Hey devs,
I know that Starbase has done its best to eliminate arbitrary UI elements from the game HUD. I appreciate this, along with all those other amazing decisions you all have made like this, so, so much. The current mouse controls for a ship are just a test of what is possible, but I had a thought that might lead towards something workable.
The current interactive station/screen panels in the game could work as manually-placed mouse controls for a ship. It could be a translucent plate like the device panels, but clear and flat. Players can then use decals to design the look of the mouse control plate and bolt or weld it into position in their cockpit. Then, when the player interacts with the plate using Tab->mouseclick, they gain control over it much like a YOLOL chip and gain mouse controls on that translucent device.
You already have the cursor detection code in the station panels and so on. You already have the YOLOL code for locking a player into a panel. And you already have the mouse movement code. Some device fields for this translucent plate such as "deadzone" and "centering speed" and some other things to make flight similar to Elite Dangerous would truly make this an optional UI element and keep it within the bounds of the game's intended design as well as allowing players to be creative in how they achieve their aiming reticle and mouse-control setup. This would also open up a lot of fun ways to interact with other devices as device fields on this plate, such as x/y position, would be accessible by the rest of the ship/network.
It's all there, it just needs to be pulled together.
I know that Starbase has done its best to eliminate arbitrary UI elements from the game HUD. I appreciate this, along with all those other amazing decisions you all have made like this, so, so much. The current mouse controls for a ship are just a test of what is possible, but I had a thought that might lead towards something workable.
The current interactive station/screen panels in the game could work as manually-placed mouse controls for a ship. It could be a translucent plate like the device panels, but clear and flat. Players can then use decals to design the look of the mouse control plate and bolt or weld it into position in their cockpit. Then, when the player interacts with the plate using Tab->mouseclick, they gain control over it much like a YOLOL chip and gain mouse controls on that translucent device.
You already have the cursor detection code in the station panels and so on. You already have the YOLOL code for locking a player into a panel. And you already have the mouse movement code. Some device fields for this translucent plate such as "deadzone" and "centering speed" and some other things to make flight similar to Elite Dangerous would truly make this an optional UI element and keep it within the bounds of the game's intended design as well as allowing players to be creative in how they achieve their aiming reticle and mouse-control setup. This would also open up a lot of fun ways to interact with other devices as device fields on this plate, such as x/y position, would be accessible by the rest of the ship/network.
It's all there, it just needs to be pulled together.
