Planets: square or spherical?

IMO spherical is the lesser of the two evils. Square would be a huge disappointment to me after seeing the trailer and getting excited for an RTS on a spherical world.

The information isn't really hard to get assuming you have a middle mouse button. Just spin the globe. Or have a zoomed out map displaying both antipodes at once.

I was speaking about Sins of a solar smpire, that is a space rts game with flat solar systems, and has no land units, so its playground is basically flat, although the ships can move in the Z axis to some degree.

Unit groups could be a good idea, if the player has zoomed out too far, merge the icons of the units of the same type together and make it bigger or show a number on it.

And now I agree a solar system minimap would be helpful, the player might need to know a asteroid is boosting towards his planet or not, but it should be diminish-able or hide-able too.

The icon wouldn't be there for control, it'd just be there to show what was there. If you have 100 land and 50 air in a single place while looking at the entire solar system, not only will it probably bog the game down (with more similar groups), it'd be impossible to use. I liked the distinct icons as well, but it'd be impossible to use if all squashed into a tiny space on the map.

Perhaps 3 levels of view.
- Surface: Shows everything
- Strategic: Replaces units with individual icons
- Solar System: Groups icons and adds icons for planets/moons/rocks.

(^ This might be a discussion for another thread?)

It seems counter-intuitive that zooming 'out' would flatten the map... When I look at the solar system, I don't want to see a bunch of squares/rectangles for every rock/planet/moon. I want to see round things. A toggle to pick which are shown might help, but would be similarly difficult to use, especially with multiple areas of play.

Is the only issue with having a constantly rounded surface that you can't see what's on the other side? Couldn't that just be a feature of having rounded planets? Faded icons might work to show what's on the other side. Like mentioned, Alt-clicking to select the faded icons. Normal drag selection wouldn't select them.

Personally, I like the idea of having no 'flat' view anywhere. We're playing on round surfaces, why not base the interface and viewing tools around that.

I don't get it. Is it somehow impossible to represent a sphere on a square minimap? Then why does Spore have a minimap? It's not like you can see the whole map in the main view of any other RTS, so where's the problem? Can't you just make the planets spherical and have a minimap of each one on screen?

If the key is alt, then alt+drag should be able to select them, and solely select them.

Yeah, that would be implied.

Pick your poison:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_map_projections

http://nationalatlas.gov/articles/mappi ... tions.html

The spore's minimap doesn't cover the whole planet (edit: this is not right at all), it isn't a specialized rts game anyway, so how informative its UI is is not very important.
And in a rts with a single spherical playground, lack of information of the back side is endurable, cause the player would rotate the sphere frequently, but I don't think it is ok for a game with multiple spherical playgrounds.

Also, you know, you could just have a minimap with both hemispheres.... :|

I was going to suggest this myself as well. The problem though is that distances would be distorted as you near the edge, which might cause issues with implementation (though I really have no idea) and controls (though players could always just adapt). It seems like the best compromise.

Also, most maps of planets/moons show 2 hemispheres. In this way it could be more familiar than some other methods, and thus easier to understand/use.

As far as I can see rotating a sphere to see other parts of the map is no different from moving your mainscreen in a flat RTS. You can't see the whole playing field on the mainscreen in a flat RTS so why must you be able to in this one.

Seems to me like the only problem with spherical planets is that the minimap will be a little inaccurate? Well couldn't players learn to deal with that? Is there some topological grand paradox preventing players from quickly looking up wherever they want on the minimap?

Not just a little, map projections of a sphere always have some obvious distortion, something can be seriously exaggerated, something can be seriously diminished, and it might be hard to know where a unit would reappear if it get through the edge by intuition. So I think non-distortive minimaps are better.

Have you ever play Supreme Commander?
The whole point of the zoom is that you DONT have to move your mainscreen. You just zoom out and see everything at once. I dont even have the minimap enabled in it. Thats the whole point of the zoom and one of most epic features ever brought to an RTS. If I have to decided between a fully functional zoom like in Supreme Commander and some weird sphere-map gameplay I would chose the zoom without a second thought.

Even if the planets are flat, you are still unable to see everything on all planets clearly with zoom out, so I think it is not that important for PA.

I totally disagree. Why should you not be able to see everything? Lots of symbols on a big screen and thats it. Should be totally fine. I actually doubt that normal maps in PA will feels much bigger than 81*81 maps in SupCom and the zoom works fine on them, too.

Without the ability to zoom out and get a good idea of what is happening everywhere it would simply be impossible to actually fight on multiple planets in parallel. Unless you want a super-high-apm game like Starcraft.

Just have the minimaps rotate based on where you are. So in practice, the edges don't affect you very much.

Cola_Colin is right.

If you want to see everything, you must zoom out to solar system level, and then you won't see things clearly, unless you have a epic big screen.
If the planets are spherical, you can still see everything with two monitors or splited cameras.

I think maybe the developers could share more their thoughts about this topic, they don't need to promise anything though, some people might want to know what problems the developers might meet if they make the planets completely spherical?

I personally wouldn't settle for flat planets, With the macro orientation of PA, you should have enough time to move the camera from time to time. Reason numero uno for me to back this project to begin with, is the spherical game play with the horizon visual effect. If the game is actually square via logic with sphere projection, that is fine by me, but it will need to convince me that I am on a spheroid planet...

Spore's minimaps worked fine. They were stretched along the equator, comprised near the poles.

I would suggest updating the minimap with the current view as the center of the minimap. The minimap could be tiled in all 4 directions (making the minimap 3 times as big as it actually is) to give others across the horizon in every direction. Units would appear multiple times on this type of minimap, but this can be made clear by different color outlines/grey overlay or something.

Now I think minimaps might be not needed at all, just being able to see things on the back side and transfer the camera quicklly to any appointed spot on the back side is enough, let zooming replace minimaps, player would know his situation well if he zoomed out frequently like in supcom.
But maybe there should be some indicators such like a red arrow at the edge of screen if there is conflict outside the camera, cause most sounds might can't transfer between planets. Click the arrow should transfer the camera to where the conflict is happening.

And a add-on for my previous idea about semitransparent icons for the units on the back side:
Holding spacebar should make the semitransparent icons non transparent, and make the icons on the front side semitransparent, so the player can make the icons on the back side more distinct at will.