everyone imagines the worst possible implementation of a gam

Hi guys,

Sorry if the question exists, i did not see it.
I saw the gameplay livestream and I wondered the question: how can I see my american base and my european base on the same planet? It is a spherical map and if the user have to turn around the planet, I think he will vomit

Same question when we play on several planets.

There is a huge UI experience issue here. I am curious about the solutions.

Thanks guys

Re: everyone imagines the worst possible implementation of a

zoom out like in real life?

Re: everyone imagines the worst possible implementation of a

Yeah, when you zoom out, you see only a half of the planet (see the livestream).
The SupCom strategic zoom allows you to see the entire map

Re: everyone imagines the worst possible implementation of a

Turning the planet is easy, stop complaining 3d maps are the future!

Re: everyone imagines the worst possible implementation of a

Also multiple windows support.

Re: everyone imagines the worst possible implementation of a

Well, one window by half of planet, this will eat a good part of the screen. I don't think so this is the solution found by Uber. I hope so.
Multiple windows is great, strategic zoom is great, but spherical planets means a challenge stronger than that.

Is there an official Uber answer at this question?

Re: everyone imagines the worst possible implementation of a

I've posted lots of different ideas about how stuff like this can be handled in other threads. Including simply showing strategic icons through the planet which is dead simple.

We will try a few different things but in general I think people are making a mountain out of a mole hill, which is normal around here. I don't see any reason to beat the subject to death because it's not something I consider nearly as big of a problem as everyone else seems to.

Re: everyone imagines the worst possible implementation of a

I would like to see hotkeys for positions on the map. SupCom has this. You simply press a combination of keys with a number on a specific position on the map and if you press another combination using the same number the screen will immediately switch to that position.

That would be a fast and effective way of checking both sides of the planet.

Re: everyone imagines the worst possible implementation of a

Thank you for the answer neutrino.

Age of Empires 2 has this functionality. It works very well through the forest. I am sceptical for the half of a planet, a little be messy perhaps?

I think you will see if it is satisfying when you will play your first 2v2 in Uber

@iampetard: yes, this is very usefull but that's not the strategic zoom. You can use this functionality of hotkey=position in Starcraft for example.

Re: everyone imagines the worst possible implementation of a

Or just leave the mole hill, moles give personality.

Re: everyone imagines the worst possible implementation of a

I can read on many forums people really concerned about this and probably much more concerned by this than by the impressive technical stuff which has been achieved so far.
It's quite obvious that in Supcom most of good players used to spend lots of time using the strategic zoom and that was quite easy : mouse wheel => zoom in/out and you can immediately get an immediate picture of the entire battlefield, where the threat is coming from ....

I'm OK with what has been done so far, but it's obvious that many people won't switch to PA until they are confident with anything which is related to planet/map navigation and gameplay. So maybe not beating the subject to death, but elaborating much more on the subject in later streamlive would not be a bad idea

Now i understand that in terms of priorities, there might be much more complex issues to adress from a technical perspective.

Re: everyone imagines the worst possible implementation of a

I must be vehemently opposed to this idea. Floating icons that violate perspective make any scene completely unreadable to me. Floating icons in general I don't appreciate but if they respect 3D space at least they fit within the scene.

Battlefield 3 for example is virtually unplayable because I can't see where I'm going. A game where floating icons display through walls across the map.

I think that the livestream really solidified the idea of planets for me, I was worried it was going to be hard to get an overview but what you showed was really easy to see even without icons, perhaps even because it had no icons.

Re: everyone imagines the worst possible implementation of a

I don't understand the OP. Why would rotating the planet be a bad thing? As long as the movement is smooth there isn't any issue with disorientation. Plus that would be part of the challenge, to be able to always place the camera in the most useful position possible.

Re: everyone imagines the worst possible implementation of a

This is an issue of truly astronomical, nay Biblical scale, and Uber will ignore it at their peril. It is the proverbial kinetic kill weapon on a gravity assisted impact course with your annihilation. If the team continues on this foolish course then the game will fail, the world of RTS shall come to an end, Uber shall go bankrupt, and its desperate haggard survivors shall be doomed, doomed, to suffer in eternity developing a casual Facebook game called RobotVille! And Chris Taylor will laugh at you like that bully kid from the Simpsons!

Alright, it's probably not that bad. But I can definitely see a problem if players get the impression that PA's strategic zoom is less powerful and more janky than Supcom's. And I can't shake the feeling that that's what will happen with approaches like camera walls and world transparency.

I posted this stratzoom suggestion over 6 months ago. I'll just leave it here in case the alpha shows higher than expected demand for such a thing.



As you can see, when a unit passes 60 degrees N or S, it leaves the square map and enters the connected circular polar map. The reason the shape is so weird is because if you project a whole sphere onto a square it gets so stretched at the poles that you can't see what's going on. I think this is fairly intuitive and in any case moreso than the alternatives. To use the space more efficiently you can surround the "%" with more info and stuff like factory shortcuts.

Unlike those options that don't involve a 2d map projection, this lets you see literally everything in the solar system at once in a pretty clean way, and unlike a Spore style projection the distortion is not too bad and you can always see where the poles are so you don't get lost. AFAICS it's currently the most optimal solution but can probably be improved.

Re: everyone imagines the worst possible implementation of a

I like this idea. What could be done is to bind a specific key to show one face of the planet.

Re: everyone imagines the worst possible implementation of a

Problem is that while the units speed would be linear on a sphere, it would not appear linear on the flat map ....

Re: everyone imagines the worst possible implementation of a

I hope you are being sarcastic.

Re: everyone imagines the worst possible implementation of a

Doesn't seem so bad if that's the biggest problem...

Now what could possibly give you that idea?