If we had to have a minimap.

Okay now then, as many knoe, a minimap causes quite the number of distortions.

Personally I don't really care much about a minimap, as I certainly would prefer pip over it, but I know many people seem to think it's a very very needed feature. Now then, if unwrapping a planet and such isn't too terribly difficult/time consuming then my best suggestion for a map would be the mercator. (Don't worry, kidding)...

I'd suggest the Winkel-Tripel version. The best one I can think of, personally.

I like the pip feature as well. The issue is that it slows the game down so much. I've got a pretty powerful system, but the pip just slows the game down to the point where I'd rather not use it.

Squishy, Why don't you use the thread you have already commented in to discuss the mini map?

Because I wanted to create an entirely separate thread based solely around the idea of this particular style of minimap. Also because posting this in that discussion would be a bit odd seeing as most of my posts there were entirely about how the game most certainly doesn't need a minimap.

I still don't really believe it does, nor that it'd be very effective anyway, but if it truly is needed by so many people, this is what I'd suggest.

In this context I thought a new post was more productive than a necro. There's a reason to do either, depending on what's going on.

Edit: Basically I don't want this discussion to be about if a minimap is needed or not like the last one was, with this one I'm just assuming for the sake of having on for them that it is "needed" and giving a suggestion of which I'd pick. I want to know if others find the validity of it, decent, compared to other forms of maps. Also if not, a separate suggestion would be nice.

Edit2: Also, sorry for going on for so long, I feel like making long posts today. =P

If you want people to realise how powerful a full-world projection is, you gotta show them how it works:




This is called the Wagner VII (Equal Area) projection, and the gif shows how it can pretty smoothly make the entire concept of a mini-map become obsolete.

since the disscussion might take off I don't want my idea to be forgotten. It could always be used in conjunction. https://forums.uberent.com/threads/...y-think-minimap-is-a-no-go-take-a-look.64400/

Gall-Peters, because I'm sadistic.

I think the longest straight line on Earth is a good example of the problems a mini-map would face.

I agree, minimaps are silly, but if we really needed one for people the people who keep asking for, the one I suggested would be my favorite, that other way of looking at it was interesting as well. (That gif)

I'm not at all convinced about a minimap either. Your suggestion seems okay if you're on a single planet, provided it has enough recognisable features. I think it'd be less effective on, say, a small moon with no craters.

However as soon as you move away from single-planet systems I think the idea of a minimap completely falls apart - should it show the planet your commander's currently on, or the one you're currently looking at, or ...? It also completely ignores the orbital layer, everything in transit between planets, etc.

PiP is a far better solution in almost every way. Add additional PiPs and/or the system map someone proposed a while back, and I'd be hard-pressed to think of a better solution for this game. For the people complaining that they want a minimap, they really need to learn how to use PiP instead. Otherwise their experience of this game will always have to be limited.

Agreed, but people won't stop asking for it so I guess it's worth a try, just being optional. Not sure if it should start enabled, or maybe it could be a button on pip.

I personally wouldn't use a minimap, just trying to find the most accurate minimap representation without having to go into those ridiculous maps.

How about we just say:
"Shut up and use PiP like everyone else we're not going to stick a 2d map for a 3d surface in there just because you're used to it"?

I'd go with that

Maybe Uber could implement a concession though - start the game with the PiP open and tracking your Commander, with the view zoomed out far enough to see the entire near-side of the planet. Reckon that'd be easy enough!


Thinking more about the minimap, I'm not sure any of the solutions based on Earth maps would work. From what I've seen, PA planets are formed by wrapping randomised tiles around a sphere (I've noticed the joins a few times). The tiles appeared to be a fixed size, so how many are used depends on the size of the planet. You could potentially apply those tiles to a rectangle too but you wouldn't necessarily end up with straight edges (e.g. the tiles could be hexes). If you *had* to have straight edges then Uber would need to look at chopping up individual tiles and rearranging them - that may not even be feasible, depending how they're generated.

Also the minimap is intrinsically for a single planet; I can't think of a solution for multiple planets that I like in-game. I would argue that even if a minimap were implemented, it should be as part of a tutorial system, and it should be implemented with a view to migrating users to the PiP system.

I think we need more functional pips and have pips be less resource hungry. Minimaps are indeed useless on planets.

I'm a masochist myself, I prefer the waterman butterfly.

personally, I find it is quite hard to find out the distance for 2d mine map(Or take long times to get use to). The current mine map is good enough for me.

I'd agree with a Mercator projection-style minimap. Sure, the distortion means that calculating the long-distance direction things are going would be difficult, but the point is more to improve awareness of what exists on the map - so that you can see the enemy teleporter going up, or the force advancing toward your base on the other side of the planet.

Plus it would be less resource-intensive than PiP. As long as it's an optional feature (although it should default to on), there isn't a downside - enough people want it to justify the development time.

That's exactly what I had in mind until the first "we probably won't have a flat view when zoomed out" came up.

I think it really would be best if we had a modding API to build minimaps ourselves. We could try them all. Even the Waterman butterfly

The mercator has terrible distortion, equal area projections are much better.

Lol, this thread got quite complicated.

I think we need to be able to freely move and modify pip-windows, and a function to switch screens into geographic+symbol only mode so normal people with normal pc's can use the function. That would already solve a lot of problems.

Then another option to expand planets into that Winkel-Tripel-thing. Or maybe something like an option to see a slightly greyed out/transparent version of units on the other side of the planet? You wouldn't want to use it all the time, but it would help to get a feeling of how units move on a planet.