I was playing Empire Earth 2 and i suddnly reaslised how handy the mini-screens are. This could be very handy for comms as it could allow them to multi task lots of battles at the same time and keep an eye on the base (like the CV) as well. In EE2 it is very effective and i think it would be very good for empires. The way it works is that the comm moves the camera to the place where he wants to screen to whatch and presses a key (# for EE2 on my pc) this makes where u are looking appear into the 'watching box' (thats its name in EE2 i know its lame). And u can move the normal camra without affecting the 'watching box'. I dont know how else to explain it so i have put a screen shot of what it looks like below: (if u dont know what they are look at this pic and its the bottom right picture on the hud) Plz say if u want more of an explination :p i couldnt think of a better way to explain
I use the watching box in EE2 all the time , it would definitely help in Empires, especially when your fighting on two fronts.
Oh! The other multiscreen should autocenter to squad leaders who request things and able to cycle through the requests.
That would be neat, I also love how it's done in OpenTTD, you can just open a new camera window and position it wherever.
I never use them in RTS games, supreme commander lets you use a similar sytem but I only use it as a minimap. In empires I could probably apply it to keep an eye on the CV to stop ninjas, but other than that I wouldn't use it. If you wanted, you could just add a little display which shows all units in proximity to the CV as red or blue dots, that would be all I'd use the camera for.
Oh and i forgot to mention, in EE2 u can still give orders and place structures with the screen by putting your mouse over it. You can also make your main screen change to what the whatching box is showing by pressing ] with your mouse over it. Also u can take muiti shots. if u look at the pic u will see numbers below it. Each number is a diff camera so u can flick between them. I think also a follow function would be good. But it should only be possible with ur team and not following the enemy.
I like this idea. If its implemented, it would be cool if mappers could preset "default" camera positions for each faction. To give the com hints on what he should be looking at.
Oh im sure krenzo wouldnt mind doing a cople of hundered thousend lines of code for us :p I can imagine that coding wouldnt be as large if it is done cleverly Suggestion: if u dont want such large code use smaller font :p:p:p:p
HL2 wasn't designed to use multiple displays. It would take a lot of time and coding in order to adapt the engine to it. Even then, it would need bug tests and more coding to fix it.
Ask krenzo for me and get him to comment on this thread (me to scard to ask him, he might eat me :cry::p) Anyhow if he gets stuck cant u just e-mail VAVLe and ask how u could do it easaly
Actually, it's not too hard to allow for infinite amounts of cameras, the bigger problem is performance, which is a problem we already have. Giving the commander multiple cameras to cycle through is a good idea, that can be managed.
Its not the cameras I mean. I know that would be on the easy side. The main issue is enabling the second monitor in HL2. It's not a native feature of the engine. To my understanding, a modification such as this is more toward the engine level, compared to the mod itself that is toward the binaries and game code that the engine executes.
Im not on about a second monitor *facepalm Im saying to set it out like in EE2 I dont even have a second monitor :p look at the screenshot on page 1
Look at the title of the thread. "Multi screen." As in more than 1 screen. multi- pref. 1. Many; much; multiple: multiarticular. 2. More than one: multiparous. 3. More than two: multipolar.
Well not really. HL2 already has multiple camera entities supported, simply drawing one to a small portion of the screen would not be difficult. screen- a white or silvered surface where pictures can be projected for viewing It says nothing about it having to be a physical screen, a screen can be either a physical entity or a virtual construct within a program. And replying based solely on the thread title is very silly.
