"Follow Player" New Unit Focus Issue

[ittihat_ve_terakki]

Hello. I’m not sure if this topic has been brought up before. When we observe a player and select the “Follow Player” mode, my expectation is to get a perspective that closely reflects the player’s actual experience. However all queued units produced from buildings like barracks constantly draw focus to themselves. The camera shifts there and the selection jumps to the newly created unit. After a while this starts to feel like a bug.

This becomes especially real during combat moments when I’m trying to follow the player’s micro. As units are being lost, the queued new ones are constantly being produced and the camera keeps getting pulled away, disrupting the viewing experience.

I think this is something that needs to be fixed. 

 

[Stan`]

It's how the follow player works, the only info it has are the actions taken by the player not the actual camera movements. Storing that would be much more costly. 

[Atrik]

Fixed in ModernGUI

https://gitlab.com/4trik/ModernGUI/-/commit/7286640d11c85197e1c345dd720dd0e730b76cd0

 

Proposed fix for vanilla

https://gitea.wildfiregames.com/0ad/0ad/pulls/8880

[ittihat_ve_terakki]

On 18/4/2026 at 12:51 PM, Stan` said:

It's how the follow player works, the only info it has are the actions taken by the player not the actual camera movements. Storing that would be much more costly. 

I can interpret the moment when a production decision is made, such as clicking on a barracks and queueing up units, as a player action, and this doesn’t necessarily have to involve camera movement, it could be done using shortcuts assigned to numbers on the keyboard. 

However, I’d be inclined not to classify the units that are automatically produced from that queue as player actions. 1 unit queued in each of 10 barracks can create quite a bit of noise, especially when combined with losses during combat.

In terms of terminology, something like “Follow Development” might make sense. But “Follow Player” doesn’t seem entirely accurate, since the player isn’t actively clicking on or engaging with those units at that moment. The player might not even be aware of how many barracks are doing what, which ones are still producing or which ones have run out.

Therefore, I think this complex tracking experience causes this feature to lose its meaning.

3 hours ago, Atrik said:

Fixed in ModernGUI

https://gitlab.com/4trik/ModernGUI/-/commit/7286640d11c85197e1c345dd720dd0e730b76cd0

 

Proposed fix for vanilla

https://gitea.wildfiregames.com/0ad/0ad/pulls/8880

Thanks Atrik. You’re like a roofer who finds and fixes leaks. Although I don’t approve of some mods that can introduce hidden unfairness in games like autotrain, these are still valuable touches. That said, I would have preferred if we could all play a single, shared version of the game, an improved common experience that doesn’t rely on various mods. Rather than insisting on keeping flaws, it would be a better approach to address and fix them.

[Atrik]

13 hours ago, ittihat_ve_terakki said:

Thanks Atrik. You’re like a roofer who finds and fixes leaks. Although I don’t approve of some mods that can introduce hidden unfairness in games like autotrain, these are still valuable touches. That said, I would have preferred if we could all play a single, shared version of the game, an improved common experience that doesn’t rely on various mods. Rather than insisting on keeping flaws, it would be a better approach to address and fix them.

I don't know about the leaks and roofer comparison.. 

About autotrain, the feature wouldn't probably be considered for vanilla integration for good reasons. It introduces technicalities and over 20 buttons each supporting 3 different interactions (scroll, left click, right click..), even if it wasn't that hard to use, it was done too empirically resulting in something that complexify the UI by quite a bit... Which makes it ok as mod, but probably not for vanilla.

 

Now I've recently proposed a system that offers the similar gameplay improvements, or even more in some areas, by having a very general way to queue production orders. This system currently introduce : 

• 0 New UI elements
• 0 New hotkey
• Should-be perfect play-flow
• No automation feeling, since actions are initiated by user, and no overlay look like pupeting another like with autotrain.

This, in my view, this makes it much more likely to be merged into vanilla. But currently I haven't got much feedback, so if you want to contribute on this feel free to do so here.