Minimap Discussion (from IGN Review thread)

yes.

us here on the uber forum will always do this kind of stuff anyways

yes it's time to use admin powers to break this thread into two.

When you can come up with a better idea that is both economical and feasible for gameplay, you can start criticising the way they did things.

I don't see either of those right now. PiP is simple and straightforward to learn, with some cool hidden features built in for experienced players - just like the game itself.

lol dude.

you didn't finish reading apparently....

my point is there's nothing fantastic about it.

nothing technically impressive either.

What do you do when you adapt a game for the occulus rift? same thing. you add a second camera.

this is what pip is : a second camera without any differentiating to what you can do within this second camera.

whereby my computer does more or less twice the work.
nothing technically impressive about that.

the buttons such as "invert the two", "track", ect.. are just obvious and naturally flow from the addition of this second viewpoint.

That isn't a criticism.

that's appreciating it at it's righteous level : not amazing

The main view being wrapped into a rectangle projection could potentially be useful for controls too, but things like this could harm the immersion, we know Uber really care about the immersion instead of having a more mechanical approach for RTS design.

What you fail to understand, Mered4, is that the PIP is an azimuth projection of the 3D globe onto your 2D screen. It is a 2D minimap. A 2D minimap makes perfect sense in PA. It is what we've currently got.

What we have not got is a way to link that azimuth projection to a second azimuth projection, with an antipodal camera, and keep our camera in the centre of the azimuth projection.

Economic? Tick
Feasible? Tick
Better for Gameplay? Tick

Read the reviews. The people who play PA, and comment on where the UI is lacking. There is a consistent pattern across those reviews. They acknowledge PIP as being good, and criticise the lack of situational awareness. And instead of taking those views on board, this forum calls them stupid?

Calm down, I'm on your side.

Please Google a gnomic icosahedron projection, as well as an azimuth projection. You specifically want an image that shows the angular distortion, while the distance distortion (the interruption of the image) should be apparent.

And the performance optimizations they did that were (afaik) targeted directly at PiP?

"it's not amazing"..... No. It's revolutionary. It's an idea noone else had thought of at that time.

Hindsight is always 20/20. Sit back and appreciate what they did. They may have been able to make it better, but would better still have followed the WYSWYG principle through and through?

no projections would work in a live real time environment @Kiwi, we've been over this before.

You are legit kidding me right now, are you not?

This is something suggested by near-HUNDREDS of forumites ages before it was implemented.
if I didn't know better I'd say it was my idea alone.

you are high off your rocker right now.

Kiwi, I'm an engineer in training. Have been since I was building robots at age 12. I know what you mean. And I'm telling you - it's simpler to stick with PiP. It takes an effort to be situationally aware. PA forces you to make that effort.

Shoot me a source, bro. Because PiP was a complete surprise to me. (mind, I heard about it a few weeks before it released, but that's just connections).

I did. It kept telling me that it was "gnomonic".

UGH you're being such a pansy, fine!

here's one where i suggested a hud overlay (obviously 3D) (so basically and even further push on PIP ....PIP but no border, no background and transparent.)
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/minimap-needed-planetary-zoom.56515/page-4#post-872109

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/my-minimap-mock-up.49061/page-4

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/...eds-a-huge-ui-update.52662/page-9#post-810837

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/community-requested-ui-features-0-1.53170/ <--obviously @Culverin did it too, should have known.

You can check the dates. All of those predate the addition of the minimap by a huge margin.

and I got tired but this is me searching for around 2 minutes.

OK, this is making a lot more sense now. Are you unaware that locking the PIP to be opposite the main screen (and changing with your view) is already a feature, and has been in-game for quite some time now?

That's correct, yep, to confirm, I was previously unaware, until approximately 8 minutes ago

In which case the problem should be documentation/tutorial for new players. If the feature is already present, it's just a matter of communicating it to the user-base. Maybe increasing the space efficiencies of the UI (because they are still kind of yuck). Possibly resizing the windows and changing the colours so that stuff is more visible. The UI needs a lot of polish to make it look thus so.

If it still doesn't work out, maybe gnomonic icosahedral projection to supplement antipodal azimuth

Earth 2150, great game, would recommend.

Darling, I'm an engineer too. Real life mechanical engineer.

Read up, my idea is already implemented. It's completely based on coordinate systems and all that, and you know as well as I do that it's simple maths to implement. So I legit have no idea why you say it's simpler to keep to the current system, rather than implement that idea, if my idea was already implemented. Unless you haven't had the pleasure of doing kinematics/kinetics in different coordinate systems yet.

Tasujb, you are high. You are so high.

The current Azimuth projection is used in the live, real-time environment game. There's no difference between what I'm suggesting and the PIP. Except the antipodal camera. Which is already implemented, apparently.

Oh my god tagging users works again

Oh good, someone did.

Clearly never played TA, Company of Heroes, Supreme commander...

Yeah great surprise for me as well https://forums.uberent.com/threads/...ad-sep-14-todaysies.63827/page-5#post-1000812

it's tatsu


ok, i concede to your superior knowledge however. I can't see how unwrapping azimut style would be all that great (if not atrocious)

can you take a PA screen capture (or several to patch them together) and show me a rough estimate of it's look?

(also explain what would happen when you slide the unwrap point (real-time))

You're not the first to miss it; no disagreements on that front.

Yep! It was added in the last forum update. So good.

Dat Frenglish

Yeah, we really, really need a proper tutorial for things like this.