Are UI improvements coming?

Well yeah, you can't turn a sphere into a rectangle without severe warping.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_projection

Edit: And when did the main view have warping?

It has been started on many occasions that the planets are 3d objects, not 2d maps put onto 3d objects.

Why not have two halves of a planet side by side. Pretty simple really.

Hold an orange and you can't see all sides at once, slice it down the middle and lay both halves side by side on a table, and boom you just won the nobel prize for bending space.

This could be incorporated into the current PiP and would still work with normal camera functions, spin the planet and both halves spin equally with portions rotating into existence on the other. Zoom in, Zoom out, switch to main view (the left half is your primary view, the right half is the part of the planet you normally can't see.).

(I wouldn't put this into the main screen, but it could be a great feature for PiP.)

Cool story.

The current 3d view has severe wrapping. Is that a problem for you?

Yeah, im going to need proof and you haven't been above lying in the past.

Proof of what?

Here is all kind of camera FOV of the same sphere.



The last one is an orthographic view, probably the less distorted possible, but still distorted when you go toward the edges.

Why are you so sarcastic?

A 2d warped image would be useless, you'd have no sense as to where what is. A 3D representation is best and is what we have now, it's not warped at all, it's literally the game on a smaller window, I don't see why you must have a problem with everything and pretend you know how everything works and yet give no examples of how you'd implement it, or give proof of your issues.

Just because you're an FAF dev does not make you better than anyone else.

No it would not. How can you say that an overview of the whole planet would be useless !?

And yes the current projection is wrapped, look at my image.

By the way, I gave my implementation idea a year ago. (the main feature would be to re-center the minimap all the time on the camera. So the less distorted view is always the one you are facing (hey! Just like the 3d view! How great is that!)

Ie. that projection could be nice, but I can think of other that could work too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kavrayskiy_VII_projection

And I'm being sarcastic because you are obviously trolling.

So what you are saying is that you don't understand how a horizon works on a 3d object?



Does a apple also have a distorted edge?

Or are you just being an *** about a non-issue?

On that photo, yes.

But no, it's not a problem, because your brain is "fixing" it. Like it would "fix" the one of a full unwrap if you give it enough pointers.

Your brain is "unwrapping" images since you are born. So it would really not be a problem to have a 2d map.

While I agree with your sentiment, I don't see much of a problem with what we have now.
Everyone is playing under the same constraints, and competition is about who's better at fitting within them.
I guess you could make the claim that higher quality games arise when players have more/better information, and you would be right. lol

My main concern with the UI is the amount of RAM is takes up (3GB for me). Apart from that it works just fine except from the bug where notifications make your camera black out when you click on them.

You are purposely misunderstanding in a attempt to entice a aggravated response.

I think what he's saying, is that no matter what you do, you can't represent a 3d object in 2D without distortion, but since our brain can work around that distortion, it doesn't really matter what kind of distortion it is. Be it, the curves on the horizon of a circle/sphere, or the size distortion of an unwrapped sphere. Except, since the unwrapping provides more information, it is the better alternative to the current system.

What I would say to that is if we really wanted a map without edges, we could have just implemented pac-man borders for 2d maps. ...BUT MUH EQUAL DISTANCES

There's a difference between not being able to see something fully because you are on an angle to it (eg., the edges of a sphere) vs something being actually warped (Eg., an unwrapped sphere). It's like if you held a piece of A4 paper at an angle out in front of you vs placing it down on a table, and suddenly it has 5 sides, or is rounded, or a different shape altogether. That's what unwrapping does.

When you unwrap a sphere as a minimap, you'll get all sorts of weirdness with unit icons. Like units appearing to change speed when they are travelling at a constant velocity. Or turning when they are going straight. Or going faster than a unit travelling the same speed. Except unlike seeing them on a sphere, you no longer have the 3D cues necessary for your brain to interpret these changes in a logical manner, and be able to see them for what they are, just tricks of perspective.

Take the projection that was suggested, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kavrayskiy_VII_projection

If you travel along the equator in the map, all the way from left to right, then you've gone all the way around the world.
If you travel along the very bottom of the map, all the way from left to right, you haven't moved at all!

So if you had a minimap showing a vertical line of units, from one pole to another, all moving at the same speed, what do you think it would look like on the minimap? What if instead of the same speed, they were moving different speeds, so as to appear on the minimap to be moving at the same speed? Can you tell at a glance what is going on then?

If it takes you more time to work that all out accurately, and otherwise potentially causes misinformation, how is a minimap better than just zooming out, or having the PIP lock to the opposite side of the planet so you can see the whole planet at once?

tl;dr: Distortion (not looking at something straight on) is not the same as warping (what you get when you unwrap a sphere onto a minimap).

If you do that, you actually get a Toroid, not a sphere (try it with a piece of paper - join the long edge so it becomes a cylander, then the shorter edges and it becomes a donut.

I think Raevn's post above clearly shows that a 2D map isn't practical for many reasons. Also, the distortion that you're talking about is actually the effect of perspective, which is necessary to perceive distance and depth. If you're trying to say that interpreting units moving across an unwrapped, flattened sphere is the same as judging perspective, I don't think you entirely understand what you're arguing.

Everything seems perfect in one's head until you try to implement it.

I think all your concern are irrelevants.

First, it is alreading happening with the current view (distortion, units barely moving near the horizon, unit coming out of the horizon, they didn't spawn from nowhere), it's not a problem.

Second, it will change speed on some area of the map, but it will be consistent, meaning that for overviewing the situation (units X are coming from the north), it's more than enough.
More importantly, as it will be consistent, your brain will adapt quite rapidly.

Third, if you see a blob of units in the minimap, it's still a real blob of units, distorted or not.
You will center the camera on it, and as the minimap would recenter around it it, it will appears not distorted anymore. But you still be able to see where you were previously in the minimap.
ie. you will NEVER lose your base or a group of unit anymore

And finally, the PiP & event system is not a great replacement for that. it lacks several basic tools.
ie. you don't even know on what planet an event is. if it was a minimap, the overview of the planet could help you determine that.

Most of them are falacious. You don't need to know what is the speed of an unit, but where it's going and how far it is from an important spot. Even with distortion, you will be able to know it.

I'm pretty sure we are not morons, and if an unit goes from one edge to another, we all know that the unit didn't teleport. If not, the problem is not in the minimap but in the education system.

Also the projection system is an exemple, they are many of them available, and if a problem is too big, another projection type can solve it.

A minimap is not meant to play on it but to inform you. Distortions are irrelevant for that purpose.

And if the minimap recenter on the camera view (it's a VERY important point of my argumentation that everyone seems to ignore), distortion are even less relevant.

I could say the opposite : The flaw of a minimap seems huge in one's head until you actually try it.

Sorry but this is just not true. The actual map on a planet is a 3D sphere in the first place, there is no 2D projection anywhere.

Sorry but it is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_projection

Unless you have an holographic screen, you are seing a projection of a 3d object on a 2d plane.

Ho you were talking about the screen and not the map? Then it's not an argument at all, in any way.