Would´t be better we have a real perspective of the fiel?

Re: Would´t be better we have a real perspective of the fie

Seems the only one who understood me, was ze-pilot totaly agreed with him..
Im just think in what you will feel when playing.
The way it looks now isn´t grab me, and bether talk now then too late.
just an personal opinion off some 1 that play this since Total anhilation.

Re: Would´t be better we have a real perspective of the fie

I have to agree with kalherine on this discussion. I feel it is a bit too curved at the moment - hopefully they will review this issue at a later date?

Re: Would´t be better we have a real perspective of the fie

I can't see how this can be resolved without delving into Lovecraftian geometry.

Re: Would´t be better we have a real perspective of the fie

On other forum, many already said that the solution is to have bigger planets. Or smaller units/props. Don't know what the engine is able to do, but I guess the later solution is possible.

If you scale everything down, the problem is that now, even the small planets are huge.
If you make way bigger planets, fast 1v1 games will have to take place on asteroid instead of planets "feeling"-wise.

One solution that come up regularly on these others forum, for 1v1/smaller games is to make bigger planets, but with less incentive to go outside a small scope of the planet.
Ie. by having natural obstacles (mountains, lava,...) or no strategic interest (no mass point, ....).

That way, you still can go around a base like it is now, you can also go on multiple planets, but the scale feel more correct.

I'm not sure how big the planets need to be, but even the biggest planet in the alpha feel tiny -even it's not tiny map size-wise- again, it's a feeling problem, not a gameplay one.

Re: Would´t be better we have a real perspective of the fie

Come up with a suggestion instead. The planets are spheres. They will always be curved unless you want to warp the camera. Warping the camera can probably be good for other causes, like being able to see the whole surface of the planet in 1 view, but making a game with planets just to warp the surface by default seems like missing the point.

Scaling everything down is pretty much like playing on a bigger planet. Just scaling down the unit models is a bit different though but can achieve similar effects.

It would be good if you could explain how a restricted playing field would make the scale feel more correct. I don't think it would. There are not even metal patches yet.
It would also be good if you could describe what you consider "correct" scale. It might be hard to put the finger on it but it could be one of many things that ticks you off.
Playing on a larger planet or having smaller models might be the "easiest" solutions but things like turn speed, turret traverse speeds and unit ranges might also throw you off. If you compare it to SupCom many bots turn much faster, aims faster and have shorter ranges compared to their model for example.

Re: Would´t be better we have a real perspective of the fie

Imagine the area of play of the smallest current planet. Take the same area, but put it on a way bigger planet, with no mass spots outside that area.

Now you have the same playing field, on a round planet, with a nice feel of scale (because the planet is big enough so a ship doesn't seem to have the size of China).

A correct scale for me would be
- A size where a ship can stand on land (they currently can't cause the curvature).
- Where jumping out of a mountain about 5x the size of your commander doesn't make you go into space.
- Where a tree doesn't seem to be close to touch the outer layer of atmosphere.
- Where you don't feel like shooting a tank should make the projectile go into orbit.
- Where an arty doesn't actually shot into space to hit a target 20 meter in front of it.
- Where you don't feel like building an advanced factory is like building something as big as a country.
- Where I can make screenshots like these instead of the kind of screenshot I've posted earlier : http://uppix.com/f-Capture51bcb6ac00131e25.jpg

When a papa importer for maya will be available, I would gladly document the scales I have in mind.

Re: Would´t be better we have a real perspective of the fie

If you have a bigger planet, why not play on the whole planet? Even if you start close to each other on the bigger planet you can still use the rest of the planet.

Re: Would´t be better we have a real perspective of the fie

Basically for the same reason you don't go on the ocean on the outer circle of that map :

(if you don't know supcom map, the useful area is probably as big as the current biggest planet on PA).

Because there is no interest going there (no mass point, no strategic advantage).

Re: Would´t be better we have a real perspective of the fie

Didn't realise that the planets are spheres!

Re: Would´t be better we have a real perspective of the fie

Funny that you use map where the water would be the closest way to an enemy on the opposite site of the island if the map was wrapped unto a sphere.

