Hey, I just had an idea (and this time it’s a good one I think…^^). That idea is a screen magnifier for PA. You trigger it with the keyboard. It works like a magnification glass. A little window pops up - say 450*450 pixels - that magnifies the area. You can change the magnification level with the scroll wheel, when the magnification window is up. You also can move the mouse cursor independently from the magnification window. The window could have frame where you can grab and move it, but upon opening it appears centered around the cursor. You also can have several magnification windows at once, maybe you can even adjust their sizes (independently) Okay what why would you want to have that? The reason: In SupCom it was rather tedious to assign targets to missile launchers, as you always had to zoom in on the launcher, select the launcher, zoom out, zoom in onto you target, select the target, zoom out select the next launcher etc. Firing several launchers at multiple targets simultaneously was rather annoying. And yes you could fix that by using split screen mode, but I always found that unintuitive somehow. I hope you get the idea from my example… Okay, what do you think of that?
I really dont mind as this seems like a single screen alternative for those that dont have multiple screens that works like the multi monitor function they are going to implement.
Neutrino already confirmed you could multiple screens AND have separate windows within each screen, as long as your computer can handle it, as it will take more power to render multiple windows. But in theory you would have 1 main window on screen A and 2 smaller windows on screen B
At this point I have 2 1920x1080 screens and Mavor said we could have full screened 2 windows so i could technically have 2 screens with 1920x1080 full screened instances of the game one to watch what im doing right now and the other to watch a particular area like a security camera.
Eventually I run out of hotkies. Why woud you suggest something that in UI power is clearly inferior and by stadard in every RTS. @ first three guys: You do realize that that is pretty different from my idea? In my thing you could have multiple magnification glasses laying on the map... Edit: I could image the magnification glasses thing would require way less extra resources than extra windows btw... but of course i don't know that... anybody who might have a more profound idea of that? I did a graphic -> start post.
having 2 zoomed in windows instead of having 2 magnifiers and an additional view of the map in the back ground seems like it would be less work for the engine. this seems like it'smaking a mountain of a molehill.
I imagine they'd be essentially the same implementation under the hood. You're just placing one windowed view on top of another that happens to be displaying an enlarged view of some of the view under it.
Hm, sounds right, yes. Well, I for one would find having moveable mini windows much more intuitive than splitting the screen and thus suffer the loss of one full window of the size of your screen. Splitting the screen or having multiple monitors although is better for other purposes. Like always having one monitor on you base, so you can quickly go there with your cursor to build stuff. Do you see how the two things would work differently? Edit: I have an idea how to negate the computational resources problem. You could make it so, that what is under the magnification window is just 2d icons.
I'm just not seeing the point when you have strat zoom and Strat Icons.....Also to your Example with TMLs, well Zoom and Control groups. Mike
I cant imagine it, implemented, when you play on several planets, but well if its good implemented, i would not mind.
It would depend on the implementation. It might be something that could be done well, but it's hard to decide without seeing it in action.
Why not? The magnification windows just disappear when zooming out really far. But you could have extra space magnification windows: Put a 'camera' on an area you want to be observed. When you zoom out into space, a window with the image of the camera will be beside the planet. So if you want to have for example an eye on several hostile bases on that specific planet, you put one camera on each of those. Then you can watch them all with a single glance, when you zoom out into space - without the need to zoom in to them all, rotate the cam around the planet etc.. Of course you still need vision in the respective areas because the cameras can't look through the fog.
