Continuous Planet Map Continued

[Neuralize]

Move your bickering about Donuts and Globes here.

To recap, I'm in favor of having the map act like a planet, but not to the point where you can zoom all the way out and you see a globe, as that would seem a little over the top, just having a landscape that loops like a planet would do.

Athough, I'm not going to slit my wrists and wear a party if such is not implemented.

[AF]

Actually I think zooming out to see the globe itself is extremely useful.
The minimap no matter how resizable is problematic int hat you cant see units themselves and the terrain just a picture generated formt eh startign terrain and radar blips. Also I'd onyl see half the globe and with much greater detail

[deth]

To be honest the looping would be kind of annoying. It would be cool as an option I guess, but I like using a map edge as a defensive wall

[AF]

In spring since the edge of the map is visible and you've essentially turned the map into an island in the middle of a sea that lies at the edge of the map, can we sail ships into this vast expanse? Fly plains there? Send hovercraft? let me guess this vast sea would have limitless depth so amphibious units would be useless

[Redfish]

How about off screen bombing???

But to go back to a spherical map. I think the idea would only be nice if maps were huge. So in effect playing a map like that is like playing a flat map without boundaries. I can only imagine how weird it would be to play something like full moon and have units move out of sight on the right and pop in on the left again. It's totally not logical on small maps.

[Torrasque]

Hey man, if the unit can go through right to left, the camera can do it too, you won't see border, you're always in the middle.

[AF]

hhmmm,. to prevent those sort fo odd things happening I think that wether a map is spherical should be made upto the map maker, the maker should eb able to say wether it can eb spherical or donut type map or just ordinary closed off map. As for a tiny map on a donut type implementation i refer to a post fo mien in the lost threads:

A commander on the smallest possible map, would I see thousands of repeated commanders off into the distance ro would I see a commander standing on a tiny globe?

[Redfish]

Hey man, if the unit can go through right to left, the camera can do it too, you won't see border, you're always in the middle.

I didn't think about that. Good one!

It does offer many problems when buidling a base though. Would be interesting to try out. But since spring has unlimited views (given the fact fow is turned off)you could stare in the distance and see your back? That would be really strange.

[[K.B.] Napalm Cobra]

As long as it doesn't directly affect the release date adversly, why don't they just do them all, spherical, torus and rectangular, and let the player decide what they want to play on.

For spherical maps they don't have to be perfectly spherical, just have say 10 slices and 10 (put name of ones that go the other way here) and then have the engine smooth the edges.

How hard could it be , says the punk who can't even get a simple damned heightmap editor to work properly.

[DopeFishhh]

as stimulating this discussion is, a planet shaped/sized map is a horrendous amount of code to do properly and odds are the team would need to rewrite mapping to do stuff like this.

the closest matching effect is to just make a very large map and place the players closer to the middle rather than putting them around the edges like most maps.

[Neuralize]

In the previous post it before they great bug nibbling of the forum was stated that it wouldn't be that hard to implement.

As for the viewing of your stuff from behind, I'm pretty sure Spring as some sort of draw distance, er, at least it should.

[zwzsg]

In the previous post it before they great bug nibbling of the forum was stated that it wouldn't be that hard to implement.

By a Swedish Yankspanker or by a clueless forumer?

[AF]

But to generalise that all forum goers save the SY's are clueless is a fallacy of such logic is it not?

[Zoombie]

Would ringworld like maps be avalable (if you havent read ringworld, think HALO just much much much much much bigger) in Spring. Then your base, if big enough, will curve up into the distance. Also think about fireing LRPC from your base straight up into the atmoshper, then whatching it plow through the axis of the Ring world THEN smash into an enemy building. BOOM!!! Or how about a huge volly of nukes flying across the axies, straight at your base would allow you to say "wow thats realy cool" befor your base is blasted into subatomic particals. Or if you dont want you computer to have a brain hemmoging thinking about all those polygons rendered at long distance, then you could have a indoor ring world like Startopia, where thier is a roof. Also Ringworlds could be like Core metal planets, and you can plop down mines anywhere. Ohh i also though about sea level. Maby if you blow something down to the sea level then it opens a hole into space!! That would be cool, however you would need to have very tall maps or else every time you fire off a gun your atmosher would vanish. Howbot you realy have to nuke them into the stone age.... Imagin looking at the vast rip in the Ringworld floor where your pitifull enemys base was once located!

[AF]

wha let em get this straight, instead of a spherical map you want the equivilant of a ring of metal surrounding a star? I'm thinking any other configuration would leave the ring world hurtling into the sun. Yikes that would be wierd

And so my parable fot he giant commander on the tiny world is rewritten again

Imagine a Giant comamnder on the smallest map possible
would we see a comamnder standign on a tiny globe or comanders ranging off into the distance? What abotu a ringworld? Would we see a commander crushed under the pressure of the ringworld round its waist or a commander with a hula hoop

[Warlord Zsinj]

Anyone played the "populous" series?

They had completely spherical maps. It was a bit weird on the smaller planets (the perspective was a bit skewed), but it did have a nice effect. It was a bit to get over in terms of control though...

[AF]

You didnt do any screenys of spells or balloons! Or the world view either! And with populous you could zoom out to top down view or zoom in further though ti looked wierd if you did that. hhmmm I aint sure I remember which level that was, though I'm a bit worried byt he amss of wild men that havent been converted across the water

[Zoombie]

The Populus view point looks pretty cool, and it might work with TA, but then
When a Big Bertha fires of a shell the shells arch whould look kind of odd. Same with planes, and other flying dodads. Also what about mobile bases (lke in TAK) whith flying Air craft plants

[AF]

Well a TA game on a populous map would quickly engulf the entire world in bases that spanned every stretch of land, there wouldnt be enough space on a map to fight byt he tiem you reached the point of 4/5 berthas, so the curvature wouldnt be as much as on populous for a good sized TA map, that way berthas wont look as bad, besides I always though fo berthas as seemign almost straight firing unless you follow the shots, so they will seem to fire further but they wont seem as arched since they'll follow the curvature more, it might mean you'd have to put in targettign as an issue since the berthas cant see targets at max range.

But then I beg of you, give intimidators a chance!

[Zoombie]

But indimadators are REALY ugly (note: i am a ARM player)