Solaroids has a large playing area, and as such it is easy to lose track of your friends when trying to coordinate an attack on the more difficult bosses or for those times when your “friends” have gone rogue and they need a little justified payback.

When bosses first enter the playing area, often it isn’t till they are on screen, or you start seeing a barrage of incoming missiles headed your way, that you realize where they are attacking from. While sometimes the surprise is warranted, with a resulting spike in adrenaline as you attempt to quickly maneuver to evade sudden destruction, sometime it just feels unfair, and a way to anticipate the interaction better would really streamline things.

I’ve had it on my radar, so to speak, for some time to create a basic way to indicate player positions and other threats or items of interest. It is the current #1 requested game feature that comes up during local multiplayer sessions.

So, without further ado I introduce the new Player Reticle feature. Currently, a Player Reticle will show three types of information:

First, small triangles arranged around your ship indicate the direction to distant players using their respective colors. The current orientation of the other players are also show, as well as relative distance indicated by size. As another player gets close enough to come into view, the indicator fades out.

Demonstration of Player Reticle when tracking other local players.

Second, the locations of active enemies are similarly indicated with small red squares.

Finally, enemy missiles that are currently locked onto you are indicated with smaller red triangles, and the reticle ring will change to red to indicate the incoming threat.

Demonstration of Player Reticle for tracking enemies and detecting incoming missiles.

This feature will be ready in time for the Early Access release of Solaroids: Prologue on Steam this spring.