Hot posts in thread: How big will be the galaxy?

Agree. Density of stars has gone up.

It leads to some very interesting games and dynamics.

 

For ISG, entirely applicable, we are not speaking of thousands of stars, then there is this

You know what I agree.
Now I understand the need to please those who may fixate on a minor issue but I sure as heck don't want to see serious time and resources go into a pan and zoom feature for a map that fits well even on 1366x768 screen. (huge map included)
So how about we keep it simple
3-4 selectable levels of zoom similar to HOI, EU series. (and of course MoO2)
Pan by this below

I like that I can enjoy this game on the go on my lap-top without peripheral devices.
I don't like creating a mountain out of a mole hill.
So to put it bluntly (my opinion only of course)
A)Give enough to silence most dissent (you will never finish any game attempting to please every last player)
B)Move on.

I mean really, most of you sit and play this on your rigs at home with large screens and apart from the initial reaction from a new player who won't be accustomed to a single map screen (which is a feature I like), this really isn't that much of an issue. It makes a lot of sense to deal with it minimally and conserve efforts for more pressing matters.

 

If you allow players to zoom in, you have to allow them to pan around the map at that zoomed in level. Simply have the arrow keys (and/or WASD or a mouse right button hold and drag) for panning. The zooming and panning are linked, and zooming without a panning ability would be even more confusing and frustrating.

 

All told, a huge map in ISG has roughly double the number of systems that a huge map in MoO2 had and there's lots of cool stuff to search for

 

So you don't see all the stars from the beginning like in many other 4x games? That would be cool
Greetings
Nico

 

Not exactly, when you add up all the red, white and brown dwarfs that you will discover add in the boson starts, black holes, rogue planets, the map(any size) is 75%-80% larger than visible, that doesn't equal 80% uncovered, that would be roughly 45%.
Total for Huge map, all inclusive, is not what you see at start, many systems to find.

 

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

 

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.

 

Yeah, exactly! 80 stars a way to small. min 150 -200 stars for a huge game

 

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.

 

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.

 

That will be my next game!

 

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

 

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.

 

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 stay far away from subreddit

 

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.