Anyway. You have a planet and you just want a small part of it to have strategical importance just so that the largest ship in the game should look more to scale... I think that is a bit of an overkill.

You know the size of the ship, you know the size of the planets. How much bigger should the planet be and how high should the atmosphere go to be to your satisfaction?

Remember that PA might focus more on celestial combat than on planet surface combat.

Re: Would´t be better we have a real perspective of the fie

...

A sphere cannot be more or less curved. This might be semantics but rather than saying it is "too curved" you should put the size of the sphere in relation to something or was your idea that they should unwrap the sphere so that it becomes flat?

Re: Would´t be better we have a real perspective of the fie

If you want to go that way, you are wrong. The curvature of a sphere can be defined by 2/r², r being its radius.

The bigger the sphere, the lower the curvature is.
Semantically, the curvature is a deviation from a flat line, it can really be "more or less curved".

Re: Would´t be better we have a real perspective of the fie

And the relative curvature is dependent on the unit. Say we have unit 'x' that is 1 meter and we have unit 'y' that is 10 meters. If we place a model of size 10x on sphere with radius 100x it would still look exactly the same as a model of unit 10y on a sphere with radius 100y. The relationship stays the same.

Re: Would´t be better we have a real perspective of the fie

I'm not sure to understand where you are going. But we know the diameters of the current planets, and what unit is used.

I think that when he says "less curved", he talked about the current units used by uber.

Now, if they increase the planet size or decrease everything on it, like I've said, it's virtually the same thing visually, but with different consequences gameplay wise.

Re: Would´t be better we have a real perspective of the fie

Simply put. You and vox1972 think that the planets are too small in relation to the units and the atmosphere. Keep curvature out of this.

Re: Would´t be better we have a real perspective of the fie

Not so, map projections could be key to this, and they're part of everyday life (albeit thoroughly misunderstood).

Biggest problem I can see is the inherent distortions potentially resulting in behaviour like units appearing to be walk in curves instead of straight lines.
However, by only using this flattened view at tighter zoom levels and finding the appropriate projection, I think a lot of that could be mitigated.

There's also getting the transition from flat to sphere right so it feels smooth and fits in nicely with the whole strat-zoom vibe.

Which leads me too:

In light of this current discussion I think it's something that merits further exploration.

Re: Would´t be better we have a real perspective of the fie

And when you go down that road you end up having to de-shoggoth your hard drive. It's really quite a mess.

Re: Would´t be better we have a real perspective of the fie

I like a lot of the concepts of the game, but I too am disappointed with the planet scale.

What was cool about TA/SC was the massive scale. Artillery took time to get where it was going, nukes took time to get to target, vehicles took time to get in position and took up space. You actually had to maneuver your troops into a useful position.

Fine make planets that are tiny for the 1vs1 knife fights, but if there aren't going to at least be the option of planets where my jets need a hour of real time to fly a patrol lap around the equator I'm going to feel ripped off.

In it's current build it feels more like they grafted Star Craft with Mario Galaxy. That is a massive decrease in scale compared to TA/SC and makes it into a totally different game.

Re: Would´t be better we have a real perspective of the fie

So the scale thing has been discussed a few times on the forum, but I'll reiterate some of it here.

This is alpha, the planets are still somewhat small. The smaller end of the planet size range is likely better suited for a 2 or 3 player game rather than a full 4 players, but it makes for quicker games with more immediate combat which helps with testing.

The play field being a sphere makes the play field feel smaller than it is.

Part of the intention is that games can take place on multiple planets, not just one. You might start on a small moon, then send troops to the planet the moon is orbiting. A small enough moon you might even just start building rockets on it and smash it into the surface to take out your enemy.

Planet size will eventually be something you guys can control, and we want to support significantly larger planets. Memory limitations that will hopefully be alleviated with optimizations still restrict us on that front.

Re: Would´t be better we have a real perspective of the fie

The alpha planets are what, 650m? I seem to recall the plan for 'large' planets in launch to be at least 3000 or 4000m in diameter. Those will be way less 'curved' (in relation to the unit size).