesome. Looks kind of like a step towards the Sensor View in Homeworld 2 (press Spacebar in that game to see it).

I long for the day that we have the ability to have some ships have tactical overlays built into their sensor subsystems. By tactical overlay I mean the ability to bracket bombs and show their trajectories without targeting them first, to see the current heading of nearby capships, or to predict the firing of a friendly capship's beam cannon by displaying its exact firing angle before it is even fired (enabling you to have time to get out of the way). This would show up in normal gameplay, not a separate screen.

Maybe not in 2367, but ships later on might have sufficiently advanced sensors to do such things.

[Rodo]

the ability to bracket bombs and show their trajectories without targeting them first

predict the firing of a friendly capship's beam cannon by displaying its exact firing angle

this would show up in normal gameplay, not a separate screen.

Nice ideas!

single point beams you should just draw a line in the trajectory (only friendly) but with slashing beams?
Bombs... I like the idea of the brackets... the trajectory is rather usless as it's almost predictable where the bombs are going, besides ships are always in the move, the line wich would point the direction should change constantly to reflect the change of trajectory, and that it's not bound to chage not to smoothly

[chief1983]

Actually I had suggested something like this with the work being done on the radar code, to replace the dots with different icons.  I thought it would be cool if you could scale up the radar with a keypress and have an enlarged view of it.

[colecampbell666]

That's what I was thinking. Sort of like in FPSes where you enlarge the radar/map to full screen.

[Retsof]

I like the Idea of it pausing while you look, now if you could click around on the various dots and select a target (perhaps by double-clicking?) it would be awesome.

[Stormkeeper]

Sounds like the radar map from Starsiege. That thing was a godsend.

[Solatar]

Just installed and ran the script like WMCoolman suggested (binding 'i' to disable HUD). It's not perfect yet, but I have to say I love it. Wasn't it Wanderer who was working on a system to allow bitmaps to be used to radar dots? Perhaps this could in some way be applied to this "fullscreen" radar?

[Wanderer]

Ability to bracket bombs... been there.. done that (simple lua script)... actually this is a screenie of a script that bracketed every weapon but changing that to bracket bombs only was really simple...


Showing where the turret points at is rather useless as in normal FS Open i) turret facing has nothing to do where it fires next, ii) beams have inherent inaccuracy build into them etc.


As for using bitmaps in radar screen... Its certainly possible with the two builds i have posted. Though it might not be that simple to use them in the scripted fullscreen radar/map

[Solatar]

After using this feature for a little while, I've noticed one thing. Is there a way to disable it showing craft that are not in sensor range (classic second mission of FS1 asteroid field hides ships)?

[WMCoolmon]

Not right off the bat. I found that TARGET_SHIP_IGNORE_FLAGS is used by a variety of functions, but there doesn't seem to be a universal is_this_thing_targetable_from_here() function that I can slap in.

Probably not too hard to do, but more involved than I want to get right now (esp. with the code freeze going on). If someone's got plans for this in their mod, put it in the features request thread (or if you really really want it in the next release, put it in mantis.)

[Al Tarket]

code freeze!. wow looks like the lead scp guy is really working on that new version for scp. i do not think that version is too far off .

anyway, i like the idea of an ingame map, however the picture above showing the positions of craft as red and green dots is far too inaccurate, their is no center line, vertical or horizontal lines either so i have no idea where everyone is from my ship. i have to admit even that small 3d radar you added on is not that helpful either which overlays FS' original radar. i hope you guys come up with something good.

[Wanderer]

It might be easier to create hardcoded option for drawing the radar map. That is as long as the method and the appearance can be agreed upon.

[Solatar]

Sure it could be improved, but even as the script is right now I find it immensely useful as it significantly improves situational awareness (you know where everything around you is, at the same time).

[Al Tarket]

which is incredibly important when in a fight