"Active Pause" / "Tactical Pause" can grow naturally from frame-by-frame stepthrough #774
Description
First check
- The suggestion is NOT related to functionality of Ares, HAres, Kratos or any other YR engine extension.
- The suggested feature / enhancement is NOT implemented in Ares/Phobos yet and the existing possibilites are not viable or good enough to achieve the wanted result.
- I agree to elaborate the details if requested and provide thorough testing if the feature is implemented.
- I added a very descriptive title to this issue.
- I used the GitHub search and read the issue list to find a similar issue and didn't find it.
- I thought out how the feature / enhancement should work and described it in the most detailed and clear way.
Description
I couldn't help but notice that the frame-by-frame stepthrough feature recently introduced in Phobos allowed me to pause the game, scroll around, survey the map, have a look at my forces... Aside from hearing unit selection and command-confirmation sounds and having access to the "planning mode" feature, this is very close to the "active pause" or "tactical pause" as some call it feature that some other RTS games (OpenRA, for instance) have. By this I mean: The progression of the game is paused, units do not move, build queues do not advance, but commands can be issued and will be executed upon releasing from pause. This kind of feature is especially helpful when you're dealing with some crazy situations, like those that Mental Omega puts you in, or, as in the aforementioned OpenRA, during the first mission where you control Tanya before she was allowed to attack autonomously (trying to pause on the first frame so I could set up a plan to save those idiot roaming civilians and not get Tanya killed took me maybe ten to twenty restarts, I swear).
This feature could almost be called complete already, in all but name, except for some minor issues:
- Unit movement/attack/target lines do not display as confirmation a command has been received
- Unit command confirmation audio does not play, making it uncertain whether a command was received
- Unit selection audio does not play, making it uncertain whether the unit was selected
- Planning mode does not respond
- Hovering over any structure that can display a health bar on-hover results in that health bar stuck in a displayed state until pause is released
- When pause is released, many sounds may play at once
- Sounds and the GUI in general do not give their full set of responses, making confirmation of input uncertain
- Presumably, code should be implemented to prevent this from being used at all in multiplayer
I sorta stormed through this whole thing, and created a Github just to do it, but hopefully email notification is sent if this receives replies, and I'll respond in as timely a manner as I am able. Thank you in advance for humoring or indulging me, whichever the case may be!
Fun side-note: The developer step-through mode is what got me to check Phobos out in the first place! So far, I have appreciated this and the new UI features.
INI code
No response
Additional context
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