Strategic zoom - planets and systems

I think that uber dont have anything more for now about strategic zoom, and becouse of that i want to work more with that.
OK, from begining:

There can be 2 types of zoom on sphere.
- zoom that just move camera up and down
- zoom that rotate camera to hold focus on where we have mouse


First one is easy to do, simple to read, but require more work from player to go where he want, becouse you need to zoom and then move there. This is not like in SupCom.

Second is more complicated to do. Camera need to dynamicly rotate around point where we have our mouse, to hold it in same screen position. There is a lot of settings. Important is how we smooth camera, cameras FOV, speed, planet size, how close we are from planet. Mavor sayd that uber want to do something like in Google Earth.

I created prototype of that here: (still buggy and not fully done)
http://ozonex.pl/planetaryannihilation/kameratest/



Next thing is how we want to manage switching between planets.

- We can click icons of planets in hud
- use zoom (when zooming in on planet camera will fast change orientation to that planet)
- normal zoom into that planet (camera will just move there when zooming in, but this need from player a lot of "scrolling")
- Map of solar system (i see it like homeworld, when you press space camera will fast go into solar system and from there you can click on planets to swith between them)

1st kills idea about strategic zoom, but its fast and easy for user.
2nd dont feel good, camera goes not where we want exacly.
3th option is used in my prototype and im not sure if this is good option.

Last sounds best for me. If you are playing on planet you need zoom to change place on planet, see strat icons. Changing planet is something other, and when you want to see what is going on on other planets scrolling so much takes too much time. In homeworld, just by pressing space, you goes to strategic map. You can zoom in and out, rotate as you wish to have best view on battlefield, but you can always fast switch to "sensors".


Another idea is "Event icons". If somewhere on any planets your units are under attack, will be good to have icon in top right corner of the screen. When we click on it camera will fast travel there. We can do this for:
- Attack
- Commander under attack
- Fab complited
- Ally/our units landed on other planet
- Enemy detected on planet (when previously it wasnt known, that there is any enemy)

how about combining rotation and zoom?
If you have the mousepointer in the center of screen its just plain zoom, no rotation. If you move away from center it gets rotation towards this point with zoom in, and rotation away from this point with zoom out. The farther away from center the more rotation and less zooming if you are ad the side of screen or window only rotation no zoom.

Rotation then is handled in a straight relativly to what is current in screen center.

This is exacly how secound zoom works. Look at my web example of that.

Neutrino said that they want to do it like in google earth - so this should be zoom with rotation. But we still dont know how hey want to switch between planets. I will create next examples today. One with gui, one with homeworlds "sensors", and fiew with straticons (how this will look like, if we will able to see icons from other side of planets)

ok, next test.
This is 6 time when i writed strategic zoom. Still buggy, but much closer to what i want.

Before moving camera, first zoom in! I know, this is lame to show something so much buggy, but i rly dont have time to work more on that (i can spend max 1h by day), and i feel this is the time when uber is working on zoom and i want to help them

And in that test you can see icons from other site of planet (for this who wanted to see that)
http://ozonex.pl/planetaryannihilation/kameratest2/WebPlayer/WebPlayer.html



Ok, ok, so what we have here. This is simplest strategic zoom with rotation we can use. Just zoom in, and zoom into other planet, or other pleace on current planet.

In next test i want add to that "sensors" from Homeworld by pressing space. I think this will be very usefull.

As far as a proof of concept goes, I really like that. Nice work!

I think this could go over pretty well, although if you have a lot of units on a planet (or units on opposite sides of the planet from a player's POV) it could get confusing. I don't really know what to suggest for that though, unfortunately.

As i only tried out your unity proof of concepts on the first post and your last post, it does feel a lot better on the latter one with the zoom tracking where you intend to go. It feels more intuitive and makes movement easier around the planet

I do 3D work for engineering.

The programs I use are mouse-centric. (AutoCAD and Revit)
It took me less than 5 minutes to get used to that, and I have been using them for years.
That is the same zoom system SupCom used and probably why I liked it so much.


I have one pet peeve I have when dealing with Mouse-pan (where you hold down middle mouse button to lock the sheet on a certain point and drag to pan).
And that would be the mouse-pan lock isn't perfectly anchored.
Sometimes I find that there is a certain level of elasticity or mouse acceleration.
This creates the feeling of an unresponsive and sloppy GUI.
I'm hoping PA won't have this GUI quirk.

Mouse-centric zoom = good.
Mouse-panning elasticity = do not want.

You mean, that when you holding mid button to pan, something that was under your mouse pointer should be always under the mouse pointer when you drag? Yeah, that is important too, but panning is now from Mini-PA, and its not working as it should. I wil try to do that in next update.

that sounds unweildy and unintuitive. zoom should be zoom and rotation should be rotation

click-drag panning is useless. simply because you can't drag far enough or fast enough. C&C style smooth scrolling thank you very much

It's also the system SupCom uses adapted to planets.

I created simple animation about how i see StratZoom in PA. Well... its better than coding it
I'm curious how Uber will do it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBbLeZu6018

this was nice

If that's what we ended up with, I highly doubt I'd be upset.