Ohh.. that's colourful!Now, we come to select a unit.. and this is where the interface increases in complexity. Here you can see that I've moved away from a complex button GUI design for a complex visual GUI overlay. What I want to get away from is a button heavy interface and especially one where you have to manually calculate Action Point / Time Units in your head to see what you can do or not.
Instead if you look at the screenshot below, you will see that for our selected unit the outlined squares are now filled in, and show the actions possible in that destination square. The lighter arrows over some of those squares shows the path toward the current destination square.
On the destination square you will see another set of 8 directional triangles arrayed around it. I call this a 'compass cursor' and it breaks down the actions within that tile so you can see the actions possible if you moved to that cursor and turned in any direction. Here you can see that all the triangles are orange apart from the one facing East. What this means is that I can face in any direction and still be able to fire an auto-shot (orange), AND if I faced East I could also fire a snap shot (yellow) as well. This lets me judge whether it's worth facing East and having a better chance of hitting an enemy, or facing diagonally and covering both directions of actions, but with less chance of success.
After using this system for a short time (as I have done with testing) you can quickly see where you can move to and still be able to cover corridors & areas with opportunity fire.
Finally in this screenshot.. the larger Green Triangle within the tile is your mouse cursor which changes from the normal white arrow when you select the unit. This shape indicates the direction between your current destination and your selected unit (i.e. the direction your unit would turn to look at this destination square). The colour is taken from the smaller directional triangles around your selected unit, and again indicates the actions possible.
So, if I click with the left mouse button on the highlighted square the player will walk to that destination. If I click with the middle mouse button instead then the player will turn to look in that direction without moving, (in the same way you could right click in X-Com and look that way). Pressing the rght mouse button and moving the mouse will pan around the screen.
Yes, it's quite complicated at first, but once you are used to the system it lets you move, turn and plan your actions very quickly without trying to juggle numbers in your head or press multiple buttons to switch states.
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