Reveal Map at Start Through Temporary Spawn Unit

[The Mak]

A feature that I think would help many players when they play a map for the first time is to fully reveal the map so they can see where enemy civilians are located and other features that give an advantage to those who know of this on the map and other related features.

What I suggest is that we spawn a unit before the ACU spawns that has a vision and water vision radius of 115 (sqrt((81^2 + 81^2)), has personal cloak, non-selectable, and a lifetime of 3 or 4 game ticks. Then the ACU spawns in.

The vision radius will cover the entire map, no matter the size and spawn locations.
The personal cloak is so that the enemy player does not know where your start point is and vice versa.
Non-selectable, obvious
The small lifetime is just there so that all features can be seen and now all structures are permanently shown to all players.


Currently, when a game starts, the following sequence of events occur:
Loading screen.
UI loads.
Map appears fully zoomed out.
Camera zooms to start position.
Flash effect followed by ACU spawn and ACU selected.


What I suggest:
Loading screen.
UI loads.
Map appears fully zoomed out.
Reveal unit described above spawns in.
Wait till reveal unit expires.
Camera zooms to start position.
Flash effect followed by ACU spawn and ACU selected.


Some hiccups that I can foresee:
ACU first selected: I do not know if the game selects your first unit or if it is specified to select your ACU. I know there is an annoying bug that if you restart the same game, your ACU is not automatically selected. I do not know if that will play a role in this modification.

Pre-built on: This completely skips over the whole zoom in, flash, ACU spawn effects. Perhaps a small delay can be added before the units are created, otherwise when the reveal unit pops in, now you will see everything in the other player's base.


If someone can point me in the right direction where all these effects are scripted I can try to complete this myself.

[BushMaster]

I guess i dont quite understand the purpose. anyone whos played a few games of supcom generally knows where the corresponding player will spawn since 98% of maps are symmetrical. and for scenarios where this is not the case, this is one of the many purposes of scouting. so i just dont understand why. there is also the issue of determining if it is the players first time on the map.

A feature that I think would help many players when they play a map for the first time is to fully reveal the map so they can see where enemy civilians are located and other features that give an advantage to those who know of this on the map and other related features.

everything but civilians and the enemy you can see, both easily found by a scout.

The personal cloak is so that the enemy player does not know where your start point is and vice versa.

so the idea is for you to not know where the enemy spawns too??? also wouldnt the enemy player already know where you spawning, hence the idea of this to begin with?

personally, id say its far better for the player who needs this feature to host a sandbox of the map instead. gives you much more time to learn the details of things like reclaim and civs and only takes a few mins.

[ZLO_RD]

actually i always wanted that, but after that change you will no longer need scouts to targer civ PDs... so that change is kinda questinable but still sounds good

[The Mak]

I guess i dont quite understand the purpose. anyone whos played a few games of supcom generally knows where the corresponding player will spawn since 98% of maps are symmetrical. and for scenarios where this is not the case, this is one of the many purposes of scouting. so i just dont understand why. there is also the issue of determining if it is the players first time on the map.

everything but civilians and the enemy you can see, both easily found by a scout.

The suggestion is not for determining your opponents position. It is to help even out the imbalance that comes with playing a map for the first time vs someone who is familiar with a maps pitfalls (enemy civilian PD/AA) and treasures (civilian structures that are not wrecks to reclaim). This way the new person to the map does not loose valuable units in the beginning of a game due to the pitfalls or miss out on the treasures.

I believe scouting should be used against your opponent, not to reveal features on a map that are there right from the start. A map should be like a game board in which both players can see the pitfalls and treasures as they are from the start of the match.

so the idea is for you to not know where the enemy spawns too??? also wouldnt the enemy player already know where you spawning, hence the idea of this to begin with?

This is for the case where spawn is set to random and there are many possible starting positions. My suggestion is not to give you free intel on your opponent, hence the cloak, as it is not seen by vision. Otherwise when the reveal units spawns it would see your opponent's reveal unit.

personally, id say its far better for the player who needs this feature to host a sandbox of the map instead. gives you much more time to learn the details of things like reclaim and civs and only takes a few mins.

We have many maps in the ladder pool. Do we really need to have new players open each and every map to find these types of pitfalls and treasures? Should the map not show these right from the start?

We also have a ton of maps in the map vault. I believe this suggestion may make it easier for players to try out these maps, but are not sure of the possible pitfalls or treasures that may be present.

actually i always wanted that, but after that change you will no longer need scouts to targer civ PDs... so that change is kinda questinable but still sounds good

Perhaps, but the scout will now focus on your opponent, not on map features. If these maps were randomly generated right from the start, then I would agree it removes a part of the game play. But since these maps are static, new players to the map are at a disadvantage.

[Blodir]

actually i always wanted that, but after that change you will no longer need scouts to targer civ PDs... so that change is kinda questinable but still sounds good

I always thought trying to identify the right gray dot out of a million others was very frustrating.

[SC-Account]

actually i always wanted that, but after that change you will no longer need scouts to targer civ PDs... so that change is kinda questinable but still sounds good

I always thought trying to identify the right gray dot out of a million others was very frustrating.

I fully agree with Blodir.