Fix for all hard-to-place blocks

[Crater Creator]

This occurred to me during a discussion on the Steam forum.

Problem: players don't know which way many doors, hatches, and drawbridges will be placed. They run the risk of installing them backwards, which can render them ineffective, ugly, and/or costly to fix.

Solution: what these problem cases have in common is that the block animates. So when the game shows a ghostly version of the block to indicate where it will be placed, this ghost version should be animated, playing its opening or closing animation on a loop. Then the player would always see its orientation, range of motion, where space for it is needed, which side the hinge is on, etc., without requiring arrows or other new art assets.

 

[Jinx_DG]

I love that idea!  But wouldn't it require more coding than just slapping an arrow to the front of said door? And would it add to the pc load as it's an extra animation asset needed instead of being attached to the asset itself? 

 

[Crater Creator]

I love that idea!  But wouldn't it require more coding than just slapping an arrow to the front of said door? And would it add to the pc load as it's an extra animation asset needed instead of being attached to the asset itself? 

Both good questions.

On the coding cost, I don't think it would be worse than adding arrows. Those arrows would have to be coded to render only when placing the block, and not render at other times. So coding the door to play an animation (which already exists) when placing it would be no worse than that, coding-wise.

As for PC load from having another animation loaded, I don't know if the game is optimized to unload animations for blocks not currently in the world. There aren't a lot of these animations compared to, say, enemy animations or player character animations, but it would still be a good optimization to have.  Even if it is, we're talking about having one more animation for the few seconds it takes a player to place the door, before the door is placed and will have that animation loaded forever after.  The player can't have more than one block equipped at once.  Compared to all the other types of doors etc. that are typically loaded in the world at any given time (at least when around POIs), each of which has their own open/close animations, the one added animation would have minimal impact.

For that matter, the blocks may already be playing a looping 'stay closed' animation while you're placing them, that happens to include no movement.

 

[AaronG85]

As the builder of my group I whole hearty wish this was part of the game.

 

[Thunderbolt-GER]

Well, maybe the green arrows of the Dart Traps, that indicate the firing direction, could be reused for that purpose?

 

[Syphon583]

A ghosted animation would definitely be the ideal solution here. I've always wanted something like that to be implemented. Arrows are fine too, but they'd have to be very deliberate and clear in their use. My question would be how are arrows used on hatches? Of course the hatch opens upward, but which side of the hatch are the hinges on? Where do you put the arrow? Depending on who you ask, they'd interpret what that placement means differently. It really can't be THAT taxing on the system to show a looping animation (that already exists in the game). If resources are a problem, that ghosted image could be a simple wireframe of the same object. The game would be rendering basically nothing.

Obviously not a huge priority for TFP right now, but a little QOL improvement when the game goes gold would be nice.