Planets: square or spherical?

I think it is possible to make the angle of the camera always be parallel to a axes of the planet, but then the cemara movements near the poles would become a bit strange, you can't make the camera get over the poles, you can only circle it around them.

Wrapped square planets don't just look strange. They act strange and cannot be mapped to R3.

With zoom scrolling what if you were able to middle click on the planet and drag it to spin it around? Or you could click on the minimap.

So I've been thinking a bit. No, I lie: I've been thinking a lot (partly because I've wanted an RTS that takes place on the inside surface of a sphere).

Anyway... suppose we take a split-screen approach to viewing information.

On one side of the screen, we present one side of the planet. On the other screen, we present the other side.



This is all well and good, but there's not a lot of detail to be shown there.

Let's zoom in, using the trusty mouse-wheel;



What I propose here is that one screen zooms in, and the other screen does the opposite. Zooming in has a double action, and this might allow everyone to view all the important information at a glance, but not mess with linear mappings too greatly (yes, this part is still a problem).

I like!

I think a more flexible split-screen approach would be to everyone's benefit. Instead of just making them opposites, allow the player to control them separately and manipulate them however they want.

Examples
Eg: Allow the screens to be resized and moved around, so you could in effect make one of the screens a mini-map, which could just always be zoomed out to show the entire solar system, or zoomed in towards a planet to show it in better detail.

Left clicking on one map would center the other on that point. So say you have one half of the screen as a view of the solar system, you could just left click on one of the planets to move the view of the other half screen to that point.

Each screen would have similar zooming capabilities as SupCom.

With this, you could (if you really needed it) have both sides of the planet shown, with each half on each half of the screen. Similarly, you could have two different planets, or two views of the same area, but at different zoom levels.

EDIT: This would just be an extension of the already existing dual-screen capabilities. Allowing more screens/splits would be a good addition as well, though I have little idea how harmful this would be to performance.

Thats exactly what I think would be very bad.
When zoomed our you need to be able to see everything that happens, everywhere.
So it should be the opposite: Spheres when you are zoomed in and projections when you are zoomed out.

To view the back of a planet you would either zoom in on it and rotate the planets view or you would zoom out completely and zoom in on a specific point of the projection, which should automatically move the camera/rotate the planet, so you end up viewing the point you zoomed in to.

I *think* this might work, but this definitely is something the devs need to play around with and test.

Hah, took me a moment to find that post. I suppose I see the point. You'd need 'some' way of seeing everything at once to be an effective commander.

The problem I see with using a projection is how it would appear. Where would one side stop and the other begin? I'm assuming you mean a projection that spreads out from the edge of the planet to show what lies beyond the horizon. My concern is that it would be terribly distorted or disfigured (either easy to look at or spatially correct).

I like the idea of extending the use of splitscreen so that it could be customized to how you want.

Anyone that really needs to have a way to see everything at once, and has the ability to deal with it properly, probably has a computer that can handle the split screen. I think it'd be unlikely that anyone with a terrible computer would need to have universal coverage of the map, so a single screen would be all that is needed (and thus a slightly limited view of the map at one time).

The distortion on any projection of course will make lit look a bit funny, but I think it is better to see everything a bit distorted when zoomed out, since you only want a rough overview anyway and after zooming in you see everything "clear", so you can actually place buildings.

I am an avid user of the dualscreenfeature of SupCom, but I actually dont think that the game should be depending on using 2 views to show different sides of the planets. Most ppl refuse the use the dualscreens-feature in SupCom cause they say it isnt helping much. Would be the same with having different views for one planet. Just to hard to handle.

Flat maps when zoomed out? Flat maps when zoomed in? Either way is still a boring flat map, that we've had since the beginning of the RTS genre. Not awesome. We need more games like Homeworld, that try to push boundaries in the RTS genre.

