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Author Topic: Weapon cooldowns  (Read 5650 times)

Mavolio

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Weapon cooldowns
« on: May 11, 2011, 06:22:45 PM »

Some people on another forum mentioned it was hard to see when a weapon can fire and came up with a few suggestions.

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Maybe a color change could happen on the weapon's status indicator at the bottom. I think now it's just a small bar that shrinks down (haven't played in a few days due to work so correct me), maybe if it went from orange to green when ready to fire again the player could have an easier time just looking for the color.

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Maybe just having the cool down bar bigger and red while you cant fire and then change to green when you can would be enough of a difference.

The other thing that might be worth doing would be having the firing arcs red when you cant fire then green when you can instead of just using brown(?) as it appears atm. Not sure Sure if that would look horrible or not tho but it would make it easy to see which firing arcs can fire and which cant.

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This sounds really useful. Instead of colour change how about significantly dimming the firing arcs when you can't fire? Simple visual cue and it won't have any risk of looking odd by changing colours. The only problem is that firing arcs for weapons with very fast rates of fire might flicker back and forth looking silly, so maybe only dim when the RoF is slow enough for it to matter.
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Lethal Dosage

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Re: Weapon cooldowns
« Reply #1 on: May 11, 2011, 07:09:32 PM »

Or perhaps a light on the HUD, perhaps beside the autofire light? or under it?
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Blips

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Re: Weapon cooldowns
« Reply #2 on: May 11, 2011, 07:18:15 PM »

I suggested in another thread you could do something around the cursor. Some (depending on number of weapons) circular GUI elements that re-fill. Or perhaps even just some numbers that turn on.
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Avan

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Re: Weapon cooldowns
« Reply #3 on: May 11, 2011, 07:19:51 PM »

maybe also have the firing arc colors change in gradient?

Ivaylo

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Re: Weapon cooldowns
« Reply #4 on: May 12, 2011, 02:10:23 AM »

There is a "in range" indicator on the UI element for each weapon. It almost impossible to see though, because it is on the bottom of the screen.

Obviously, there are also the arcs for each weapon. Those are quite visible (so much so that we have the ~ key to turn them off).


I hear you on what you're saying that those two elements are still not enough. We will take a look at it again.

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Avan

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Re: Weapon cooldowns
« Reply #5 on: May 12, 2011, 07:02:36 AM »

A problem with things like MRMs and SRMs is that the seen firing arcs are big on the screen, but unlike LRMs, they don't tend to cover practically the entire map, so it can be hard to see exactly when something is in range or now without checking the indicator.

Ivaylo

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Re: Weapon cooldowns
« Reply #6 on: May 12, 2011, 07:44:41 AM »

Yep, as I was hitting "post" I thought about missiles. There the arcs won't do it for you.
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