Might develop a patch for the Barb compass range Options

[ScrapyardBob]

This goes back to my work from Oct 2004 on the compass range issue in the initial release of CoD:UO:

http://www.iwnation.com/Forums/index.php?showtopic=10222

The default value for CoD:UO still seems to be 1024 units for the compass range. You can check this in-game by opening the console and typing ([TAB] means to hit the tab key):

/cg_hud[TAB]

You'll notice that cg_hudCompassMaxRange indicates the radius of your compass. It's read-only so you can only change it by applying server-side mods.

One of the fun things is that if the gametype or map that you're playing does not specifically set the compass_range variable in its GSC files, it will inherit it from the previously played map. This is why some of us noticed that sometimes Ponyri had a good compass while other times the compass was messed up. (It all depended on what map we played previously.)

More in a bit...

[ScrapyardBob]

Looking at Barbarossa's GSC file. After-Hourz actually released both mp_uo_barbarossa.pk3 and a follow-up user_svr_barbfix.pk3. The GSC file in the user_svr_barbfix.pk3 overrides the GSC file in the original PK3 file.

Right now, it looks like the Barbarossa map always loads with a compass range of 1024. This range is good for close quarters battle maps (i.e. Chateau, Carentan) but is not so good for larger maps like Foy / Ponyri / Barbarossa / Smolensk. My personal preference is compass ranges of 3000-5000 units on maps like that. It's a tradeoff between being able to see what's going on far away and still being able to find small targets like bombs / CNQ points / flags.

I've patched the user_svr_barbfix.pk3 file to set the compass range on Barbarossa (all gametypes) to 4096. It makes a big difference as you can tell where your teammates are in the russian town by R3. I'd love for Slyk (or other After-Hourz) folks to take a look at this and see what they think. I'm unsure whether 4096 is too coarse of a setting for SD/RE gameplay (or CNQ). It seems to be fine on my local test server.


This post has been edited by ScrapyardBob: 02/12/06 11:55am