The Artillery unit behaves differently than the rest. It's the only unit that can adjust the distance at which its projectiles explode. The downside is that they won't explode if they come into contact with anything on the way, they'll just sail right over it. It requires more finesse to catch an enemy in your sights but the reward is much higher damage.
To help the Artillery out, I've started implementing a HUD to show aiming related data. In orange you can see the minimum and maximum range of the left-trigger weapon, and in cyan the min/max of the right-trigger. I've yet to add an actual reticle but it will be there shortly, showing where the weapon is actually aimed at.
Turns out this HUD is pretty useful even when you're not playing as an Artillery, so I modified it to show just the max range for other units since their weapons don't have a minimum range.
The art style of the aiming marks give you an idea of where the art direction is headed. The red health and ammo HUD in the bottom left will be replaced eventually with something more appropriate and aesthetically pleasing. You can also see that fog of war is on, with some subtle fading at the edges! Here's a shot of an artillery projectile exploding:
I'll post soon about the auto-aim feature I implemented recently and how that fits in with the Operator unit type. Keep the comments coming and I hope you enjoy!
That looks pretty cool. Since your vision is fairly limited around your tank, will you often be shooting such far ranging weapons into complete darkness? Or is it that your teammate will be engaged in close combat with the enemy tank and through them you will see it?
ReplyDeleteThe latter! Mechanized is all about teamwork. I'll be posting soon about the auto-aim feature which will shed some light on how exactly coordinating with your teammates will work.
ReplyDeleteAdditionally, you can have a tank with a wider vision range. I'm aiming to have customizable tanks via a point buy system, so you could spend some of your points on upgrading your vision range. However, I don't think a vision range as far as an Artillery can shoot will be purchasable - keep in mind they have the farthest range in the game. Most other units are active at a much smaller distance.