Vehicle Usability Brainstorm

Right now the usability of vehicles is horrible. The bumblebee is the best example, with most of the players i've seen using it trying to deal damage with the heal beam. Currently vehicle functionality is discovered through trial-and-error. This results in poor performance out of new players regardless of their skill level. There aren't very good visual cues and those that do exist are inconstant across vehicles.

Here is a list of some of the usability bugs that i have encountered (feel free to point out your own as well)

General Problems

• Crosshairs are inconsistent across vehicles:
  [1] Square brackets are for flares on raptor, rockets on crawler
  [2] Crawler's high-arc fire and raptor's bombs are functionally almost identical, but have different crosshairs
  

Bumblebee

• No indication that the vehicle is for more than one player
  
• No indication of the functionality of the heal beam
  

Crawler

• There is no indication that there are multiple fire modes
  

Raptor

• There is no indication of multiple fire modes
  
• There is no visual indication that the firing secondary in flares mode does anything at all
  

Speeder

none so far


This thread is for brainstorming solutions to improve vehicle usability.

mods please don't merge to vehicles thread because this addresses something very specific these issues will go undressed or derail the vehicles thread if that happens.

wtf? bumble ... since when? .. is it new?

what map has one? (can I find it on the main vechicle ctf server) ?

other than that ... I have never been able to test vehicles with less than 100 ping ... so I have no useful info for you ...

Here's a fix I thought of for the bumblebee, graying out weapons indicators until the gun they correspond to is occupied, displaying explanatory text with the space.

wireframe:

I like the idea of simply putting text instead (or perhaps over) the left/right gunner ammo bar. Ill implement sth like that soon.
EDIT: implemented this in master.

@ Heal beam
Yeh, it certainly could use some better clue to what its function is, question is how. Printing some text on users screen will get irritating fast if noticeable enough to work xD

@ Crosshairs
Indeed, im more or less recycling the ones already there due to lack of ideas how to make better ones. Contributions are very welcome.

wtf? bumble ... since when? .. is it new?

what map has one? (can I find it on the main vechicle ctf server) ?

other than that ... I have never been able to test vehicles with less than 100 ping ... so I have no useful info for you ...

It's on most maps in the [MoN] Vehicles server. Unsealed Trail, Top of the World, and Sandstorm definitely have it.

@ Heal beam
Yeh, it certainly could use some better clue to what its function is, question is how. Printing some text on users screen will get irritating fast if noticeable enough to work xD

Quick Fixes:

• Take a look at the iconography for health used across the game (in luminos and on the mega health item models) and make the beam emit particles of that shape.
  
• Make the crosshair for the heal beam match this iconography.
  

I think the problem of identifying weapon functions and indicating that multiple firemodes even exists is something that has to be designed into the vehicle HUD at a fundamental level if we want to accommodate advanced functionality well. I think it would be beneficial to look at the paradigms used in the default luminos HUD and apply them to vehicle functionality. Tribes: Ascend does a great job of making the HUD consistent between vehicles and standard gameplay.

... hutty plays some vehicle ctf ....

ah ... thats what the bumble bee is :3
awesome ....


... vehicle wise ...

I see crab used for defence (camping) and slow offence
I see speeder mostly for quick caps ... (and anti flyer)
I see flyer used for everything
I havn't seen the bumblebee actually do much anything useful yet (thats different from the flyer) ... mainly because its still a novely (and I only played one game with it so far ...)

My issues with the vehicles the last time I actually screwed around with them is that they felt a little off. With the exception of the Spider Bot (which was perfect feel-wise in my opinion) the vehicles didn't really feel like vehicles. My suggestions for them would be to make them more feel closer to that of what I'd expect to find in a game like WarHawk (PS1) and WipEout. If that were accomplished, Tribes would have a hard time taking this project on in the gameplay department, especially if auto-recharging jetpacks were introduced as this game already kicks the crap out of it in other areas that it does well in addition to being able to go toe to toe with UT99, Q3A, and Warsow.

I have a big issue with vehicles since bumblebee introduction on [MoN] Vehicles server (don't know if it is related, just putting a date) : there's a lot a of lag, vehicles (both the one where I seat, if I enter one, and others) seem to jump from point to point instead of the nice fluidity i was previously used to. It makes using vehicles or even attacking them or defending from them almost impossible. Everything else is just as before - near perfect ;-)

Anyone else have noted this ? Any clue about what I can do to improved situation ? I use Xonotic 0.6.0 on linux (glx)

For the bumblebee gunners' seat, graying out indicators with text is a great idea, IMHO. The green healing beam definitly needs to be clearly explain - no idea how. Another bug with the green beam is that it doesn't disappear once bumblebee is destroy.

I'm working on some ideation for weapon grouping/crosshairs at the moment. Sorry i abandoned this thread for a day i had no Internet connection.


Please note this is not a thread for vehicle balance, if you have suggestions regarding gameplay please post them to the vehicles thread. This thread is for looking at ideas to make it easier for new players to use the vehicles as they currently are through better use of iconography, UI design, and language.

Could name of the vehicle be displayed when you board vehicle? also i would like to use tab to finish typing vehicle name

Could the game play sound when you run out of ammo