An Idea for a UI mod: QuickView Gear

[TheHarvesteR 11]

Hi,

An idea just occurred to me that could be worth taking the time to script it into a mod, but I wanted to ask here first to gauge the interest on such a system...

One thing should be made clear: I am not asking for someone to make a mod for me here... I'm trying to find out, by user responses, whether or not the system I have in mind would be a worthwhile addition or not. Also writing down my ideas help in making them more solid.

Ok, enough rambling, this is what I intend to make:

The system I have thought is simply a time-saving addition for browsing gear inside ammoboxes.

Currently, to view an ammobox's content, one must be quite near to it, and use the 'gear' action (or press G) to open up the gear dialog, which lets you view all available items and equip them.

The problem lies in missions that have dozens of ammoboxes to choose from (as in 'The Longest Day'). These situations force one to be moving from crate to crate searching for the needed gear, and makes gearing up a very long and tedious process.

What I propose (for now) would be a small dialog, that would popup on the right hand side of the screen, and would automatically list all the items inside an ammobox that is in range. This dialog would be triggered automatically just by being near the crate and looking at it... No need for any action on the player's part other than positioning himself.

It would not allow you to equip items, but quickly view the content of an ammobox, so you know your gear is there before you open the main gear dialog.

The dialog would steal the mousewheel while it is up, so you can scroll the list (if it's long enough). Just pointing or moving away from an ammobox would be enough to close the window. It's worth noting that ONLY the mousewheel would be trapped by the window. All other commands and actions would still work as they should.

The ranges for seeing and unseeing this QuickView screen are not defined as of yet, those would be the subject of careful calibration. Since the trapped mousewheel could, at times, hinder using the action menu.

If possible, it could be a better idea to not trap the mousewheel at all, since all it does (when no dialogs are open), is flip through the action menu.

As a second-priority feature (and if at all possible), It could be nice to add an action to open up the gear screen from this preview window and have the selected item already focused out on the main gear screen, so that you don't have to search for it inside a long list after having found it already. This would use a non-standard key or mouse button so as to not create unwanted behaviour by performing other actions, and, of course would depend on the feasability of doing so without having to modify the main gear dialog.

I frown upon the idea of modifying any content that is already there, because this would break compatibility with other mods. I want this addon to work regardless of ArmA version or Mod... this should be able to work just as well under vanilla ArmA 2 as under ArmA OA:CO with ACE 2, and any point in between.

I would really like to have this as a client side mod... As far as it's possible to do so. I'm not sure whether querying the ammobox content requires the mod to be active on the server or not, but I feel this addon should be available for any mission, and that means client-side only, since it's unreasonable to expect mass acceptance of any addon.

This mod could also implement a setting for opting out of it, should need require, because one shouldn't need to deactivate the entire addon should the server reject it. Possibly a server side version that could force it on or off, but that's a little out of scope right now...

Well, that's my idea... Let me know what you think, so I know if it's a good idea or not :)

Thanks in advance for any feedback

Cheers

Edited October 16, 2010 by TheHarvesteR