mini PA engine for fans

Icons >>> dots. We need icons that make clear what kind of unit is where.

Really cool!

+1

What could also be an nice feature, merging icons of one type and label them with the number of merged unit-icons if these icons are very close/overlap, e.g. if zoomed out very much.

What comes to mind for me is "home" style UI buttons. 1 for each level of detail you want to show (planet level/ solar system level/ galaxy level) for quick swapping in between and perhaps a default camera position. Sins of a Solar empire had something similar I think, where you could toggle between gravity well and solar system view (and even the level above that). Either way, take some time to check out how SINS does it as they seem to have pulled that off quite well.

Don't mess with the player's camera like that. Let them decide when they want to switch (if at all). Only go back to 0 if the "home" button is clicked for the corresponding level of detail. outside of that, just let them free cam it (but prevent the camera clipping with objects).

This sounds more like what I'm talking about, but you should prevent the camera from clipping into objects. This should not be too difficult if you are not fixing the camera to the planet (or object) in question. If a moon or something comes between the camera and the planet its no big deal, for all you know the moon is what they wanted to see anyway. Although with a camera system like this it would be nice to be able to "0" in on the moon (for instance) specifically. Being able to name objects like planets and moons and select them from the zeroing list could streamline that process.

Icons man, no need to reverse a good improvement over TA. Still, I question the usefulness anyway when you get into galactic war scale. It would be better to have a highly customizable alert system that allows you to zero in on threats you define the severity of in the options pre-game. If you are particularly frightened of experimentals or enemy Metal planets for instance, when they show up on your radar they could perhaps trigger some kind of red alert that also has a zeroing option.

update - starting to work on strategic zoom.



scrool - zoom in and out
arrows - rotate view

http://ozonex.pl/planetaryannihilation/

That's pretty nice

Awesome dude . Great effort.

I was thinking with the strat zoom, how about when you zoom out you can "click" a planet and thats what your lock on too, you can zoom and move and it then turns into a normal surfaCe terrain 3d camera as found in most rts, from certain heights its spherical and others its "flat". when i zoom out i can either move to my mouse (which is what we got here atm) or click a planet, and move freely around it in out up and Down etc alternating between the 3d view of planets, to the flat "overviews" (supcom like) and then normal rts camera views.

Either way, its a challenge to make it feel "right" so i wonder how the devs are working with it currently.

It's cute. It also makes me wonder about people's preferences on how zoom works. As this engine currently is scrolling up zooms out, and scroll down makes the camera zoom in. In a way this makes sense as you are moving the camera up or down. My preference though is inverted where scroll up zooms in, and down out.

Just a thought.

/agree

This is a rad idea! Would you mind sharing the source so I can have a go at it? I think it's the perfect way to prototype controls, as others have mentioned, and your idea to test how units look is commendable--something I'd love to do as well.

:shock: Amazing !
Any chance you manage to put include a few commander units

I can give project, but remember, this is unity 3,5 pro. I dont have license for 4, and free version isnt good because i want shadows and postefects

Dont know why i make scrool like that, trying to make it like in supcom, but... i will corect this in next version.

I have only one commander, and he will walk in next build just for fun

This is totally awesome!

Not to toot my own horn but have you considered this idea for strategic zoom? (Scroll down to pics) It would be amazing if we could test that in a low risk environment.

update - some fun with commanders and units + small zoom upgrade

space - comanders will start
esc - restart game

Looks awesome and makes it even harder to wait for PA xD

I think the camera-angle should be controlled by right-click dragged.
Just because controlling the view should be possible with just the mouse.

Ah-ha ha! Shotgun tanks! :lol:



I'd honestly leave this open on my second monitor if it didn't halt once the window lost focus.

Wow, love the new strategic zoom. I like how you dealt with moving between locations. Simple, just zoom in on it.

I was just thinking the exact same thing before i got to your post. Right click to pan around planet sounds awesome for the interface.

I really like the fact that if you hover your mouse overtop of the othe rplanet, and scroll in, it fixes your view to that one and zooms into it. This is working well.

Nice job ozone this made me smile.

I love your work and what your doing but do the commanders actually doing anything except move around in circular routes? Im just curious is all I know you havnt been working on it long so i dont expect it to be a finished product.