Mouse pointer

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  • Views 6,151
  • updated
  • Not a Bug

The in game mouse pointer is diffuse ... sometimes its the tip of the pointing finger of the hand and sometimes its the bottom of the light beam and sometimes something else ... makes it hard to get the feeling of "im having the control" ;)

Game Version:
Steam Public
Platform:
Windows
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Lee "Noontide" Moon Designer & Community Manager
  • Pending Customer

Hi Simeonw,


By design it should behave thusly:


  • Selecting things, casting unit target spells, tagging tiles, placing rooms should all act at the finger/pickaxe point this is because either they interract with a tile at the maximum height or with an object in the field.
  • Placing things (units, parts, potions, artefacts), placing defences &constructs, spells that target tiles, aoe effects all interract at the base of the beam because they interract with tiles at ground level as opposed to at the top level.
  • Shouldn't be any exceptions to these two rules as far as I know so I'd be very interested in knowing what they are.

Quite some time ago everything followed the top rule but we received a huge number of complaints on the accuracy of placing things into the scene so we reached this compromise which the majority of players seem content with.


I can't remember exactly what happened around this time as we're talking around 2 years ago now but if I recall there was a long discussion with the code team and at this was the only solution at time.


On a fundamental level though I agree with you and I'd love to see us find a way to once again make the interaction with the dungeon feel more consistent but by this point with the vast majority of users familiar with the current system even if it was possible to change it would not be fair to do so.


However if we ever do a sequel this is one of the topics I would be sure to raise :)


Cheers,


Lee

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simeonw

hmm i see your point. it's difficult to find a solution ... it just happened to me a few times

1. i missplaced prisioniers -> they walk freely in my dungeon

2. i misscast minniontargeted spells -> they don recieve the needed healing nor buff


is the mouspointer (hand or pick axe) a 3d object? If yes it could be an idea, to take the object "hanging" in the hand (minnion, potion, etc) and place it in the world, where it covers the view for the player. I have to play dungeon keeper 1 real quick ... to see how it was there ...

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simeonw
Quote from Lee "Noontide" Moon

Hi Simeonw,


By design it should behave thusly:


  • Selecting things, casting unit target spells, tagging tiles, placing rooms should all act at the finger/pickaxe point this is because either they interract with a tile at the maximum height or with an object in the field.
  • Placing things (units, parts, potions, artefacts), placing defences &constructs, spells that target tiles, aoe effects all interract at the base of the beam because they interract with tiles at ground level as opposed to at the top level.
  • Shouldn't be any exceptions to these two rules as far as I know so I'd be very interested in knowing what they are.

Quite some time ago everything followed the top rule but we received a huge number of complaints on the accuracy of placing things into the scene so we reached this compromise which the majority of players seem content with.


I can't remember exactly what happened around this time as we're talking around 2 years ago now but if I recall there was a long discussion with the code team and at this was the only solution at time.


On a fundamental level though I agree with you and I'd love to see us find a way to once again make the interaction with the dungeon feel more consistent but by this point with the vast majority of users familiar with the current system even if it was possible to change it would not be fair to do so.


However if we ever do a sequel this is one of the topics I would be sure to raise :)


Cheers,


Lee

okay i tested the behavior on the old game ... there is a glowing frame that snaps in on the next tile.

in War for the Overworld the behavior is like you explained. -> no bug


anyways i'd succest to add a snap-in feature to the mouse in game to avoid edgy gameplay: As soon as the player aproaches an interactable object (tomb, strech bank, minnion, imp, etc.) with the mouse (pointer or beam) it snaps on the object and highlights the object snapped in.


e.g. if i hold a prisonier in the hand and aproach the torture chamber, as soon as i'm close enouth my mouse with the prisionier snaps on the strech bank and the strech bank is highlighted.

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Stefan Furcht Programmer

Yes the player hand is a 3D object.
What you mentioned are all non trivial solutions and more a feature request than a bug report.
We experimented with this before but it had drawbacks, eg. you don't see what is in your hand anymore when you zoom out too far.
So we thought the current behavior has the best tradeoff between accuracy, visibility and simplicity.
So now I am unsure what to do with this bug ticket.

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Lee "Noontide" Moon Designer & Community Manager
  • Not a Bug

Just popping back to this one after a while. For now I'm going to close the ticket down as "Not a bug" but I will take the feedback on board and will pass it through in the new year.


That said as Stefan quite rightly pointed out at this point a lot of things things are not trivial to solve and it may be too far down the line for us to solve them in this game.