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[Proposal] Team indication icon

Postby aquarius » Sun Aug 28, 2005 12:02 pm

It can be very difficult to distinguish between teams. I know the crosshair changes when aiming a team member. But I think it would be useful to have an icon above a team members head or something similar. The skins are too similar when viewed from wide range.
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Re: [Proposal] Team indication icon

Postby ReD NeCKersoN » Sun Aug 28, 2005 4:07 pm

aquarius wrote:It can be very difficult to distinguish between teams. I know the crosshair changes when aiming a team member.

That makes two of us. This idea has come up before on irc. We'll have to see if there's something we can do.
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Re: [Proposal] Team indication icon

Postby torhu » Sun Aug 28, 2005 9:06 pm

aquarius wrote:The skins are too similar when viewed from wide range.

You could also view this as a 'realism' feature. You have to know where your teammates are to be able to shot first and think later. So good cooperation is rewarded. The green crosshair thing is pretty good I think, because you usually have a split second to see if it turns green when the target is far away, before you fire. But I admit it makes everything easier always knowing friends from foes.

TC:E has this feature, and the icon even shows through walls, making team cooperation easier. Or we could have a map/radar like in DoD. But then again, this is not a military game. It's the wild west, where men are men, and only chickens use high tech aids. The green crosshair thing makes it bearable to play with noobs, that might be the reason they put it in.

And anyway, it's not likely I can find time to code this, so it's up to el Vakond. Or someone else, should they volunteer. I don't know if this is good or bad myself. Maybe good, because it would make the game easier to play, and that often means more fun too.
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Postby ReD NeCKersoN » Sun Aug 28, 2005 9:14 pm

If we had the option to choose a larger/different crosshair that might be an easier alternative.
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Postby torhu » Mon Aug 29, 2005 2:08 am

Selecting different crosshairs would mean we have to make gui for it too, which is a bit more work. But I have made some mockups in photoshop to show other possibilites. The crosshair changes, or something gets added to it to show that your target is a teammate. We might want to avoid having it change too much, because you would get an annoying blinking effect when running behind some of your teammates. That could also disrupt your aim, because you lose track of where the center dot is.

  1. Crosshair turns into a green dot with the same diameter.
  2. Green ring around crosshair, doesn't change crosshair itself.
  3. Big, red X. Maybe too much.
I tend to like the second one myself, so how about it? Of course, we might still need to tell some noobs that green doesn't mean 'fire at will'.
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Postby ReD NeCKersoN » Mon Aug 29, 2005 2:49 am

Of your screenshots, I like the 2nd one as well but would rather see red.
Of course, just having the crosshair turn bright red instead of green could work.
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Postby torhu » Mon Aug 29, 2005 3:16 am

I'm not sure about the color. I think green to mean 'friend' is just as good as if we use red to mean something like 'NO NO! DON'T FIRE!'. Red could just as well mean enemy. I don't think there is an obvious choice here, but I still think a green ring is good. If it was an X like in the third image, red would make the most sense.

Here's one with a red ring, for comparison.
http://folk.uio.no/torhu/wq3/pics/crosshair06.jpg
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Postby ReD NeCKersoN » Mon Aug 29, 2005 4:34 am

As long as there is something that stands out a little more than the overly subtle, green crosshairs. :lol: Anything is better than that.
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Postby aquarius » Mon Aug 29, 2005 9:27 am

I would go with a red and slightly bigger crosshair.

Isn't there a menu entry to switch of the indication (Identify Target)? Pro gamers can switch of this hint. Noobs, or guys like me :D, can play with it on.
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Postby torhu » Tue Sep 06, 2005 3:17 am

cg_crosshairSize lets you change the crosshair size to anything you like, the default is 24. I hope that helps most of you wanting so have something that's easier to see.

I've tried changing the crosshair appearance, but just changing hud/crosshair.tga doesn't do anything useful. There's something special at work that decides how the crosshair looks, I guess.

EDIT: The alpha channel is where it's at. I found a guide here if anyone wants to try it out.
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Postby torhu » Sat Sep 10, 2005 6:49 am

Ok, now an extra image will be overlayed on the crosshair when aiming at a teammate. It can be anything we like, this is an example. It's just a matter of replacing hud/crosshair_friend.tga in a pk3. Do we need GUI to disable this? Maybe it will get annoying after a while...
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Postby L3th4l » Sat Sep 10, 2005 2:19 pm

Very slick :D
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Postby ReD NeCKersoN » Sat Sep 10, 2005 3:28 pm

HA! I like it! :D
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Postby L3th4l » Sat Sep 10, 2005 3:55 pm

Prob should add a switch in the GUI to enable disable it.
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Postby torhu » Sun Sep 11, 2005 3:29 am

I've called it 'Extra Friend Warning' in the options, the cvar is cg_drawCrosshairWarning. If you turn it off, the crosshair will just turn green, like it does now. It's on by default.

If you have any opinions about this, please let me know. It's easy to change the code for this, and the graphic is just a .tga made in paintshop pro.
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