If you watched the video and thought "yeah, this, but actually flat maps floating around", I'm sorry to be so blunt, but I believe you missed the most awesome part of the video or are ignoring it because all you want is a simple update of TA or SupCom into a more modern engine. It's a spiritual sequal, and spiritual sequals don't have to be carbon copies of their inspiring game. And this one from all dev accounts appears to not be a carbon copy. It is its own game. And it's not "planetary" annihilation without the planets, and all the possible problems that come with them that need to and can be solved. In an awesome fashion

So I guess what I'm saying is, I definitely only want spherical maps
No matter what I'm already in for $40, so I'll play it regardless, but dang I hope they go with true spherical. I'll be sorely disappointed otherwise.

Hah, yeah, I brought that up earlier (though you say it much better ). I'd much rather just see them find a workaround using round planets than revert to flat maps.

EDIT: @Cola

That's why I suggest they extend its usefulness. Allow the player to stretch it to any rectangle, move it around, add more screens, etc. It wouldn't just be for planets, but that'd be an option.

I really feel everyone is a little 'too' obsessed about needing to see everything, all at once, in a single moment, from a single point of view. If all it takes is a single additional action to turn the map around and see the other side, is it really 'that' big of an issue? It'd be so much easier to make the planets and such act like round things at all times, no?

You can't spin all planets all the time, so it is indeed a issue.
There is reason why the most other rts always give you some kind of full view, like minimap or zoom out or strategic mode etc, you need a easy way to make sure if there is enemy marching towards your base.

And a addon to my previous idea about semi-transparent icons:
Maybe the game could have a option to show the terrains of the back sides when zoomed out too, but only in the from of faded contour lines or mesh network(holding spacebar should make it not faded and make the terrains on the front side faded), so it won't looks confusing.

Seeing everything at once when fully zoomed out is THE epic feature that made me love SupCom instantly -yeah after I started playing I also fell in love with the general gameplay -. Of course I want to have this feature in PA aswell. Sure sphere-world are great, but just give me the option to see everything when zoomed out. This feature is even more important in PA, since managing multiple Planets at once in a huge battle will be challenging enough to the player.
Toggling between 2 views would just complicate things.

How about this.

When zoomed in the planet is a true sphere and units are full models. You can zoom out normally until the entire planet fits snugly in the center of your screen.

Then when you zoom out further the planet 'folds out' into a square projection. Lambert, Mercator or whichever is best. Units and buildings become icons. This is the strategic map.

Some special key, say ctrl+mousewheel, zooms out all known planets and moons at once and displays them as square maps together on your screen, or on separate screens if you have them. Thus you can get a strategic overview of the entire system, and easily send units from one world to a particular spot on another.

Is this doable?

I guess the question should be, is the distortion of a cylindrical projection onto the strategic map so bad as to be unplayable?

Distortived maps or minimaps have been excluded by bgolus from the uber entertainment, so the developers think it is a bad idea, and I agree with them.
In a distortived map, distortions at poles might become so extreme that the slowest units would move at a ridiculous speed, and the map textures might be stretched to a really low-res level.

This discussion is getting confusing because there are many slightly different topics. I'd make a poll but I don't know how many people would understand the question.

You're right. Hmm, I think players could cope with the kind of distortion you see at around 60 degrees N. The problem is the poles, where it's literally stretching to infinity. So how about this: Show one square global map as well as two circular maps, one for each pole. The longitude of the global map cuts off where the polar maps begin. Could that work?

You still get stretching with two circular maps (unless you were actually playing on a disc, but that's no a sphere).

Would it be so bad that it gets unplayable though? Do you think players could get used to the idea that "units move x% slower at 40 deg North than at the equator?"

For all the people mentioning cylinders that join at the top earlier. That topology is a torus.
It might just be possible to to make a torus world draw like a sphere.

If we do however want to truly tessellate a sphere then hexagons (plus 12 pentagons) are probably the best way to go.
Think 'soccer ball', but with additional rings of hexagons around the pentagon tiles.

Unplayable is an airy-fairy term, and would vary from person to person (I have no idea what I'd actually consider unplayable for myself).

But I think another hastily-drawn MS Paint artwork might explain the potential problems better. For example, imagine looking down at half the planet;