coop selective element selection mechanism

[beepster4096]

There are many suggestions about coop here that have the same flaw; they take away coop players' ability to choose which part of the puzzle they want to do and their ability to swap places if they get tired. (#2119, #2120, #3266).

I propose a solution where instead of the map maker choosing which player color can interact with an item, they choose which of 2 shapes can interact with an item. Then, at the beginning of a map or at checkpoints, players can use the ping tool to choose a shape.

If a shape is currently picked by no one, it will be gray, and if it is picked by both players it will have orange and blue stripes. Otherwise, it takes its player's color.

If 1 or more shapes are unchosen with both players inside the checkpoint, the door will not open. When there is a player outside of the active checkpoint and a player changes their shape, red outlines will appear around the shapes and testing elements will not update who they affect until both players are in the checkpoint or move on to the next checkpoint.

Testing elements using this system would display their shape on them and the player color they currently affect, preferably while both active and inactive. For example, a selective fizzler affecting Triangle (currently chosen by orange) would have triangles on its field, the field would be orange and its emitter would have orange triangles on it.

My suggestions for what the shapes would actually be are Triangle and Circle.

[LautaroL20]

This is a duplicate of: https://github.com/BEEmod/BEE2-items/issues/702, however, i´ve added the description of your issue to the original one. If you have more ideas to share regard to this subject, make sure to comment on issue #702

[TeamSpen210]

Not really, this is a seperate thing. This is something I've been keeping in mind when designing items. It's why the seperation checkpoint has buttons, so you can decide which side to exit at. The respawn droppers are also designed so they can handle either player on the sides. This idea would be neat, especially if I built it as a pre-spawn override where you first drop into a selection room, then continue onto the main map.

[vrad-exe]

This should also affect Aperture Tag (allowing players to choose who has the portal gun and who has the paint gun).

[vrad-exe]

I thought of a simpler way to implement this, just swap Atlas and P-Body's models if you choose that option at the start of the map. Since internally the players aren't actually swapped, it'd still require modifying every coop-player-detecting item to handle this system and portal colors wouldn't change, but it would mean that visibly we can reuse the existing blue/orange player identification system rather than having to come up with something new.

[vrad-exe]

Never mind, that would be way too finicky with cosmetics... Maybe we just swap the bots' eye colors around using prop_dynamic_ornament overlay models?

[vrad-exe]

• The best way to implement this would probably be to have the test elements physically switch to the corresponding bot's color, we'd need to do that anyway for autoportals.
• We should probably also allow switching mid-level at specific places like checkpoints.
• The whole system should be turned off if the map doesn't contain any items which need it, to avoid confusion.
• Maybe we just do the swapping using a pair of buttons in the spawn room (+checkpoints?). Pressing both buttons at once would blow up the bots and respawn them from the opposite droppers, while all player-specific items in the map would swap which player they applied/responded to.
• The button would be marked with a signage showing the two bots with a pair of arrows going between them.
  • Perhaps in Old Aperture it's a poster which has text more directly explaining the mechanic ("Getting tired? Swap places with your partner.") It'd still have the icon as well, so we don't rely on the text since we can't translate it.
• Possibly skip in splitscreen, since players can just physically swap controllers. (There is a VScript function to detect if splitscreen is being used)

[vrad-exe]

I found at one point you can call the SetTeam VScript function on co-op players to literally just swap Atlas and P-Body, maybe that would work for this