1 (edited by kokhba 2013-12-18 00:04:37)

Topic: flagger indicator

If I'm already going for health when the flagger shows up, I might not react quickly enough to let the flagger have it.  To them, it might look like I'm stealing the health.

A much simpler suggestion is in my second post.

Suggestion: An indicator of when the ally flagger is approaching and what direction they're coming from.  Maybe a visual indicator for direction plus a sound alarm.  You could design it to apply to only the players within certain map regions.
The equation could be something like proximity ÷ average speed.
So if we wanted a 0.75 second heads up, the code could say something like
When (x-axis movement over the last 2 seconds × 0.375) is less than (flagger's proximity + ½ screen-width), sound the alarm.
If the flagger is above or below, i.e. when the y-axis distance is greater than x-axis distance, you could replace x-axis with y-axis and screen-width with screen-height.  You could also go with pythagorean theorem, but it would have to be doing this computation constantly for each player.

Alternative:
Sensors placed and labelled by the map creator.  When a flagger passes them, teammates get a message like "2B" or "flagger at 2B".
This would probably be lighter on the servers because it wont be performing a distinct calculation for multiple players.  However, a potential problem is that a traitor could start feeding this information to the other team until they are finally kicked for it.  If an opponent can already see the flagger when this begins, they will know whether they're being fed truth or lies.

2

Re: flagger indicator

flagger should have a bind "coming to base".. too much helps is kinda cheats imo

3 (edited by kokhba 2013-12-18 00:11:04)

Re: flagger indicator

It might seem like a cheat, but it will be available to both teams.

More simply, you could put the flagger in control of sounding different alarms with different hot keys, so that the implementation relies on the player's brain rather than a complicated computation.  They could have different alarms with meanings like "entering the base", "need weapons", "in safety", "low-health / flag pass", and of course, "Nevermind".

4

Re: flagger indicator

As Broken said, everyone can bind the team_say command to send a message to his teammates, as in "bind b say_team HELP!"

It's up to the flagcarrier to manage it, and the team mates to react accordingly. There are other hints, such as the time since when the flagcarrier took the flag, the size of the map, the kill log showing actions happening everywhere. It's enough, any more would make it too easy and it's not supposed to be so.

If you want to see your flagcarrier further you can also use the dynamic camera to check the surroundings before taking the pickups, but of course once again it is a part of player skill to do so.

5

Re: flagger indicator

I didn't know what Broken meant.  I thought it was a variation on the idiom "to be in a bind."

Thanks for letting me know.