Official KaM Remake Ideas topic

[H.A.H.]

In the original game, there was a cursor which looked like this, whenever you hovered some place while you had a troop selected, that was not allowed to go to. This way, the user knows whether terrain is accessible or not. (And also the reason why map editors had to "fill in" the regions that were not accessible; then this icon could show, and it needn't the pathfinding calculation whenever you moved the mouse.)

I think it's missing from the game now. Also whenever you do click when this cursor was shown, you were rewarded with a dull-sounding "duhng" (and feeled like an idiot): the same sound whenever you try to place a building that is not allowed, or trying to place farms on roads.



So is the reason this is missing because not all maps use the "block access" to fill in unaccessible regions?

[Lewin]

In KaM that cursor was only shown when you click on the "Move" button on the troop control panel. We haven't implemented the Move and Attack buttons there because they seem useless (unless you don't have right click). If that cursor was always used when you have troops selected it might get a bit annoying, always changing as you moved your cursor over the map.

The "duhng" sound should be played if you try to move troops to an unreachable location. If it's not playing that's a bug and I'll fix it (it could have been broken since the last public release during other changes/refactoring).

In the Remake it is not necessary to block access to unreachable areas, we don't need to do pathfinding to decide whether you can walk somewhere, we use a precalculated floodfill algorithm that makes it instant to test. Using pathfinding would be too slow, there's a lot of cases where you need to check if location A is connected to location B (e.g. allocating serfs/labourer jobs). So we could show that cursor if we wanted to, it just seemed like it would get annoying to always have it when you had troops selected.

[pawel95]

The "duhng" sound should be played if you try to move troops to an unreachable location. If it's not playing that's a bug and I'll fix it (it could have been broken since the last public release during other changes/refactoring).

When you mean the sound, clicking with troops on a mountain for example, than he is right that it doesn´t work in the remake. I thought you have extra deleted this feature from the game.

[Lewin]

The "duhng" sound should be played if you try to move troops to an unreachable location. If it's not playing that's a bug and I'll fix it (it could have been broken since the last public release during other changes/refactoring).

When you mean the sound, clicking with troops on a mountain for example, than he is right that it doesn´t work in the remake. I thought you have extra deleted this feature from the game.

Hmmm you're right, it looks like the Remake has never made this sound. Should we add it back? I vote yes

[pawel95]

For me for 100%. Only negative point,which I can find against reimplementing it is,that in online games you can "see" in the dark and send your troops wide away,because you can imagine where you have to go when you know that there is a mountain

[Mixons]

I have some thing(exactly this is Romek`s thing) about watching replays. It will be awesome when you can see only this what saw team 1 and second option only this what saw team 2.
What do you think?

[H.A.H.]

pawel95, good point! But it's not hard to hide the sound when you are clicking on hidden areas.

Edit: however, you still have a possibility to know whether the terrain is occupied or not: if you don't hear anything at all, then it's occupied. If you see the direction selector, you know it is accessible. For this minor issue to be solved, one has to always show the direction selector, even if the terrain is impassable: your troops will move the closest they can get to that point.

[Krom]

@Mixons: Yes, we have that in our list, but we dont have good UI for it yet

[Lewin]

I have some thing(exactly this is Romek`s thing) about watching replays. It will be awesome when you can see only this what saw team 1 and second option only this what saw team 2.
What do you think?

Sometimes nagging does pay off, this morning after reading your post I came up with an idea and implemented it
It works nicely, and will be in the next release

[The Dark Lord]

That's so great. Can't wait.

Also, I'll remember this hehe:

Sometimes nagging does pay off

[Ben]

With all the fancy things being implemented in the Remake, I'm surprised to see that there still isn't a work radius for a building's work area. For example, when clicking or placing a woodcutter's, one should be able to see a circle or something of the building's work radius. This would also make map-making easier so there'd be less counting (and testing, because I always forget how the radius works for different buildings!).

I know this has been suggested before, but I'm starting to wonder if this simple, but great idea has been forgotten.

[Krom]

@Ben, thanks for reminding. The idea is not forgotten, but we miss one critical entry - radius visualization. The question is how to show the radius in a convenient yet precise way. Radiuses are tile-based and that means simple circle won't tell if some tile on the edge is within or outside. Marking all the tiles on the other hand is a bit too "heavy" from visual side. Maybe just a tile outline ..

Does anyone has ideas on how to make it better?

[Ben]

@Ben, thanks for reminding. The idea is not forgotten, but we miss one critical entry - radius visualization. The question is how to show the radius in a convenient yet precise way. Radiuses are tile-based and that means simple circle won't tell if some tile on the edge is within or outside. Marking all the tiles on the other hand is a bit too "heavy" from visual side. Maybe just a tile outline ..

Does anyone has ideas on how to make it better?

I'm fine with a tile outline; however, I would prefer a circle because it would look better. It could simply understood that if a tile is even partly touched by the circle, then it can be used by the building.

[FeyBart]

@Ben, thanks for reminding. The idea is not forgotten, but we miss one critical entry - radius visualization. The question is how to show the radius in a convenient yet precise way. Radiuses are tile-based and that means simple circle won't tell if some tile on the edge is within or outside. Marking all the tiles on the other hand is a bit too "heavy" from visual side. Maybe just a tile outline ..

Does anyone has ideas on how to make it better?

You could show a grid highline for the tiles, so when you want to place it, it outlines the grids of the tiles it covers in light blue, or some other colour.

[Lewin]

There's another problem, we don't use radius now, we use walking distance. This means the outline would shape itself around the terrain, such as a mountain or river. So we'd have to use something like a grid which IMO would ruin KaM's look.