Uber, do you agree PA needs a huge UI update?

projection will never work. you guys don't see it because you'll need experiencing it to understand. but it will have to place information in the wrong place. you of course would know the perfect unfolding point for each situation, but it's a machine, it doesn't understand those things. you're bound to be frustrated with projection.

@tatsujb

The current view everybody is playing with IS a projection.


We are playing on a Planar Projection.

It is a 3D sphere projected flat on your 2D monitor.
Since we can pan the sphere, it will always seem 3D.
This is why your units at the edges of the world are all bunched up.


People are asking for other types of projections...
Azimuth, Mollweide and Robinson.

you know what I meant.

Well, as long as you are working at the center of the projection, it's going to be a near perfect 1:1.
And if you want accuracy, then pan to so your target location is middle of screen.

I'm not saying it's the be-all-end all.
But I think it's a critical piece of the puzzle people are asking for.

Appologies, im typing this on my phone.

The way I see it, all we need is some 3d mini-maps per planet. Dont have to be big. But could be resizable.

Light blue hologram looking spheres, with some liniar falloff to edges. With the back faceing slightly darker.

On the surface of the planet, represent only land and water/lava as different shades to give reference. This will make it simple to read.

Then highlight units as pixels on surface,
Red enemy
Green friendly
Yellow blips, gun shot impacts.

On the edges of sphere, where bunch up, have little subtle light shafts that come up from surface and point out from edge of sphere.

The opacity of these pixels and high lights/light shafts can increase with unit density.

So if see a red blob moving to green blob, and yellow flashes. You will know **** is going down right there, on that planet.

Double left click on that spot, will snap main view to that planet and location.

Left click drag will let you repositon mini-map sphere.

Right click will set the sphere continuosly rotating. So have a view from all sides and will be able to gage depth and position easier, due to the motion.

This will apply to all planets in system.

If make the perspective orthographic on the spheres will also help. Could even show a mirror image of the reverse below, as a seperate sphere.

Benefits to this is,
● low system foot print for rendering
● easy to read
● allows for view of entire system
● has a cool star wars / sci-fi vibe to it.
● its not spherical unwrap, which is just bad, and in practice just wont work due to distortion.

/pessimistic mode on

This (heated) discussion is going to lead to know where. Why? well because atm no one of the devs read the forums, they do not respond to very important questions on the forum, or disucssions.

They hired a community manager so the devs would have to respond less and have more time making the game, but even the community manager is no where to be found on the forums.
There has been a absolute silence treatment for almost 3 weeks now. The only communication thus far has been a live stream where they showed of HDR and a PA beta match.

This discussion about the UI is pointless, and yes even i have spent time on making a damn post about it, but no response either. They will not use ANY information discussed in this thread and we all have to wait for the UI update and see what they have come up with. And what if we don't like it! Then i would say: join hands and make a mod together that would make uber jalous and maybe even hire you!!! We got allot of information here, if Uber decide a compleetly different non functional screw up of a minimap or UI, then i would say use this information and make something together.

But discussing this further is useless untill further information is available ^^

/pessimistic mode off

You know that reading =/= responding, right?
You can very much read things without having to reply. Developers tend not to reply unless they have a definite answer that they can't be called out on later down the line, and they tend to be fairly short statements.

I like having the viewcube, it's a base point of reference that is comfortable for some of us. I get too engrossed in my drawing and lose my position.

In the same way, I become distracted by trying to lay out symmetrical buildings in my base that I don't get anything accomplished in game.

Speaking as a non-professional, however lifetime gamer I am not yet happy with PA. It's good, but I have to agree with other posters. Never mind polishing graphics or making extra cool units. Fix the UI problems first. As it is I can only play PA when my friends are online because I get worked over too badly by myself. I spend too much time making my build ques rather than paying attention to the rest of the planet. So far Forged Alliance is the best turtle game for me.

Thinks I would like to see come to the UI:

-Build ETA
-Queued builds on fabber
-Building templates
-Planetary grids/coordinates
-Better tools for giving orders
-viewcube/compass
-modifying existing orders, such as moving patrol points or unbuilt strutures.

I'm sure lots of this has been covered before, but I do want to add my voice in here, that the UI should be the primary focus.

PS: as much as you hate shields... I miss them.

That argument is like "you will never be able to read newspapers through it, so mirrors must not be used". In a car you need to be able to get an overview of your surroundings, while no back-mirror will replace your front-view it augments you with necessary information.

Similarly just because minimaps are ultimately either not showing everything or are will be borked outside of the center, doesnt mean they are useless.
You should be able to pick a couple of them and center them around the areas where you need vision (imho covering more than a hemisphere would be stupid). For me primary this would help with giving me an overview and being able to set the camera by clicking on it for getting in a familiar view. Right now scrolling around the planet sucks and there is little feedback, I often dont even realize a factory is gone if I wasnt watching the area.

Also what's going to happen when we have many many planets? If you own 20 planets say, in the GalacticWar, you're never going to know that an army of bots is landing on one of your planets unless you are actively micromanaging that planet..

no I think the idea is you choose what planet you have on the minimap. but I don't think there's room for more than one in the UI. however warnings issued from that planet could auto-switch the minimap to that planet.

still think this is a better idea than map unwrapping :

I have 2 monitors.
I would happily have 5 "windows" open.

1. Planet 1 - Main and zoomed in.
2. Planet 1 - Enemy base, slightly zoomed out.
3. Planet 1 - Projection entire planet
4. Planet 2 - Moon base
5. Planet 2 - Projection

I can take in more info than that, but will need practice.
And if we have 20 planets, I will need to adapt.

p.s.
You're not my mom.
You can't tell me how to play!

I dont see why those have to be mutually exclusive.
I cant think of a better way of giving you a good overview of one area than a 2D Map. What you want, and whats also necessary in bigger games atleast, is an interplanetary overview. Maybe even get separate message-queues for each planet, showing status changes (enemy was first spotted, first fight commencing after some peaceful time, etc).

Personally I want the basic stuff done first and then work your way up into inter-planetary conflicts...