daid
[Feature] Sensor screen
After further discussion about how the RGB signals, I feel like the wonderful back-end created for them is under-utilized.
There only apearance are in the edges of the science screen and there is not even a legend for people to know how to interpret them. This makes me believe that they can be forgotten in game.
I propose a sensor screen which resembles the work of a hydrophone operator in a submarine. This would allow for crews to mark and track bearings of signals of interest wether a ship or an artifact.
The reason for it to be a new screen is to not encroach on current crew roles that keep gameplay simple and accessible, while giving deeper playing possibilities for scripting with signal data.
- Top buttons would allow to choose map and signals
- The map would mainly be used for the sensor crew to visualize their tracking and report their finding to the crew. It would be similar to the relay station but with less capabilities.
- The sensor values would be a graph like a RF waterfall graph, a time/angle representation of all three signals. This video shows a very nice example of it. Zooming and moving the cursor would allow to check different frequencies at different resolutions.
- The top instantaneous values could be averaged over time in order to see signals in noise (might be too complicated for the gameplay loop)
- Bearing indicator would visually show where you are aiming at
- Lock position would center the view on a selected position in the map
- The target ID would allow to cycle between different target we are tracking (unsure if I want that in for now, it's a maybe)
- Mark bearing would use the selected bearing in the sensor value component to draw a line on the map
- Remove/reset is to cleanup the workspace
- Link to probe is like science. This would allow fancy moves where someone can locate an object with two bearing on two different location (see below)
Map UI with bearings
Waterfall graph example (source https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAbgbDVs_0A)
Here's maybe how it could look if we do a 'stacked line' style, and put each sensor in its own column:
I was thinking of all superposed as an image and then as you filter it the image does not show certain colors. Was thinking of a shader or something.
This allows to not have to draw lines and have it simpler to implement. Could also be next to each other as image.
Definitely need to play around though with tests.
An image search of 'vst spectrograph' should give a ton of implementation and UI inspiration for user-friendly and self-explanatory analysis:
However, audio analysis, naval navigation, astronomy, and meteorological software probably gives a better UX inspiration; i.e. what is the user focused on and able to quickly control:
And of course, as always, Project Rho is a wonderful resource for both inspiration and references: https://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/sensordeck.php