Map Edging

[Zoombie]

Maby you can chose maps in a fasion that gose as this! Chose planet type: Metal, Crystle, Aqua,Green, Suburbia, Ice. Then once you chose the planet the view zoomes to a planet. As i rotates on your screen it is split into multiply provences. You chose one and the game starts. The place you chose is the map you play on, and other maps are aranged around you in a planet like formaiton. You can allow the players to move from map to map, or simply force the wall! The wall forces people to stay on the map, whith the exeption of planes of course.


Also howabout we steal somestuff from schorched earth! it will be a little silly, but fun! You set the walls from passable to bouncy. passable means that planes can fly through it. Other units cant however. Also when a shot flys through the wall it comes out the other side! COOL EH! (that way you can acedentaly shell your own base by accedent in small maps. Now if the wall is bouncy then it will be realy funny! Whatever hits the wall bounces. Shots bounce, planes bounce, missles bounce EVERY THING BOUNCES!!!!

[Warlord Zsinj]

Redfish, only an extra 10% of the map needs to be visible outside the range. That is enough to reach the horizon line, in which case there are images just like those of the sky which show distance.

Napalm, I don't have Rome on this computer, can you post an image of a Rome TW map when looking out towards the sea? I think that is the best example of faking a map going off into the distance. The actual terrain goes on for a very short distance beyond the actual playable bit, but a faked 2D panorama makes it seem far greater.
This is the best image I can find:

Note that the terrain in the foreground, just beyond the wall is real, and part of the map, but the mountains in the background are fake. They aren't 3D at all, but rather a 2D image made up to look 3D. You can sort of pick it in the change of lighting.

The game "Bontago" uses a similar idea of a 360 degree 2D panorama that encapsulates the screen, and gives the idea of infinite distance, despite the 3D camera, and limited space.
Here are some pics that explain it better than I can. Excuse the large sizes:

[Charlemagne]

That would be nice, but it would make mapmaking a lot more work for us fans who are so inclined.

[[K.B.] Napalm Cobra]

But it would be damned hard to make anything that looks that real.

[Warlord Zsinj]

Not really. A basic panorama can be made pretty quickly using a stock set of backgrounds. Indeed, a single background can be included for each tileset.

For example, there are over 10,000 different maps in Rome Total war. Each is not individually created by a map maker, but rather created through generating a map based on the terrain type (if I recall correctly).
Now, I highly doubt the makers of Rome Total War individually mapped 10,000 360 panoramic views. Hell, that would take up a CD on its own.
There are ways around it that don't mean large workloads, from selecting stock panoramas to getting a generator to work them out for you (which I'm pretty sure Rome does). For example, in Rome, if you have a large armada offshore, and you fight a battle by the coast, you will see your armada in the distance, meaning that there is some form of basic generator (stick mountain here, stick sea here, stick ships here, etc.)

[RightField]

Just render a terragen picture and smack it on a 3d sphere. Then make several varieties and make it as an option to selecting in the maps ini files or whatever it uses.

[AF]

Alantai has seen the edge of the world and there's more land!


Infinite maps are a bad idea. It changes the whole strategy fo the game. By giving you unlimited space you thus ahve unlimited potential for resources thus you canc reate abses that are the equivilant of a 50x50 map with surrounding bases, and play the game to an unmanageable scale where nobody can win. And worst of all this would be easy to do. And what about the minimap?

I think syffer biddans idea is the best for maps that dont loop or form globes. Exept I would like a translucent white line rather than a red line for aesthetic reasons.

[Warlord Zsinj]

Just thought I'd bump this, as I'd like to see this feature implemented into Spring.

[zwzsg]

I don't know, now that I can play spring I realise that most of the time I'm in "overhead TA view" and map edges rarely show up.

[Buggi]

I would hope we all would focus more on enhancing the playable map before we worry about what's not playable...

[ILMTitan]

Now that I actually have gotten to play spring, the edges don't seem to bother me too much. While it would be nice to have more formatted edges, it is not something I fell spring needs to be a complete game.

[Warlord Zsinj]

Well, I don't think it would be difficult to attend to, and it would make the game look far more efficient.

I wonder whether you can trick the game into extrapolating the edges of maps to create the impression that the map continues outside the boundaries.

I play in Total War mode, so I still see the edges. I think total war mode is the best way to take advantage of what Spring has to offer without hurting gameplay. I'm used to the TW camera anyway (Except that now I can't hold mouse1 and use the arrow keys to rotate)

[Torrasque]

I like the way it is. It could just be cool that the mapper can select the color in concordance with his map. One some map, blue is not very nice...