An RTS usability challenge

Orcs vs. Martians is still plodding along.

Some people who saw me originally kick off this project are probably wondering if it will ever get done. Still others have probably died of old age since then. I'm now making plans to fund my development via U.S. social security, and to have my laptop propped up on my bed in my nursing home (KIDDING...kidding...)

So anyway.

Lately I've been wrestling with an interesting usability problem. Here it is in a nutshell:

fact: In Orcs vs. Martians, terrain elevation plays a pretty big role. High elevation gives bonuses to vision, attack range, and windmill productivity.
fact: RTSs are usually played with the camera angled down--some RTS players even prefer the camera straight down (the overhead view)
fact: It's hard to visualize terrain elevation with the camera angled down !
result: occasional frustration

So I'm trying to think up some way to show terrain elevation more clearly. It's inconvenient for the player to check the lay of the land by repeatedly swinging the camera down to eye-level, then returning to a God's-eye view. I mean, it's not too terrible, but it bugs me when I playtest.

So the 1st idea I thought of was to render contour lines onto the terrain. Like you see on a surveyor's map.

But, it might be pretty hard to implement that into Torque's terrain renderer. At least for pencil-thin contour lines. Torque's terrain renderer does all kinds of fancy multiresolution stuff, which scares me off from trying to modify that code. (Don't get me wrong though, I love its capabilities)

So, my 2nd thought was to use a new terrain texture to introduce contour "swaths" into the terrain. In other words, use the new texture for terrain squares at the same height. So it's like a contour line, but much coarser.

That was pretty easy to integrate into Torque.

Here's a screenshot of my first attempt at this.


The purple-ish grass, above, is supposed to be the contour swath.

Yeah, I know, it doesn't look very good. :) It's way too subtle right now. Well, it's a first attempt.

Another, bigger view:


Yeeesh... still not too good. But at least it sort of shows the terrain contours.

It seems like the challenge here is to render contour swaths that (1) stand out adequately, but (2) do not look too unnatural or ugly.

Not sure yet how to achieve both of those.

One idea I plan to try is to put plants or wildflowers on the "swath texture". Flowers of course can have bold colors, so that should help the swath stand out, while still looking relatively natural. Flowers seem slightly strange in a wargame, though. And plants that grow in rings and only at certain elevations may still look odd...hmmm.

Tactically-engineered flowers, anyone? "Sir! If we advance just past this line of flowers...we'll get a range bonus against the enemy !!!"

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