Waypoints - Real Distance

[Vaze]

When a waypoint is a few rooms away, the it points me to an exit from the current room I am in to the next. Cool. That is how it should be. But it shows distances like 50 m, 20 m. I see it on the minimap and know if the map exit is close or not that close (by a couple of meters further away [if it's out of the minimap]). I am sure that everyone else has a gut feeling for that. So there is no need to show me those tiny distances. Somebody slaps out a waypoint and you don't know where it is or how far away it is. Only that the exit is this way and a couple of meters away. 50% useless. Same goes with oxygen canisters and dying players.

Now for the more reasonable solution. Show the distance of the whole trip to the waypoint through every room, every section, add them up and that's what there should be. 500 m, 200 m. All this while it points me to the next exit from the current room.

Not that difficult to do. In fact you just change the output variable. You have a path, room exit locations and distances between them, let's say, d1 through d9.

 

d1 is the distance of the waypoint to the room exit it is in.

d2 through d8 are the distances of each path marker point (or what is it called...)

d9 it the distance of the player to the next room exit/marker

 

You only had d9 shown this whole time. What you should do is add up d1+d2+...+d8 to a constant that recalculates only if the path changes from d1 to d8 (to save up on processing power, lower lag... stuff like that). Then just add up the constant and the dynamically changing d9 and it is done.

d9 you already have and use, constant is calculated only a few times per minute. The output changes from "d9" to "c+d9". Easy, efficient, useful.

 

There is a lot of text so I need to sum it up. In short: keep the waypoint mechanics, show only the whole route distance.

Edited October 25, 2014 by Vaze

[Murderspoon]

would definitely be useful for downed players. too many times have i had to run through hordes of enemies to revive someone, only to find out when its too late that they were too far away for it to be worth bothering and end up getting downed myself in the process