Add team visualisation (drawing lines on map preview)
Motivation
It's frustrating if a match fails in the first minute, simply because a player didn't select the correct team. This idea shall help to minimize that frustration.
Proposed solution
In the lobby when you joined a game, you normally need to select a team and spawn. On that level preview, where you can click on the spawns to select them, I propose to draw lines between players that are in the same team. Making it easily visible how the teams are set up. (A)----(B)----(C) If lines cross, It's a failed left vs. right, or top vs. bottom. eg.: (A)----(B)--l--(C)
Potential implementation: The idea is to only draw one line per player, via the player index order. (To build snakes, not loops) The line between A and B is drawn by A, in case B has the same Team as A The line between B and C is drawn by B, in case C has the same Team as B ... Go though all players (Last player shall be skipped.) that are not a spectators and have a team selected. -skip drawing a line if there's no other player with the same team. .. When searching for other players with the same team the search can start at the index of the player (i) +1 (but validate the +1 ;)
update the dawn lines in case something changed, e.g. if somebody changes spawn, team, leaves, goes spec (I might miss some condition here)
Side effects
Player will play play snake or could draw in cooperation things like a pentagram, or other symbols... or the admin could draw things by setting spawns of players...
Alternatives
I don't like that idea, but as alternative at each slot draw another grey circle with the team number. Or write like F2 for Spawn F and Team 2, but because the spawns can overlap this will not be as helpful as my suggestion.
There's the possibility to only show it to the admin, but I would show it to all players, that they can fix wrong teams themself.
Thank!
-Yellow
Source: OpenRA/OpenRA