Unit selection cycling via the mouse wheel

[Wolfpox]

I think the title speaks for itself, cycling between the units by rolling your mouse wheel. Advantages are pretty obvious, and if anyone thinks it would cause problems, just look at how much precision and memorization is used in games like Counter-Strike. Please consider doing this, I think it would save a ton of time and become a favorite feature, even if old school players are all uppity about it until they see the beauty of it, ha ha.

[Gauddlike]

I would actually prefer to have the aim level changed by the mouse wheel.

Left click to select a target, mouse wheel to increase/decrease aim level and right mouse to cancel the shot if need be.

What do you think about that one?

[Sathra]

Both have good sides and bad sides.

The current system does has soldier selection via the scroll wheel, with aim level via right clicking. This has the obvious problem concerning cancelling shots, which can be a bit confusing.

I think there was some talking about having it context sensitive though.

The JA2 v113 mod makes some creative use of the mouse wheel.

Normally it cycles through your mercenaries.

Once you click a target to attack, you have the "crosshair cursor". In that mode the mousewheel selects the number of aiming ticks.

At the same time and if your weapon happens to be set on automatic fire, you can use ALT-mousewheel to adjust the length of the burst - how many bullets to fire.

It's a very quick and elegant system that gets by without an excessive amount of clicking.

In the base game you can only "click" the aiming levels up. With the wheel you can seamlessly adjust them up and down.

That's definitely something that should be stol... err... considered a creative influence!

So I'm thinking...

Left click (hold) to enter targeting mode.

(Alternatively Ctrl-click if the cursor is not over an obviously hostile target)

While the mousebutton is held down, the mousewheel cycles through the firing modes, single, burst, etc.

The firing mode is remembered for the soldier / weapon so this step can be skipped on follow-up shots.

Releasing the mousebutton locks the firing mode.

The cursor changes (in some visible way) to aiming mode.

The mousewheel is now used to scroll the aiming ticks up / down.

The number of aiming ticks is also remembered but subject to be limited by the available AP.

Another left click fires the weapon.

A right click at any time during this operation cancels everything.

It can still be done "slowly" by using the current UI elements and it's important that this option exists. Some players don't have the manual dexterity for such things - or even the required number of fingers.

The beauty of this system is that you don't have to "mouse around" and click UI elements all over the screen.

The player's focus can remain exactly where the action is.

Once all the options are set to your satisfaction, follow-up shots can be fired with a simple double-click.

Double tap hotkey autocrenter been added at our end now, that was frequently requested at the Expo.

For the terrain, we're thinking about a way to target walls specifically - at the moment you can only shoot at tiles, and the walls sit between the tiles. That's problematic if you're trying to blow a hole in something, like a cover wall etc. If you're aiming directly at something, you should have a better chance of hitting it than if you're trying to deliberately miss it (which is how the game treats shooting at a tile beyond a cover wall / fence etc).

Yes, demolition packs will be in the final game.

@ Gazz - the LMB hold is presently earmarked for LMB-drag scrolling, but having a shortcut using the mouse for fire mode might be a good idea too. Any ways to do it without LMB hold?

Why not swap it for RMB hold? Then the process would become this:

Press and hold RMB to enter "fire control mode"

Mousewheel scroll to cycle between firing modes (single/auto/burst)

Release RMB to select the current firing mode

Mousewheel scroll to cycle between aiming levels

LMB-click to fire, RMB-click to cancel

RMB now has the context of entering/exiting/controlling the firing mode, and LMB remains the "decision-button".

The problem is that right-click is linked to 'Look' which wastes APs if you don't click / hold for long enough (which is not good in a battlefield context). In that sense, the LMB click and hold is better because getting it wrong has no consequences.

Another possibility might just be holding shift to activate temporary fire mode, or we could just leave out dragging as a method of scrolling.

No good idea without LMB hold - or using nerdy qualifier keys on the keyboard.

But why can't we have both?

