Feature: UI: Radar/Jamming Circles: Fill circle

Discussion in 'Planetary Annihilation General Discussion' started by coldboot, August 23, 2012.

  1. coldboot

    coldboot Active Member

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    Radar/Jamming Circles: Fill circle instead of outline
    Last edited: August 24, 2012
  2. magicide1

    magicide1 Member

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    Re: UI: Radar/Jamming Circles: Fill circle instead of outlin

    I strongly agree. We still play TA on occasion and at high res it can be difficult to see the radar outline on the map. Having a light fill effect that could be toggled on and off would be a great feature to add.
  3. nii236

    nii236 New Member

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    Re: UI: Radar/Jamming Circles: Fill circle instead of outlin

    Hey that's actually a pretty good idea! Otherwise you have to keep zooming in, selecting the radar, then zooming out just to see where your intel can sweep.
  4. coldboot

    coldboot Active Member

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    Re: UI: Radar/Jamming Circles: Fill circle instead of outlin

    Does anyone happen to know the performance impact of drawing a coloured alpha-filter on the ground for a large area in OpenGL?

    Is this feature possible without severely impacting performance?
  5. acey195

    acey195 Member

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    Re: UI: Radar/Jamming Circles: Fill circle instead of outlin

    instead they could write (add to) a shader for the terrain, with multiplication/adding colors, instead of blending, which should already be some lighter on the video card.

    or...

    it could be only visible when the jammer is selected...
  6. GoogleFrog

    GoogleFrog Active Member

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    Re: UI: Radar/Jamming Circles: Fill circle instead of outlin

    I prefer a system which only visualises the edge of your radar coverage. As in the border of radar coverage and non-radar coverage can have a line drawn along it (I can post a screenshot for this later). Zero-k had area filled radar visualisation on the minimap and terrain for a while. The problem with this is that the terrain looked strange either when you had radar coverage or you didn't depending on the settings. For PA I'm sure they could come up with a better area shader but idk if it would work. Although some people like area fill so an option to toggle between them would be the best.

    Is there anything official about radar at all? I don't think they really need radar in this game and it's mechanics will be somewhat confusing when combined with multiple planets.
  7. KNight

    KNight Post Master General

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    Re: UI: Radar/Jamming Circles: Fill circle instead of outlin

    How so? I don't see how for example SupCom's implementation of radar wouldn't work in PA. Its not like radar on one planet could reach another planet anyways, or at least not from the surface.

    Mike
  8. cola_colin

    cola_colin Moderator Alumni

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    Re: UI: Radar/Jamming Circles: Fill circle instead of outlin

    having radar is really important, who likes to play blind?
  9. GoogleFrog

    GoogleFrog Active Member

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    Re: UI: Radar/Jamming Circles: Fill circle instead of outlin

    What about orbital radar?

    I'm not saying radar is bad. I just think they could (as in it is possible) make a game with the same TA-style stuff but which works fine with radar. Everyone else seems to assume radar is going to be included because that is what has happened in the past.
  10. KNight

    KNight Post Master General

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    Re: UI: Radar/Jamming Circles: Fill circle instead of outlin

    Orbital Radar could be much 'better' than ground based radar as far as Radar Coverage is concerned but it is pretty hard to defend something in orbit so it's vulnerable, while Land based might not give as much coverage, its much more convenient to defend/rebuild.

    Or you can make it that orbital intel is vision based instead of radar, giving each a unique role and good synergy.

    Mike
  11. coldboot

    coldboot Active Member

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    Re: UI: Radar/Jamming Circles: Fill circle instead of outlin

    I'm assuming there will be land radar, the way it works in any RTS.

    Let's keep the scope of this conversation about the visualization of regular land radar. Please start a new thread if you want to talk about satellite and space radar.

    If you had "fill-style" radar indicators, it would only be visible with the unit selected, or an option selected, and you should be able to toggle (easily) between fill and circle.

    The intersection of radar and jamming appearing as a combined colour would be incredible.
  12. ozonexo3

    ozonexo3 Active Member

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    Re: UI: Radar/Jamming Circles: Fill circle instead of outlin

    to add color you first need to blend it...

    in supcom you can check, that all radars, omni, sonars and jamers circles was always visible. Then outline is better than fill
  13. KNight

    KNight Post Master General

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    Re: UI: Radar/Jamming Circles: Fill circle instead of outlin

    in supcom you can check, that all radars, omni, sonars and jamers circles was always visible. Then outline is better than fill[/quote]
    Especially with strategic zoom where it's so easy to zoom out to see what coverage you have.

    Mike
  14. acey195

    acey195 Member

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    Re: UI: Radar/Jamming Circles: Fill circle instead of outlin

    what I mean is that actual pixel lookup with transparency is more resource intensive, than faking transparency by adding/multiplying color with the radius as mask, but that is not really of importance...

    I don't really think the fill is needed anyway, like mike said, if a fill is used, it probably won't look good anyways.
  15. coldboot

    coldboot Active Member

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    Re: UI: Radar/Jamming Circles: Fill circle instead of outlin

    I'd think the fill feature would get especially important when you're trying to sneak through enemy territory with a large force under the cover of many jammers.

    You should be able to see that you have sufficient jammer coverage on the ground, and when the amount of jammers gets high, it will be difficult to interpret a bunch of intercepting circles to see if you're actually covered.

    Fill in radar/jammer circles effective tells you the union (from set theory) of coverage from all of your radar/jammer units.
  16. ozonexo3

    ozonexo3 Active Member

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    Re: UI: Radar/Jamming Circles: Fill circle instead of outlin

    do you ever played SupCom? circles are combined (you dont see many circles, but outline of jamer/etc. terrytory) and it work great


    addiative or multiply blending is faster than transparency. Transparency is a grayscale mask that is use for alpha blending. This is almost not important if you blend that color in shader of terrain or just create object that will be blended with terrain.
  17. acey195

    acey195 Member

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    Re: UI: Radar/Jamming Circles: Fill circle instead of outlin

    you are really keen on being right, are you :p?

    but yeah that is basically what I said, and yes the difference will be minimal, and no it is not really relevant.
  18. coldboot

    coldboot Active Member

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    Re: UI: Radar/Jamming Circles: Fill circle instead of outlin

    I did play a lot, and I actually totally forgot about that. Good point.

    It could still be useful when you're zoomed in on radar coverage and you're wondering if something is there. It's mostly useful when you're zoomed in and can't see the circle's borders. Having a key to quickly toggle it on and off even when your radar units aren't selected would be really handy.

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