Uber, do you agree PA needs a huge UI update?

I guess he wants to see the whole battlefield at once, like you do in FA. Which is quite an improvement over scrolling around a lot.

If only there were a reasonable projection that can display the whole surface of multiple spheres on a 2d screen. :/

Perhaps with the multi screen system just have 2 Screens of every planet you are operating on, on the exact other side of the planet I wonder if we would beable to Click on one of these screens and it makes the Screen our main screen to play on... so we could just around and put orders anywhere we needed to and then jump back to our base

This?
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/idea-minimap.51928/page-2#post-801213

Proposal: projection.
Possible issue: Game engine can't handle skewed units at the map edges because more complex than on sphere?


Just like now, wherever you zoom in, the camera will refocus to that location, which means it's centered and negligible distortion.


Possible use:
Window #1 = Current Spherical view
Window #2 = Projected view


I believe this meets all requirements of minimal clicks, and strategic overview.
Since it's a live projection, it's not hampered in anyway, it should behave them same, just with different camera angles zoomed out.

So this gives you an overview of a single planet, how does it fit into the larger celestial system?

Anyway I am going to do some kind of minimap. We've done experiments with unwrapping this kind of projection and I think it might be better to go with something simpler than that... over time though we'll continue to experiment with this stuff.

Thanks for the answer Neutrino, I appreciate that

As for the strategic view (which I see as a full representation of the entire battlefield), I'll give you an example of how the 3D planets can be burdensome, and how a 2D representation of the world would help. Recently I started a game against an AI opponent, and wanted to make a plane scout the planet to find where the enemy is. In PA/SupCom, you would pick a plane, select the "patrol order" (don't know if that's the correct word in English), zoom out, and click on the different areas of the map. That's it. Quick and easy. In PA, you have to select the plane, click on a destination spot, rotate the planet a bit, click another spot, rotate the planet a bit, click another spot, etc., etc., until you've covered pretty much the whole planet. Long and painful.

3D planets are a good idea, and it brings a whole lot of new strategic perspectives which I find interesting. But on a UI point of view, it requires top notch tools so that the player can focus on what is happening under his eyes, and not so much on remembering keystrokes, having alternative cameras, watching multiple screens, etc. to check what is happening elsewhere.

I don't think the projection view would be able to show anything outside the planet?
It's meant to supplement, not replace the current planetview.
Meant for the picture-in-picture or 2nd monitor.

Technically speaking, it would display units at "x-distance away from planet", the orbital layer seems like a good height?

That way, if you have an invasion force incoming, you can get the
"Object entering planetary atmosphere".
It would "ping" on your planet view the same as the projected view.

Confusing?

The Longest Straight Line You Can Sail on Earth
(Pakistan to Kamchatka Peninsula, Russia – 20000 miles)

You know I'm not totally sold on a minimap type of affair really. All they have ever done for me, is eat screen real-estate for marginal added value. Expanding my POV has always been a preferable solution. An enhanced awareness and notification system is something that I feel would serve far better if it can be implemented without cluttering the UI and the pretty things I'm arranging on screen. Furthermore with multiple planets in play, a simple minimap just hasn't got it where it counts either.

It does nothing for the celestial view, but at least we will have to spend less time rotating around the globe (currently 90% of my actions in PA is that).

Here is how I've imagined things during the kickstarter, and what I've hoped for when I've backed it :

- The default view is the current one.
- You press one key and you swap to a flatten mode. Full view, not a minimap. Obviously with some distortions, not really relevant if it's centered around the current position (at least you see things coming & radar blips).
- You press , and ; (or any other key combo for "next" and "previous") to switch rapidely between planets. Always in the same order, probably from smallest to biggest. And from any view.
- Probably a single key shorcut to switch to the two latest planets seen.
- The camera stay at the same place you've left it each time you switch. (ie. if you are watching your base and swap to the enemy base on your moon, when you switch back to the base, it's still on your base, not reset. You switch again to the moon, you are still at the same level of zoom at the enemy base).

The constant rotating and resetting of camera is really giving me headaches. It's also very tedious to see what's going on on a single planet, obviously it's scale with the number of planets. So a flat view would already partially solve the issue.

Basically my main grief about PA currently. Scouting is a basic action, something you have to do all the time in these kind of game, and it's so tiresome that even when I want to play "competitively", I end up randomly sending stuff around, hoping for the best.

What about supporting multiple displays as well?

PIP = Picture in Picture. Probably just as much usable to display 2 pictures on two screens

You just took the words right out of my mouth.
But instead of "next" and "previous" planets by order of size, I would start left to right from the star.

Mock-up Coming.
Today.

OMG
Stop suggesting this people! stop!
it gets more irritating everytime.

One: scrolling around the planet is not that bad

TWO : there are tons of better alternatives to the excruciatily eyesorish and insulting projection idea (asks to be able to play on sphere rather than BOORING 2D maps -> asks to flatten shere to play on that instead = WTF?)
check out Artementix idea for example :
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/an-idea-for-seeing-behind-a-planet.49275/

Yeah it make more sense

Also, if wrapping/unwrapping is done from the main view, you can imagine that switching to sphere view is centering the view where the cursor was on the flat meaning.

Meaning that for going on the other side of the planet, you unwrap, move your cursor on the edge of the screen, back to sphere and done, instead several seconds of middle-mouse dragging & zooming.

Each time I want to play a game of PA, I remember that I will have to rotate like crazy, and I stop there. It's THAT bad for me.

It's also give me headaches (real headaches, not metaphoric ones).

what about this: https://forums.uberent.com/threads/how-can-i-see-the-map-of-the-planet.49280/page-3#post-761114
and this:

It's nice (and probably required if we can't have an unwrap) but it doesn't solve navigation.

Yep, tatsu, those solutions are basically all workarounds around the projection problem. In a perfect solution you can see all the map and directly zoom into it. It's just so much more efficient. Basically zoom out, move cursor to where you want to go and zoom in again while getting a quick overview over everything in the process. It's super efficient. Probably still the best solutions even if you have distortions all over the place.

guys, common, you know you're talking to a FA fanatic, you're preaching to the choir on the idea of seeing the whole map, zoom into what concerns you, but if strategic zoom was the revolution that took TA to the next stage, then it's time for a second revolution, I'm persuaded we can find something better than it and avoid going from an engine that has real bodies orbiting around the source of light determining shadows in real time for playgrounds, back to 2-D maps that are connected through a GUI called celestial view. If the community keeps pressing this point, they will have to scrap the planets and make 2-maps that they cosmetisize into spheres.