Minimap/Radar Deadzones - Mapping entity

This may be a terrible idea. I normally find someone to bounce my ideas off before I post it up publicly, but I want to go to bed so I'll just post it up as I thought it.

So I was playing earlier, and some tanks were going past. I was in my APC and I wanted to sneak through, so I nipped into the densely wooded patch to hide. It would have gone well but they saw me on their minimap, which kind of sucked. So I thought, well hang on, what if we had a system whereby mappers can designate certain areas, such as densely forested parts, or a deep ravine or whatever, as radar deadzones. If something is in this, then unless directly spotted by a unit, or move past a camera/radar placed there, then they're totally invisible on minimap. I could be wrong here, but I do believe this is a bit similar to HoN's sight system with wards and whatnot.

On the other side of this though, I'm not sure how much of a point there is to this once autospot is gone. I mean, besides the radar sighting vehicles, I don't know how else it could really have an effect, unless it made stuff within these areas untargetable (unless spotted). I don't know if that's the best of ideas either, to block that targetting, although it would be nice if the red boxes didn't appear around the targets in those areas unless they were selected specifically. But again, that causes other issues.

Idea may suck but I figure it's worth discussing anyway. I also have no idea how difficult/easy it would be to add in. I figure it would be done as a mapping brush entity or something. Examples of where it would be used include Canyon's tree areas, Arid's deep valley, as well as any maps which have tunnels such as Midbridge.

 

Hmm...but they only spotted you because you were in an APC, and this is because....they had a radar in close proximity, i'm presuming?

Or...why?

I mean you could always tone down the radar radius, it does cover like 1/3 of the map already, which is kinda big.

 

I once considered, if empires ever got moved to a new, more open engine, that we might consider making radars work on line of sight, so building them on top of mountains and suchlike would be a good idea.

I'm not averse to the idea of radar deadzones, in fact it could be interesting to actually make them work on LOS.

 

Does Radar Stealth not work against autospot or something?

 

I find it a decent idea, you could actually do them traps etc, although I might overdo this by suggesting this thing but fuck it,
maybe give tanks and units that are in the forest and not moving a hiding mode that is kind of like that of a scout but only at minimum invisibility and you can only activate it once if you go in the woods and have to stop moving etc , discuss?

 

I think this idea will stay dead until we actually have a version with working minimap and 100% working targets like you said. But yeah, it's a good idea. Don't see any kind of disadvantage by adding it to the game / for the mappers.

But man.. this would make comm targets / paying attention to every corner of the map so much more important which could lead to a better playerbase.

 

I like the Line of Sight idea, but it would have to have a "gap requirement" so that people in doorways or in a forest don't get spotted. To some extent it works like that IRL anyway, with wavelengths and such.

And Flasche has a good point on my idea, and imo, that makes it totally unusable. I never considered the consistency of it really, that every mapper would have to use it pretty much the same. More reason for Chris's idea to be the better option.

And no, Autospot doesn't pick up radar stealthed vehicles, and I was close enough to an enemy radar to get picked up (but they have a pretty large range), but the point was that I saw the APC coming from a different angle so he didn't see me, and I nipped into the forest and darted through that. I slipped through undetected until a couple of vehicles were waiting for me on the other side. After crying like a girl over allchat, they said they just saw me on minimap. And finally, no Paradox, I don't want people to stay still in the forests, it's just about adding at least a tiny stealth element to the use of vehicles. Radar Stealth would still be useful, but it gives you options when you don't have it at least, you just have to use a bit more ingenuity.

 

honestly, i like the idea, but i think it faces the problems flasche mentioned. that is unless, it is somehow designated on the minimap or something similar

also, while we are on the topic of mapping entities

 

I would actually expand on the indicator idea, you should have an indicator for when you have radar stealth, for whatever reason, and also for when you are detected, so you know when your cover is blown.

 

i once had an idea i bounced off on a few people and had average succes with

the problem is that it makes the commander have a hard time knowing how good his cover is, but that could be fixed with a colour gradient i hope



the whole textures thing could just be rigged to the folder-names of textures, adding a text file that updates itself each time you load a map (can be done in the blink of an eye) this way new textures always will work, also some "problem cases" could be hardscripted in a textfile somewhere for the server

 

Blizzerd's idea doesn't need a recompile of any maps, it's purely a radar change. Not that I agree with it, but it still doesn't need a map change at all.

 

The scoring is kinda interesting if you take it out of context and apply it to the scout. As a base talent or innate quality of the scout, if it were harder to detect by default by electronics, only becoming visible at a certain radius, you could have an easier time getting rid of hide, or just figuring out how to deal with it.

But that's a massive digression. Perhaps i'll do another thread on separating visual and electronic hide.

 

I've always liked that idea, especially if/when we add the TF2spy style hide.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1034763/Development or PC screenshots/hl2_scout_refractionshader2[20MB].avi

For anyone who wants to download it, that was a test Siro did with a new scout hide plan.

 

Does the server have higher CPU demands then the Client does? I like blizzards idea but, it seems like there would be alot of added work for the CPU to do.

 

It looks good but a little too invisible. Needs to either be darker (if that's even possible) or show up a little more when not close to a wall/building.

That would be pretty good though, on the move it would probably be spotted, but statically, wouldn't.