Mini map?

I think strategic zoom effectively eliminates the need for any such silly thing as a minimap

I agree with most of what have been said, but what about sphere navigation? How do people plan on making it easy to find out where you are on a planet? I mean, with no boarder like on regular map, it can be quite confusing to find out what way to go to find you base or whatever. At least when you do it in a hurry

I imagine the shape of the landmasses and lighting will be a good guide. Water only planets might be an issue though.

Ok personally i think A mini map or "condensed view" is vital to any strategy game. In a game like planetary annihilation where you are active on not only multiple part of a map but multiple planets you NEED some way to see the big picture. If i am focusing on one part of one planet for whatever reason i cannot keep zooming out to see the whole game. that is just impossible and would take away from the game making it down right boring. The mini-map is an artfully created tool that allows you to monitor all the areas under your control with only a single glance. Without a mini-map there is simply no way to control your army effectively while monitoring your enemy. Anyone who has played amy RTS game has had the experience where they are controlling an SCV or Engineer and building factories or moving Units when they suddenly glance at their mini-map and notice the massive army of squares, triangles and god forbid circles showing up on the outskirts of your radar. That few minute warning can mean all the difference in any strategy game. Without a Mini-map you are required to pay attention to the entire game meaning you are either playing from a fully zoomed out perspective the ENTIRE GAME which defeats the purpose of a computer based game (just go play risk!) or you are forced to keep zooming out to monitor your territories. My question was How will the mini-map function? With multiple planets what will Uber's way of showing the explored universe be? Will there be individual maps per planet? On giant map showing the whole game?

Did you even read up at all?
Neutrino said (in this thread) that there will not be any unwrapping to a flat map.

In the Confirmed features and suggestions you can see:
{G} Multiple monitor support (with multiple viewports): #1

You will be able to open multiple viewports on 1 screen (or more), allowing you to monitor different planets. There will not be a standard flat minimap as seen in traditional RTSes.

PS: Your reference to "universe" makes me think you do not understand how the galactic map will work, so read up on that as well. (It will NOT be real-time.)

There's nothing silly about a minimap. It's an extremely powerful tool for understanding the status of the game.

A zoomed out view could end up a large drain on system resources. That's why minimaps tend to be very abstract, using simple textures and lacking the total detail of a full view.

The drain on resources is minimized by the reduction of detail in the game as you move out. not to say there isn't any.

but minimaps though, how are they supposed to work when you are expressing all the surfaces of an n body solar system instead of a square? I dont see how a minimap is even possible.

Later half of this (6+ month old) thread got in to the mini-map issue quite a bit.
Might be worth reading it: viewtopic.php?f=61&t=34863&start=0

The easiest way to orient yourself without a cumbersome gross minimap it so have something like polar lines, equatorial lines, or orbital lines. These would only be visible as you zoom out of course, but they are all good options to help give a sense of orientation.

Strategic zoom already implies that there will be a specific LoD that does not render everything in the normal view, only the general terrain features and units as icons.

With a seamless strategic zoom (for example, the view you see in the Planet Generator), you already get a broad overview of a large area, making a minimap unnecessary.

Like this, only with Fog of War and unit icon representations.

I think a lot of people don't fully use minimap at it full expand.
One of its best functionality is to be able to spot, in less than a second, enemies at your border.
Strategic zoom doesn't solve that problem, unless you always play fully zoomed out. And that defeat its purpose.

Guys, guys, it's perfectly simple.

Gall-Peters

You can thank me later

(we had a pretty lengthy discussion about this a while ago.)

I'm still in favor of the Dymaxion projection.
But we would still need view ports in an (almost) arbitrary polygon-shape.

I now have two monitors so having a whole monitor as a minimap is good for me :mrgreen:

But having a very customizable and visually pleasing minimap would be very awesome indeed. Once the alpha is out I will be able to talk more about it since I have no idea how will the game function

at the end of the day there is just to much information in the wrong shape to express in a simple format. The best you can do is basically a small zoomed out wire frame of sorts highlighting points of interest that change as the world does. Without summarising it there is just to much information to condense into a simple map.

Guys, learn to read the thread you post in:

So go away with your projections.

Oh I'd read that. But it's still fun

Mini map wont be needed, if there is a strategic zoom (maybe in addition to normal zoom(extra hotkey); 3 stages: normal view, planet, and galaxy?)

Why would there be "stages" and extra hotkeys to the zoom? Why not just make it like SupCom had?

Quick way to navigate between strat/close view.

Say you're zoomed in working on a base, and another base gets attacked. You hit "-" and are insta-zoomed to the full planet, to analyze the threat. If you deem it not worth your attention, hit "+" and go back to work on what you were doing.