Millenium7 0 Posted February 7, 2011 (edited) I think its great that you have the ability to place symbols and text anywhere on the map for players in the specified channel. However it's not exactly intuitive enough to come up with a gameplan other than "go here/attack this" Here's a snapshot of a typical map in a rescue or assassination sort of mission nothing wrong with it. This is a pretty basic mission, get to the mosque and rescue/kill the [insert] then head to the extraction. But how do you coordinate with your team? you may do something like... Which is fine but its get a bit messy and its difficult to interpret whats going on. As its essentially just a bunch of clutter. You can use the up/down keys in combination with shift to choose different icons or text however this can literally take minutes to do, and still looks pretty average. If however we are given a 'draw' ability and utilising Shift+Up/Down for colouring we can in 2 seconds show something like.... Which is far more intuitive and with nothing more than a quick glance you can in a split second see, ok guys this is the route we're taking both in and out. Being an ex programmer I can't imagine this would take much to get going either. There's multiple ways to go about it but the easiest would simply be that when the mouse is dragged it places '2d waypoints' if you will on the map, and then a line is simply drawn between each one in sequence. Once completed the position of each waypoint and number sequence is sent over netcode to appropriate players and each client renders the lines between them. This method is a little more crude in that it only allows you to draw straight lines, however it utilises very little traffic and is quick and easy to implement from scratch. Implementing this in mission making as well would allow for drastically improved/simplified/easier visible objects and instructions such as... http://img715.imageshack.us/img715/4531/arma2oa4.jpg > 100 kb Now this could be drawn at design, briefing or midgame and it very quickly and easily illustrates what each of 4 squads should be doing and which path they should take. Trying to replicate something like this with the current ingame tools during mission/briefing is VERY time consuming and just leads to a mess of icons all over the place Thoughts/Comments? Edited February 7, 2011 by W0lle Image > 100 kb Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
dmarkwick 261 Posted February 7, 2011 I think this has been suggested/discussed several times, and the consensus seems to be favourable :) However, the system would need some limits in place (or at least optional) so that people across the map don't get magic information. So maybe have an option that only people within 10m can get the info, who can then take it away with them. That would simulate getting direct orders and scribbling them on your own map. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Pulverizer 1 Posted February 7, 2011 It should come with scripting commands that would be used to limit what "drawing channels" each unit can see and where to draw on. For example: unitName enableMapDrawing [global|side|command|group|vehicle|direct] unitName showMapDrawing [global|side|command|group|vehicle|direct] Usage: redleader enableMapDrawing side+group+direct loon1 enableMapDrawing 0 Scripting commands like this could be used to limit drawing to leaders only, and to briefings only etc. It would definitely need layers so you could toggle whose drawings are visible to you (side, group, invidual players) to avoid confusion, and in public mp to tell who's drawing enormous dongs on the map. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Cyteless 10 Posted February 7, 2011 http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=90826 That should help you until BIS come up with their own solution. :) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