Left-click to initiate the firing procedure as described in my post above,

but if you left-click and drag, the firing is aborted immediately and the view is dragged.

That way nothing untoward happens if you accidentially click an alien when you want to drag the view.

Context sensitive controls are better than many-key-controls.

[Gauddlike]

Hmm I missed that thread the first time around.

Maybe you could just add burst fire to the end of the aim queue?

Click to target, scroll down to go straight to burst fire or up to cycle the other way through the aim options.

That isn't a problem if you can scroll back when you overshoot your desired shot type, rather than having to go back through the whole list.

Seems quite straightforward and matches the way reaction AP reserve looks.

When you haven't clicked to aim you could still scroll through troopers with the wheel.

[Sathra]

So, you're suggesting:

Left-click on a target to go into aim mode. Scroll wheel moves up and down aim levels and burst mode above max aim.

Left-click again to fire.

Right click at any time during aim mode cancels.

What about aiming at non-enemy targets. Such as your own troops, NPC allies, walls, random bits of map. Would that be manual selection of the weapon to get into aim mode (and a hotkey for quick access)?

[Chris]

We've just added a system where Ctrl brings up fire mode when it is held. So Ctrl + mouse scroll could change fire mode but normal mouse scroll could scroll through units as it currently does.

[Gauddlike]

What about aiming at non-enemy targets. Such as your own troops, NPC allies, walls, random bits of map. Would that be manual selection of the weapon to get into aim mode (and a hotkey for quick access)?

Don't see why not, we have quite a few keys left on the keyboard to use.

Ctrl would be useful when firing at non-enemy targets.

Chris may even be able to get in a system where holding down ctrl while pointing at an empty square will target the scenery in that square.

Make blasting down walls, doors and random offensive lamp posts easier.

We've just added a system where Ctrl brings up fire mode when it is held. So Ctrl + mouse scroll could change fire mode but normal mouse scroll could scroll through units as it currently does.

Mouse wheel outside of aim mode changes units, ctrl just puts you into aim mode in the same way as left clicking on an enemy?

That makes sense to me and reduces the amount of screen area you have to cover to fire a shot at anything.

Edited October 20, 2011 by Gauddlike

[Sathra]

We've just added a system where Ctrl brings up fire mode when it is held. So Ctrl + mouse scroll could change fire mode but normal mouse scroll could scroll through units as it currently does.

Sounds good. But I'd still like to be able to do everything with the mouse as well. Sometimes you just want to be lazy .

[Gauddlike]

I imagine clicking on the weapon will still bring up fire mode in the way it does now.

[peren]

Or we could just do double tapping numbers for unit selection like most rts(starcraft2), since each unit has a number attached to them anyway.

Scroll would be for levels.

[Gauddlike]

What do you mean by levels?

Aim levels while shooting or map levels for example.

[MickeyC]

Don't see why not, we have quite a few keys left on the keyboard to use.

Ctrl would be useful when firing at non-enemy targets.

Chris may even be able to get in a system where holding down ctrl while pointing at an empty square will target the scenery in that square.

Make blasting down walls, doors and random offensive lamp posts easier.

Mouse wheel outside of aim mode changes units, ctrl just puts you into aim mode in the same way as left clicking on an enemy?

That makes sense to me and reduces the amount of screen area you have to cover to fire a shot at anything.

Sounds good to me. So it should also free up a right click while in fire mode to cancel the shot

[Chris]

Yes, we're currently implementing a system where you can shoot specifically at terrain objects - this makes them much easier to hit as their stopping value is assumed to be 100% (as the soldier is shooting at them, rather than shooting over them)...

[peren]

What do you mean by levels?

Aim levels while shooting or map levels for example.

Sorry about not making it clear. I meant map levels. I believe that we cycled through aim levels by right clicking. But I also think that it wouldn't be too hard to make where if you are aiming it switches to aim level, and if you are not it defaults back to map levels

[Sathra]

I'd rather not, its annoying.

ET did that I think. Soo much annoyance.