First, a little background information: When an Engineer creates a new structure, usually it needs to be repaired before becoming functional. All of the structures that need repair after initial construction will self destruct if they aren't repaired within a short period of time. The problem is, that people who are unfamiliar with the old Gloom interface can't tell that repair is necessary because the game doesn't give them many hints. In fact, I think the only hint I display is a small/unobtrusive health status over structures that are under the Engineer's crosshairs...
Here are some ideas I've come up with that I might be able to squeeze into 1.6:
- Make the health indicator larger and make it blink red, or say that the item needs repair
- Display a blinking repair sprite above the structure
- Display an animated texture on the surface below the structure indicating that repair is needed
- Have a console variable to enable/disable help hints/sounds
If you've seen a good build interface somewhere, and you think it might work well for the Engineer, please let me know.
In addition, I thought you might as well hear it here first: Valve is updating the 2013 SDK this week and it's going to break all mods, including Darkness. Once the updated SDK is released, I'll try to release a second beta with all of the fixes that I've made recently.
By the way--Has anyone seen Brutal Doom? The videos make me want to increase the amount of gore in Darkness, but Source SDK doesn't have many gibs included. Anyone know where to get better gibs?
Natural Selection had segmented health circles that floated just above floor level. The number and colour of segments showing the health of the structure. Also make them emit sparks if they need repair.
Where can I learn more about this 2013 SDK update? I've heard some rumblings with no office source.
On the Steam page for Source SDK there was an announcement about it about a month ago. All you have to to is pull in the new SDK changes and recompile.