Arcalane wrote:
Maaan it's been a long time since I took a look at this game. I remember back when there weren't even vehicles! Or a third faction!
Anyways a bunch of ideas that have been simmering over the time I've been playing;
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Smoke Grenades
Something to screw with LoS for players/AI. Could generate a volume that is opaque for the purposes of AI line-of-sight, and just be generally obscuring for players? Lasts 10-20 seconds, potentially random.
Mostly for the stealthy players out there. I had fun with hit and run tactics using both loud and suppressed weapons during a campaign run. Nevermind that it was mandatory when trying to solo Final Mission 1 against the not-Russians.
Took me like two hours - at least one of which was purely cutting through the last mass of troops on the east side of town. It seemed like for every one soldier I killed, five more would take his place.
We had this under development
http://modulaatio.com/runningwithrifles ... shot93.png 12 months ago, but decided then there's no time to work it in for 1.0. Right now, still 1-2 months away from 1.0, it remains true

It's a shame though, the multilayer animated fog looked great. We might pick it up again for 1.5 but not sure, needs planning what we will be focusing on.
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Deployables
Whilst trying to deploy a turret or object, showing a transparent preview of the position the item will appear at could help a lot. Could also include firing arcs for turrets.
Alternate style; 'fire' once to enter deploy mode (slow movement, but show preview), 'fire' again to deploy, 'reload' (or swap weapon) to cancel.
The automatic position helper is supposed to help with that, you anyway can't position things exactly due to some after deployment movement and for the requirement that the deployments can't collide with other stuff i.e. there has to be some gap between things.
One thing I noticed was that in online as a client you don't even see the "no room here" speech bubble from the soldier which complicates things. Will get at least that fixed. I personally hate markers of all kinds how they take away from immersion, even if it would improve usability in most cases. Something super-subtle could be added perhaps.
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Interiors/Buildings
Have rooftops that become transparent when beneath them? Could be solid to block mortars/grenades/etc. but turn (semi)transparent if the player or at least one character is under the roof.
Would still only allow for single-floor buildings, but better than nothing?
The game physics currently doesn't handle several collideable surfaces layered on top of each other, i.e. ground and roof in this case.
With the disappearing roof you'd also see into the interior which would require paying attention to how do things look inside there. Interior decoration, furniture models, collision with furniture, etc. Would of course open lots of possibilities but also require lots more content work. The way maps are made wouldn't be ready for this.
Also some behavior elements would need awareness of being inside somewhere with a roof over head. Throwing grenades would need different parameters, same for shooting with trajectories.
It's a can of worms going there

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Mapping Subforum
Setting up a subforum with tutorials/etc. could be a good way to encourage people to look into mapmaking.
Something along these lines is probably coming. JackMayol and DoomMetal have been working on some tutorials for map making, I think.
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Supply Drop
Support option available at first rank, or as a grenade/flare option instead. Paradrops in either a bunch of crates (the regular smashable variety found throughout missions) or a special supply crate. Blocked by AA.
Standard crate drops will always include at least one anti-tank weapon and at least one medkit.
The supply crate has 10-20 unrestorable resource points that can be used to buy any item available to your faction from the cache. Once all the resource points are gone, the crate changes to an 'empty' model.
This was also one of the things we were thinking about adding, in a variety of optional forms from which none is directly doable. The smashable static crates can not be spawned or moved by will given how they have been implemented. A seatless vehicle looking like a similar crate would be possible to add, but vehicles right now don't handle stab collision checks, so you'd be limited to destroying them with explosives. This is closest in feasibility anyway.
We also considered being able to call for a seatless mobile armory -like element with possibly specific item set. It's basically doable, but the number of items provided by the drop would be infinite just like with a regular armory.
Using what we have, the supply drop wouldn't feel very satisfactory in terms of user experience, so it has been left out of scope. Could be again picked up on the work list for 1.5, but like said, needs more planning what we really need there and how do we do things. I heard it was going towards survival or zombies, so a finite inventory source might easily be one of the needed ones.