Unit Obscured Alfa

[gameboy]

I think that units behind buildings should give an alfa of the team color of their outline.

[mictes]

yes, like in c&c

[hailstone]

I agree. Add it to the bug tracker as an enhancement if you haven't already.

[daniel.santos]

Yea, please do.  I actually had this written down somewhere (some time back), but I guess I didn't make it into bug tracker.  This is exceedingly important in more ways than one.  I've also been keeping my eye open as I've been studying OpenGL to figure out how to do it.  I think it involves drawing to a stencil and such, but I'll eventually learn it

[Idanwin]

This should be an option you can disable if necessary.
(better for screenshots)

[daniel.santos]

perhaps automatically disabled in photo mode?

[Idanwin]

I mostly take screenshots in play mode.
Otherwise I have to save, quit, load, take screenshot (I know you can play in fotomode too but then there isn't any minimap)

Maybe you could make the minimap (dis)apear when pressing "m" or something.

[daniel.santos]

yea, or a hot key to toggle photo mode, or something like that

[modman]

All these keyboard shortcuts!  I can never remember them all!  How about the mimimap can just have a minimize button, and if you mouse over, there's a un-minimize button (I don't say maximize, because it's already a minimap).  Minimizing the minimap could also temporarily minimize the resource counters too.

[Idanwin]

maybe a hotkey to make a hotkey window apear?

[mictes]

Yes:

You can define hotkeys in the ini (/ the options menü) and see them pressin "h" ^^

[Idanwin]

nope, i get "chat mode: all/team" when pressing "h"

[mictes]

^^ then another key (oh my godness)

[ZaggyDad]

All these keyboard shortcuts!  I can never remember them all!  How about the mimimap can just have a minimize button, and if you mouse over, there's a un-minimize button (I don't say maximize, because it's already a minimap).  Minimizing the minimap could also temporarily minimize the resource counters too.

Nononononononononononono. Just a hotkey for photomode. It's not that hard to remember the hotkeys (for me, at least. ).

And the hotkey menu should let you change the keys, not just the ini. It makes it way too hard to have to restart Glest every time you want to change a key.

[modman]

OK, then what about the idea about minimizing the minimap?

[Idanwin]

Why not just an ingame menu with lots of on/off buttons to decrease the number of hotkeys. (the less important ones)

[Omega]

Now this is getting offtopic, but hotkeys aren't that hard to remember. For simplicity matters, I agree that a hotkey to do photomode (maybe CTRL + something) will be nice...

[daniel.santos]

guys, keep it simple!! geeze!! You don't need to enable/disable more/less important hotkeys.  There is now a keymap.ini file where you can change them if you don't like the defaults but the UI will come when it does (not high on the priority list right now).  However, when there is a UI, the changes will take effect immediately, it would be insane/absurd/etc. otherwise.  Either way, yea, it's off-topic.  I don't recall if you can toggle photo-mode from a hotkey at the moment, but look in the hotkey.ini to see if there is a setting for it.

But back to the obscured units, I'm still thinking on the lines of an outline (much like AOE), but I'm starting to like the transparency idea (i.e., cause the obscuring unit to become partially transparent?)  Then again, I think I'll go for the outline -- maybe unless it's a non-unit model, like a tree, stone, etc.

[Omega]

Hmm, transparency sounds kinda cool if it were to be used for units running through objects (such as trees) to make it easier to see the unit. For units that aren't yours which are not in your current field of vision, an outline would be sorta cool.

[hailstone]

Command & Conquer series has transparent obscuring objects iirc. I'm not sure if that includes tech tree models.