tactical combat: bar?

[enpi]

Maybe I am overseeing something, but may I ask: what for is this moving bar in the tactical combat good? Has it any game use or is it just eye candy ("look there! something is moving" )

[echo2361]

I've always assumed it was just showing how many moves everything had made in the battle. Every time I or the enemy makes a move it makes a little mark on the bar. Gives me an idea of how epic a battle as been when I see a ton of marks and movement

[sven]

Maybe I am overseeing something, but may I ask: what for is this moving bar in the tactical combat good? Has it any game use or is it just eye candy ("look there! something is moving" )

It can do a lot, actually -- but almost all of what it does are along the lines of "developer features" -- i.e., stuff that's useful to me when adding features into the tactical battle. Changing what that bar looks like, and making it user friendly enough to expose some of the cooler 'dev' features to players are both on my TODO list.

Basically, right now, the bar shows you a complete overview of the "tactical event animations", and clicking on it can move you around the animation history. A "ctrl+click" will jump to certain position in time, while a a normal click will just stop the animation early, which is useful for freezing on a frame. "ctrl+alt+space" toggles between play/rewind/pause modes.

None of these features are going to survive in their current form to the release build -- I'd like to do something cool with the tactical timeline, but, to be interesting to players, rather than developers, the functions and presentation really need to change.

[enpi]

ah ok, I understand. Interesting feature. thanks for the info.