Minimap Discussion (from IGN Review thread)

I would love a 2d minimap of all the planets similar to a water map in TA where each planet looks like an island, and the water is the space between so you can see what's coming to where pretty easy. it doesn't need to be perfect but just give is the information we need.

Well, Kiwi and thePilot are correct, imo. The issue is battlefield awareness, and a full-world projection map is *automatically* better by far than none at all.

You also MUST consider this as in the context of having only the mini-map available, not a combination minimap/main view, because we cannot have a full planetary image for 2 planets at the same time, therefore the current implementation fails as soon as we have n+1 planets.

If you want a kind of real time example, check this out (just found this page)

Whole Earth Strategic Zoom

If you go to the "Map" tab and untick 'Rotate Poles' the default settings actually work pretty smoothly in showing how you can zoom between a full-planet map and a spherical one. Try out some of the different projections too - I think my favorite is the 'Natural Earth' projection. Notice how easy it is to understand where you are, and how seamlessly it works to switch between projections as you zoom in.

That's, intriguing.

I do feel like the warping would be it decisively unclear, but hey.

I have been wrong before.

In what world does that give the same information as a non distorted map? Unless you've moved units across the distorted area, you have no idea how bad the distortion is, because their speed on the map is your only indication of distortion without the terrain displayed. And without knowing the level of distortion, distances become a very mysterious thing.

You've got it!

You don't care if the unit are not going through the distortion. Because it means they are not moving, so it's not a strategic problem.
The point of a minimap is to see things that evolve over time, not things that stay static.
What is not moving is static, and you know how they truly are from the 3d view.

As soon as they move, you see the distortion happening and know that they are coming towards you. That's all you need to know.
Something is moving towards my dots -> Potential danger -> let's click on the minimap to center the view and see what's going on in the 3d view.

You all forgot that one important factor missing in my screenshot : temporarily. It "fix" all kind of issues.

Pawz : Thanks for finding that site, I was about to make a prototype in a 3d software, but I'm sick of fighting rigid and closed minds to be honest.

All your concerns are not a concern. What is important is stuff moving. What is not moving is already know from the 3d view. Stuff moving can be detected easily and checked in the 3d view.

Your example of dots moving at high speed is stupid, sorry. You know that the top/bottom of the screen is distorted, and that engy are not moving that fast. Don't think people are stupid. You know that, a child know that.

It's not a problem if the map is not a 1:1 representation of the planet. It doesn't need to be. It could display only vector of moving units, that would already be enough.

And again, the distortion is irrelevant, you see the dots moving, you check them, that's it.

Check http://cartography.oregonstate.edu/demos/AdaptiveCompositeMapProjections/

Go to map, Check rotate pole and uncheck Snap, switch to "Modeled Winds video" and move around.

Now tell if the info is not readable because of the distortion.
You can switch the projection to whatever suits you, it's a very good way to check what would the better for a game like PA.

After playing supcom without using the mini-map, nor having a second screen (albeit never competitively (at least not online), I am not inclined to agree with the very vocal, often abusively so, mini-map advocates. This absolutely is not necessary for command and control -- this game has fluid strategic zoom just like sup-com, the difference being that you can zoom further out and then in on another planet. A few subtle changes to the notification system are all thats really needed, though mutliple pips would be great, one for system view and a couple (more) others to keep an eye on your critical areas. IMO if you're honestly having trouble keeping track of things and not just trolling with nonsense about distortion not mattering, or insisting/ranting that a simulated globe on a flat screen is the same thing :{ ....you're probably just being too ambitious with the system size. Even if you had a hologram instead of a screen you'd encounter the same problem people - you can only see one side at a time, just rotate it, doh.

A wire-frame pip might work, but i'm pretty sure this has been mentioned and flatly ignored in the pursuit of a flat map.

I'd like to see a discussion of a potential minimap that makes it -more- functional, not less.

Having to check every little moving thing because the minimap is unreliable seems like a regressive approach to minimap design.

So a minimap is better because you have to double-check everything against the main view?

Is the red unit moving left, right or going straight down the planet?

Answer: Could be moving left, right or straight, depending on the curvature of the planet. You also can't confirm how far it's moved, because the top of the planet could be distorted vertically too. So in other words, it's told you very little, and you have to double check it anyway. This could be an example of a unit moving a very short distance away from where it started. Yet the minimap makes it look like an aggressive move.

Now with a PIP: Something is moving towards my dots and I can already see what is going on and whether it's a threat.

Which was simpler?

How close are these?


And these:


The answer to both of these: You don't know, and can't tell. I can draw planets which puts those sets of dots right next to each other, or very far apart.

So on a perfectly round planet, that you are already intimately familiar with the terrain of, you have a minimap which gives you an approximation that you need to double check in the main view, and has less intrinsic functionality compared with a PIP.

Never mind that there are so many cases where this just fails because you are making assumptions about the shape of the planet

how is it gone? press end.

You hold your middle mouse button and spin your mouse around, you've perfectly covered the whole planet and know what's going down


Seriously it takes a second and gives you a much better idea of whats happening than taking the same second looking at a tiny map in the corner that's not portraying distance and position properly, teleporting units from one edge to the other (or worse if theyre on the poles) and constantly wasting screen space

Yes, it's better than having nothing

It would if it was possible to open multiple PiP. And still, you would need twice the amount of PiP.

