How big will be the galaxy?

Hi Nico

I can share some information that may be helpful, My current game is at turn 250 and not near the end, not bad for this stage of development.
Research is partially random (not full) so it already varies game to game and will take a long time to go through. Once the devs manage to add some more items to the tech tree (several candidate items currently) it will just get more expansive, I feel it will be epic.

The map can't really get too huge, these are MoO2 type systems which means a single star can have multiple colonies and outposts, add in all the hidden systems such as black holes, boson stars, dwarfs and you will be exploring the existing map for hundreds of turns. I too thought it was small at first but could easily see the game un-ravel if the map gets too big.

Of course this is my understanding now, I don't know what the devs have ultimately in mind but the map certainly does feel larger than just the number of systems would suggest.

P.S. Welcome aboard, nice to have you here

Chris

 

The static maps restricts this.Personally I would prefer a zoom and pan map.Sticking to a flat map just because an old game did it is not reason enough.

 

Yeah, I agree. This was my other sticking point on the eXplorminate forums.

I know the devs are in the throws of development, but it's important to think about how certain design decisions are going to play out in the market. Look at MoO: CTS. The game generated a ton of heated discussion around a few things - most notably star lanes and real-time combat. Whether these decisions were good or bad from a design standpoint is irrelevant if the fallout from the decision means that your game flops in the market. Which considering how much was probably spent making MoO:CTS I'm guessing we can say it was a flop.

For ISG the two things I've heard people grumble about are 5-slot limit on ship design (which I've commented on elesewhere) and the single view, fixed galaxy map. Let me talk about the latter for a moment:

I understand the nostalgic throwback reason for this. And I appreciate that you can see the full scope of the game space all in one, informative view.

However, I guarantee that one of the first things everyone will do the second they load the game is hit the scroll wheel on their mouse and hit the WASD keys to try and pan around. People will immediately see that this has no effect, and will immediately start questioning what it is exactly that they are playing. The fixed map is counter to our modern sensibilities for how we navigate games and interact at a basic ergonomic level - and people will use this as an excuse to start ripping on the game.

So, my suggestion is to still design the game with the idea that you can zoom fully out and see everything as it currently is. But, something as simple (maybe? I'm not a programmer yet!) as starting with the view centered over your homeworld and zoomed in 50% of the way, thereby allowing players to zoom and pan around immediately, will make this entire approach more palatable.

As an added benefit, having some zooming might enable additional information to be displayed around systems without getting the screen to messy. And at an aesthetic level, starting zoomed in a bit will make the galaxy "feel" a little bigger and more expansive - which will help with people's initial impression.

 

Mezmorki, that makes sense, MoO2 had that, It was a single map like ISG but you could in fact "zoom" closer. In that case it was done by clicking the proper selection. ISG can modify and incorporate this option to address this issue as you are correct, human nature is such that when a deficiency is picked up, we gamers hold onto it like a pit-bull. best to remove the potential problem straight away

 

Yeup

 

Sure, I also do it even when I know the map is rock solid.
I turn the mousewheel, just because it would be nice to have my homeworld, that is located at the bottom, in the middle of the map.

But I must say, the way MOO2 did it, even felt in former times kind of outdated.
Besides that, Mezmorki explained it much better than i ever could.
I just would love to have the ability to hug my homeworld by zooming in and centering it.

 

Every game does the zoom and pan and I'll tell ya... I don't miss it one bit in ISG now that I'm used to it. The less I have to mouse around, the better. Even took me awhile to stop clicking on my planets on the galaxy map, looking for my production screen thanks to Endless Space.

I really like the UI quite a bit.. and I know having the ability to pan and zoom would please some potential buyers.

The balancing of cleanliness, easy to use UI and not having to click a billion things is what's appealing to me with ISG. ES 2 has so many clicks it's crazy.. but I do like that game quite a bit. With ISG, I can really bang out turns and most of that is due to the well done UI.

 

I wanteed to write aboute the very well done UI in a separate thread, but now I do it in here.
I also like this UI and the readable and clean and overviewable way it is designed. All things can be reached with a few clicks.
But also, everything is so well throught through and the game is playable to a great extend, I did not expect to get so much for an Alpha!

Just one complain must be: Distant World really has one disadvantage: The fonts, the readabiity.
Now I have good eyes, but after a hard day and in the night, my view gets sometimes blurry, and even here ISG, the tooltips or lets say, startips and colonytips could be bigger.
It would be nice when the size of the hint popups could have two selectable sizes in the option menue.

 

I stay far away from subreddit

 

You know what? I completely agree with this. ISG doesn't really need a zoom and pan does it? The more I think about it makes me feel it's simply not designed for that.
But Mezmorki brings up a point with an element of truth in it. Until someone plays ISG for bit and gets used to it there are going to be some instinctive first reactions, the pan and zoom will be one of those. Why get the initial bad reaction then (when you can avoid it)?
That doesn't mean that you actually have to go pan and zoom exactly though.
Paradox in many of its' series (HOI, EU, Victoria), had good old fashioned set selectable sizes for the map.
Players are still familiar then, so if you go this route they wont be shocked by the mouse wheel not zooming, they'll just select an option instead.
It should also fit very nicely with the way ISG is designed, Max zoom would of course be default. I think doing it this way may also be a little more fun for the player at times.

 

I was thinking a little further on this... pan and zoom might be needed for bigger galaxies? Playing default medium seems ok to be static.. but as more races are put into the game, the need for a bigger map will be paramount. It might be a little cramped or at least travel to each system might be restricted on a larger full screen map?

It's a good discussion though and I'm not sold on which implementation is best to be honest.

 

Try it and see how it feels, set your galaxy to huge and play a game.

 

That will be my next game!

 

Well I did already and it still looks tiny compared to the star count in distant worlds.
I will get used to the static map and it also has its good arguments, but seriously, the biggest map that we can choose can not be the biggest map that I dream of.
The universe I would like to play would be ten times bigger.
And therefore we would need a savegame organizer.
Now if the universe stays in this tinyness, we can play the game through in a glimpse, cmpared to bigger maps that would take moths to complete.

Now I know, you do not like to compare or even take some things out of MOO3 because it really had many flaws, but the universe was pretty big.
Look at this one:


Hard to press into one screen.
This is also 3D, but sure this can be broken down into 2D and the stars can have a minimum distance to the next.
Even this screenshot has not enough stars when we talk about huge in my opinion.
And this amount of stars would fit into ISG. But nothing more and we could miss with the clicks.

Here two pics from moo3 with 12 arms and 250 stars.
from top perspective not all stars fit, from the side, not all arms are shown and the middle is crowded.

 

Another argument would be, that the exploration slots are a bit too small.
But here it shows again how well done your game already is. Compliment!

Posted are a small and a huge map.
The huge Map has about 80 Stars. Again, while the huge one is good for a medium sized game, a even bigger one will be wanted from many people for sure.

 

Don't forget, by the time you uncover that huge map it isn't 80 systems anymore, it's about 140-150. The map is bigger than it looks.

 

Are you sure about that number? I mean that means ~80% stars are uncovered.
And that would mean it is .. enough for the most.