My minimap mock up

I made a quick mock up for my idea for a 3d interactive mimimap, that basically is a small, fully interactive version of the planet with small icons, that shows radar range.

http://i.imgur.com/muB4Ae1.jpg

Movement controls are basically the same as the real planet, but it gives you the option to have it positioned on the other side of the planet while you observe your half yourself, and would allow you to instantly move to the other side of the planet instantly just by clicking on it with the minimap, like any other RTS but vital I think in PA, because even strategic view is very low with big planets.

I also think it should have scale-ability and transparency options.

I don't really see any real alternatives to this method so its already probably in the works.

Thoughts?

Edit: Also it should show metal points (unclaimed, yours and your enemy's).

In my opinion, a minimap is a bit useless since we can zoom out in half a second. In Spring (BA or ZK) i never watch at the minimap thanks to the zoom.
And actually you minimap is just a replication of what we can already see on the screen, it doesn't bring new info. A transparency feature could be directly implemented to the main view in order to see at the other side (but i m not convinced that it will be readable).

A minimap is not useless imo. It couldn't be more important. Zooming in and out is not quick or easy on large or any planet, nor is rotating around the world to see the results of your scouting, then zooming back to finish what you were doing, when I could scout, look at the ghost icons on my mimimap, click the area on the minimap and be there, and click back in 1/5 the time.

It would allow you to monitor your radar for attacks, which would otherwise require you to constantly look to the other side of the planet at the edge of your radar range. Thats more work then required. Just because TA and SupCom didn't need them, the added effect of having round planets mandates minimaps.

what I think could be very helpful: If you are zoomed in, and some new units pop up in your radar or vision coverage, but not visible on your screen, or even your current half of the planet, an indication marker on the screen border should show in which direction new enemy units are scouted. The marker could be small for a single unit, and huge for 100 units.

Honestly, this is the best take on the minimap that I've seen so far.

However, I gather that multi-windowing is the direction that Uber are hoping to head in.

I'm not against the idea of a minimap, although I'm still not convinced it is necessary.

Regarding this idea though, there are several issues:

1 - The primary purpose of this is to be able to have it at a different orientation to the main window. Planets, however, can be rotated in 3 different axis, not just the 1 indicated in the mockup. Trying to match up the orintation of the planet to the orientation of the minimap is not something that can be done at a glance, which kind of nullifies the entire idea of this kind of minimap.

2 - As satanpetitcul pointed out, this doesn't actually offer anything the main window can't. As for transparency, being able to see through the planet would get very confusing, very fast, especially due to point 1.

3 - I believe cwarner7264 has hit a nail on the head with multi-window; having either a second screen or a small window-in-window would achieve the same effect as this, while being far more versatile, in that it has no limitations (it wouldn't even be limited to the same planet. To make a smaller screen more readable, the equivalent of Supreme Commander's cartographic map shader could be used.

It's also worth considering the controls that will likely be in the final game that will make map management easier: Screen bookmarking, some kind of alert system, strategic overlays at the solar system level etc.

I think a "minimap" like this with either a transparent planet or some kind of projection would be really helpful, since it enables the player to quickly see where an attack is happening. Currently when I hear the "you are under attack" sound I press c to check if my acu is in danger and than I try to remember any positions to might be fighthing now and search around. Takes forever. Having any kind of minimap that directly shows me where it is happening, and also how "big" it is would save me a lot of playtime.

about 1: You could easily offer a button/hotkey to copy the view of the minimap to the mainview. Or let players click on the minimap in one way or the other and focus the mainview on the clicked point. It has all be done before in 2D.

Sure a 2D minimap is easier to use, but that's the drawback of playing on planets. I like playing on planets by now. Sure it's harder, but I still like it a lot.

The issue isn't getting the two maps to align (as you point out that is trivial ). The issue is trying to determine, at a glance, where a dot on the minimap is relative to where you are currently viewing in the main screen. In order to do that, you have to first mentally translate the rotation of the minimap, relative to the current rotation of the planet, in three dimensions. That's very difficult to do mentally.

You could just have an arrow or indicator showing on the minimap where you are currently looking, so you could then tell at a glance where something is relative to where you're looking at.

Although I think a minimap of some description could work, I'm not sure the suggested mock-up is the best way to go about it. I imagine it would become VERY cluttered as the game goes on, and it would get very difficult to distinguish points that were on the far side of the globe from those on the near side.

Personally, I would be happy to see a straight forwards 2D equirectangular projection, with some sort of symbol showing the position and orientation of the camera. Of course these features would still need to be tested thoroughly in order to see if they help.

Yep some sort of markers (N/S/Equatorial/...) could probably help the player with this problem.

Standard response: http://xkcd.com/977/

I resisted bringing up that xkcd when making that post, because I knew someone else would do it. At least my initial assumptions were correct.

Sorry, but I've always been very sceptical the idea of trying to make a 3D globe into a playable 2D surface. It's not physically possible without extreme sacrifices in readability, and creates more problems than it solves.

When this sort of thing was first discussed back in the latter end of 2012, I chipped in with quite a few thoughts on those threads and discussed the matter at great length.

But it's been a matter raised so frequently that now I just respond with an xkcd comic.

No worries. Although it's true that projecting a 3D sphere onto a 2D globe is not possible with out sacrificing positional or area based accuracy, these are sacrifices that I believe anybody who has seen a map and a globe are familiar with, even if not at a conscience level.

I'm willing to ignore my inner cartographer, and make those sacrifices if it makes more useful information available to the player. At the very lease, I would like to see it tried, in order to see if it is workable.

Personaly, i would prefere to have a hotkey to focus on the alert, like in starcraft. when you ear "base under attack" press spacebar and you are at the fighting place.

In general, as it has been said, is quiet difficult to move on a spherical surface, and even more difficult to represent it in a readable way. These points make me think that a minimap is not the perfect tool to answer the issue.

Have a look at the streams of pro sc2 players. I cant remember any that constantly use that feature. Why? For the same reason I didn't use it: Events pop up so quickly that often you find yourself jumping to an even that you didnt expect when you pressed space.

Given the great length at which it's been discussed, I would be very surprised if someone didn't come up with a mod for it.

Neutrino however has already confirmed it is not something Uber will be looking at.

Aye, I think at this point in the discussion anybody is familiar with the problems a 2d map has for mapping a sphere or similar.

Nevertheless there seems to be too much of a "perfection is the enemy of good" mentality around it.

We don't need a map with good scaling for distances and proportion, as that isn't possible, but a map that gives an overview of the relative position of enemy forces to our own.

Ie. is there something near my bases, where are my units engaged in conflict, one key action to send my reinforcement army to there, etc.

Currently we see about a third of the planets surface in an useful way, stuff around the edge of the view area gets clumped together too much to be usable and this doesn't get solved with a 3d map as stuff on the edge still gets clumped together quite horrible.


Any 2d projection which is centered around your current view location and scrolls with you (and thus has to be remapped continuesly ofc) should be enough to get the important information of where is stuff on the whole sphere. Yes, things near the poles (compared to the current viewpoint) always will be horrible distorted but you could lessen this by having the 2d map showing the planet 1.5x times to cover some areas twice.


(Btw. neutrino hasn't said they won't do a minimap ever, they'll look into it he changed their earlier position.)

On a point of information: viewtopic.php?p=695120#p695120
I was referring to the fact that they won't be making 2D stuff