The game is supposed to be played on several planets. You can't do that on several planets at once.

On a single planet, sure. On 5 planets, if it takes you 3 seconds to spin and 1 second to swap to another one, it takes you 20 seconds to scout everything.In loop, it's getting old real quick.

Fact is : The game is not meant to be played on several planets. There is no tool for that.

So it's a good thing we don't have nothing. PIP + main view is better than PIP + minimap. You don't need to double check everything, and you can do more, with the PIP + main view combo. So for the planet you are looking at, PIP is superior.

Now onto multiple planets.

But you yourself established that you need to double-check what you are seeing on the minimap, because it's so vague. Given you don't need to leave what you are looking at to rotate a PIP, you'd still come out in front by having the same amount of PIPs and rotating them occasionally (or just using camera bookmarks, making it a single keypress), than having minimaps which you have to move the main window to. Furthermore, multiple PIPs have been doable in the past. I doubt that won't be a feature again, same with multiple screens.

You don't need to leave the main view to rotate a PIP. And you can set camera bookmarks to make looking at the opposite side a single keypress.

Ok.

Whatever.
I've only played once since release, it's not like it matters anymore to me.
I'm out.

Courtesy of XKCD
Sadly, this does not properly show water occupied space distortion

The same could be said of PiP. In PiP window 1 you notice enemy movement. Is it moving towards or away from your units which are currently in PiP window 2? What if both these groups of units are near the horizons of their PiP windows?

How fast is a unit moving when it is near the horizon and which direction is it going? If you say that people have an intuitive grasp of horzionness then why do not have an intuitive grasp of a map projection? If you say people can move their PiP window to that spot to get a better look why could they not change the center of their minimap or move their main view to get a better look?

Think brianpurkiss is referring to the most of page one being about him not playing much RTS's before PA

Lord, yes.

Here are two screenshots for those that say antipodal PiP gives you a full overview of a planet. These screenshots are of the same planet taken from different views.

View 1​

View 2​

Look at the large lake displayed in View 2. If you look hard you can see the edges of the lake in View 1. The lake is extremely squished in View 1 to the extent that icons would overlap and it would be impossible to gauge unit position or speed. With antipodal PiP the player has to deal with a band of near-blindness which wraps around the planet. This band is approximately as large as the lake in View 2 so this band is a significant portion of the planet.

Now consider the Commander and how it appears in View 1 and not in View 2. The Commander has not moved between views. Also note that the LOS of the commander only seems to appear in the PiP window of View 1. This demonstrates that the band of blindness has an area of true blindless in which units are completely hidden from the player.

Finally is anyone able to tell me, without significant inspection of the views, which horizon my Commander is over in View 2? In other words which way would I have to rotate the planet to bring my Commander to the center of the main view? The landmarks should contain enough information to solve this problem but it is not obvious how to solve it. "Which way do I move my view to see X" should be a basic piece of information shown on any UI but it is not shown here, at least not to me. Perhaps it is obvious to someone with a lot of experience using this UI.

View 1 with unit​

The problems so far relate back to the patchwork problem. I will give a concrete example of it. Say you are looking at View 1 and see that an enemy unit about to move over the horizon with position and speed represented by the red arrow. It would be useful to know whether this unit is heading towards my commander. To do this I have perform some complicated metal operations all while spending valuable eye moving time looking back and forth between the main view and the PiP.

• Determine the velocity of the unit. Note that the distortion of the horizon makes this task difficult.
  
• Estimate where the unit is going to hit the horizon.
• Estimate the angle at which the unit is going to hit the horizon.
• Use the position estimate to estimate where the unit is going appear on the horizon in the PiP.
  
• Hold the angle in my mind while I flip it and superimpose it on the appearance position in the PiP.
• Extend that angle to see if it hits my commander.

This is all very complicated and will likely lead to wrong judgements. People are going to be very bad at this, at least to begin with. Even if I had the practice required to accurately judge the positions and angles I still must spend valuable eye time looking between these two views while I do this.

Of course I could move the view to get a better look at the path of the unit. This is not feasible because there is quickly a large number of units with distinct paths running around the planet. Knowing where an enemy force is going to be is a very important bit of information in an RTS and it seems bad that it takes a lot of work to extract that information from the UI. Extracting this information is a major skill by itself, one that new players lack completely. It is easy to see why so many people complain of disorientation and a UI too weak to deal with it.

In light of these problems I do not see why many people in this thread dismiss some attempt at a minimap before they have had a chance to try one out for themselves. Sure, perhaps an argument could be made that Uber has more important things to do at the moment (although this argument is far older than the current crunch time). It is the extreme view that PiP does the job far better than any possible minimap that I do not understand.

Two azimuthal equidistant hemispheres would look a lot like antipodal PiP but are better in many ways. This minimap would not suffer from the horizon distortion and blindness effects described early in the post. It would not solve the patchwork issue (but would help) and I am not saying that azimuthal equidistant hemispheres is the best minimap suggestion. It is just an example of something that would work almost exactly like PiP but with less problems.

Why is moving the view not feasable? I would turn off the minimap in all my games if I could just zoom out and teleport my camera across the map as easily as I can In this game, and all PiP does is let me do that but on another planet as well

Minimaps are outdated. They're not even that useful on games with flat maps compared to just being able to zoom way the hell out and see exactly where the enemy is and the exact size and shape of the terrain between you, and on round maps its even worse (looking at you, Spore)