So the Alpha camera.

I noticed how its still a floating camera and there is nothing fixed, this can be confusing. are there any plans to lock it to the poles?

2nd'ed lack of fixed orientation is confusing!

We turned off pole locks. We have hotkeys to allow quick resetting, but the pole locking was making the game impossible to play if you had a base anywhere near the poles. It still will take quite a bit of iteration, but the lack of pole locking is far better than when it was locked before.

I see, hmm.


I guess you'll need to find a balance, because the videos i have watched seemed to be a bit confusing, but hey maybe when i get my key i can say for myself.


I can see how that would be an issue, i'm very curious as to how you find a compromise.

Right now, you can hold N to re-orient the planet so the north pole points up.
We are still working on a more stable version of pole-locked planet camera.

There really needs to be some kind of indicator for the topmost pole. I don't know... some kind of pole... maybe striped, with easily distinguishing colors...

and a big fat guy in a red suit you can blow up?

The "N" button is more then enough in my opinion!

As long as there's a way to re-orientate that should do I reckon, I wasn't aware of this on my first play.

- n button to reorient
- pole locking as an option (coming soon)
- pole markers for identifiying orientation
- camera markers with quick reset (e.g. setups your base camera and be able to flip back to that view quickly)
- going to experiment with some minimap ideas to help with navigation

are among a few of the things we have planned.

Nice
I imagine it will be the same with asteroid shaped bodies? They would'nt really have poles though...

I think that once we have a north and south in the solar system, planet orientation will be much easier to understand. With the quick flick of the mouse wheel you could see all ff the surroundings in the solar system, and know which way is solar north.

Which brings up another question, will planets all have aligned equators and poles? Or will there be some awkward orbits?

Anything spinning has poles. Also, everything is spinning.

Couldn't pole locking just be some sort of........ how can i explain it..
Locking the camera from rotating sideways, that's all. Shouldn't give an problems when zooming over poles, right? Unless the camera is only linked to the planetary body and not some universal thing.

Imagine if you get planets with tilted poles, that could mess up your orientation if zooming from the solar system map or a moon, down to the planet if we use pole-lock.
So a method of simply locking the sideways rotation (yaw) would be better.


Like, when first loading a game and spawning in to select spawn points, the player usually (i assume) sees the planet from the equator, with "Up" as being "universal up" in the entire solar system.
Just keep that orientation throughout the entire game. Don't rotate (yaw) sideways.

If the player pans the camera up over the north pole, of course he'll view the planet upside down from the other side of it, no problem. But the point is that at least his camera wouldnt change rotation, so he know that he could always keep using W A S D to move in specific directions.

W = North
S = South
A = West
D = East

If the player goes past a pole, of course these invert, but that's not a problem.
They are still specific hard-line directions, predictable.
A and D is always "left or right" on the planet.
W and S is always "up or down".
The problem is when the camera rotates a few degrees, making orientation absolutely impossible, such as this after a while of play.

W = 27* North-North-East
S = 82* South-South-West
A = Incomprehensible direction.
D = Incomprehensible direction x2, some degrees to some angle at some direction.

blabla, you get my point, the degree numbers were just random, i have no clue what they would be in that example :lol:

darn polaks

i think that would involve rotating the entire planet and its units/buildings instead of rotating the camera

rotation is always a bit tricky with 3d. its doable, but not simple

I think most of the orientation problems can be solved with the aforementioned poles and an overlay with hemispheres marked, and maybe a compass painted on the ground right under your screen.

Another stuff very helpful is a key to center the camera on the last event. For example:
10:30 - Your base is under attack
10:32 - Your Big Bertha is ready to fire
10:33 - Your base is under attack

It is 10:35, you press "F3" and the camera moves to the 10:33 attack, you press "F3" and the camera moves on your Big Bertha, you press "F3" and the camera moves to the 10:30 attack.

It is a quick way to navigate over the map.

:lol: Right now the game feels like bobbling and fumbling with a ball. I can see why pole locking could be a problem. But I feel the camera interface does take a bit of getting used to. I think the best idea is to have a pole lock on/off button like the "n" button.

I thought the camera was pretty neat. I like the lack of pole locking. N-key for aligning north is very handy. You can easily flip your map upside down by quickly going over the planet 180 degrees then panning sideways another 180. viola! flipped map.
Didnt take long to get used to.