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

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.

 

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But I must say, the way MOO2 did it, even felt in former times kind of outdated.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.

 

Yeup

 

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

 

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.

 

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.

 

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

 

Hi all,

i have one or two questions: Will there be big maps? i mean more than 100 or 150 systems. Please don't make the maps to small.

And a question with research: I hope it will be enough to research and not to fast, l love long and epic games. There could be a speed option for example, then every player could chose the speed.


Greetings
Nico