On the subject of the photos and Blackdog's file-sharing idea, I'm sure it would be easier to just send the position and orientation of the recon aircraft's camera over the map at the moment it took the photo and just generate the "photo" client-side. That's bytes rather than kilobytes for a start, no need for any kind of complicated sharing system there.
I like the collaborative-editing idea for drawing on the recon photos, although it does open the door for lamers and suchlike. Perhaps it could be a server option, or only the recon pilot and leader of the attack squadron could edit it. Probably the most you'd need to do is draw on it with an in-game "red pen" editor anyway. Given that we're trying to conserve bandwidth here just to be neat, the resolution of the annotations made doesn't have to be as high as the photo itself. not much point! Just make it a transparent .tga with the same aspect ratio overlaid onto the recon photo.
It's probably worth pointing out that putting any kind of responsibility in the hands of one person is a dubious idea in a multiplayer game so perhaps a voting system to kick someone out of the leader spot would be wise.
I don't think it's so much necessary for the exchange of .html files, either. Ideally, the leaders of each squadron could simply set their waypoints on the map by simply drawing the lines and typing in altitudes (and maybe naming each waypoint), and these would appear on the briefing map for everyone on the same side, coded by colour for each squadron (with a key at the side), once they were completed. Once again this is simply co-ordinates and a few words so there's no need for any kind of big file-swapping system. No need to make any kind of distinction as to who gets what information and suchlike, may as well just keep recon photos in a separate tab and just make the briefing text specific to the squadron in question. For real awesome-sauce it would be cool to allow the possibility for each squadron leader to write down their own little addendum to the briefing containing advice and "tally-ho, give 'em what for, chaps" and suchlike that would be visible to their squadron once they finished typing it and clicked okay or whatever, for those people who don't use voice-comms or just for the fun of it.
As for the mid-mission chart-editing, it's a cool idea, and it only has to use the same interface as the original briefing map so it's not even like it would be a lot of effort if the above part was already done. Say you got badly shot up, you'd just open up the map, press the edit button, click through a "Are you sure you want to edit the flightplan" dialogue so that you don't start moving stuff around accidentally, and then make your new flightplan from your current location. It would be useful if the navigator actually told you to "come around to <new course>" if you were off-course or got to a waypoint, as well.
Basically, I think they're really really good ideas, but they could use some simplification.
08-10-2010, 12:52 PM
Linear Mode
