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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

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Author Topic: Cartography  (Read 66988 times)

Alex

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Cartography
« on: November 25, 2016, 12:26:52 PM »

Blog post here.
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Bastion.Systems

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Re: Cartography
« Reply #1 on: November 25, 2016, 12:29:09 PM »

The new map: Woah.

(also I knew that refreshing the page obsessively like a prayer every few hours for weeks would pay off)
« Last Edit: November 25, 2016, 12:34:40 PM by Bastion.Systems »
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Nanao-kun

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Re: Cartography
« Reply #2 on: November 25, 2016, 12:42:13 PM »

Really nice post. That screenshot with the fuel range sure has a lot of stars.
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Midnight Kitsune

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Re: Cartography
« Reply #3 on: November 25, 2016, 01:02:16 PM »

i'm loving that new ability (was wondering why we burn speeds only went up to ten) but I wonder: If a burn 11+ ship uses it, will the burn speed go to only 20 or will it go to 21+
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SeinTa

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Re: Cartography
« Reply #4 on: November 25, 2016, 01:06:15 PM »

I'm drooling like a dog at a treat.
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mendonca

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Re: Cartography
« Reply #5 on: November 25, 2016, 01:43:16 PM »

All looks so beautiful - and well considered, I'm really impressed  :)
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Draba

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Re: Cartography
« Reply #6 on: November 25, 2016, 01:50:17 PM »

Tons of interesting stuff in the works, can't wait for my next playthrough!
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Deshara

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Re: Cartography
« Reply #7 on: November 25, 2016, 02:45:02 PM »

Is that a "how far can I get & how far can I get and still be able to get back to where I am now" overlay I see?
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CrashToDesktop

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Re: Cartography
« Reply #8 on: November 25, 2016, 02:48:22 PM »

Oh, another new faction in game, the Persian League. :D

@Deshara
Yea, looks like the double green circles screenshot shows your maximum range and point-of-no-return ranges as well.
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Alex

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Re: Cartography
« Reply #9 on: November 25, 2016, 02:53:56 PM »

Thanks, guys!

(also I knew that refreshing the page obsessively like a prayer every few hours for weeks would pay off)

(Hah, good timing on that, since you caught it right as I published it.)


i'm loving that new ability (was wondering why we burn speeds only went up to ten) but I wonder: If a burn 11+ ship uses it, will the burn speed go to only 20 or will it go to 21+

Burn 20 is the limit right now. Might up it at some point, might not - the decision probably won't be based on burn 11+ ships and SB, though.

All looks so beautiful - and well considered, I'm really impressed  :)

Thank you!!


Is that a "how far can I get & how far can I get and still be able to get back to where I am now" overlay I see?

Yep, that's it exactly.
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Deshara

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Re: Cartography
« Reply #10 on: November 25, 2016, 03:17:59 PM »

Alex I see a pattern of having over world abilities have visibility redux as passive costs, which works for early game when you're a bug scurrying neath the boots of the mighty, and falls off the "exclusively works against you" side of things in midgame when there's also lots of stuff trying to avoid you but the late game has a problem of making what used to be a constantly relevant mechanic fall to the wayside once a player is big enough that visibility itself ceases to be a concern.
My question is this: what are your thoughts on the viability of implementing a submechanic into the visibility loop where not even trying to avoid excess visibility to an enemy you engage gives them a passive edhe, for example giving a boost to the amount of ships an enemy can deploy from the sides if a round, to give some vague slap on the wrist to players who persistently hard-burn blindly into fleets who aren't running dark (and therefor have a lot of info on you) who you never had any info on prior to engaging?
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Sy

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Re: Cartography
« Reply #11 on: November 25, 2016, 03:50:05 PM »

neat, i was hoping for a map overhaul for quite some time. :]

two suggestions:

1) i like the target selection menu in general, but i think radial menus are much more suited for quick button down -> move mouse -> release button actions than drop-downs. if there are three options, the default can be centered on the cursor as it is now, and the other two could be selected through quick swings to the left or right (or top or bottom). since that requires a lot less precision than selecting a small button with definite position and dimensions, it can be done quicker once the player knows where each action is -- especially if the radial options only require a direction of mouse movement from wherever the cursor is initially, regardless of how far the cursor moves (past a very small area in the center to give some leeway for selecting the default option).
having the small drop-down buttons right below the cursor already allows for quick selection, but a radial menu would be even quicker. and since this is something we'll probably be doing often and frequently, a small difference could still have a noticeable quality-of-life impact, i think.
and as a bonus, i think a radial menu with shiny icons instead of text would also just look nicer. ^^

2) are there any map changes/additions regarding fleets? specifically, identifying any fleet through the map screen requires to click on it, thereby canceiling whatever travel destination you had set. in dangerous territory, this can lead to lots of clicking and cancelling just to take a quick look at any fleets that appear on your sensors, even if most of them are easily dismissed as posing no threat just by looking at their names. and the size of a fleet's icon doesn't feel particularly accurate in displaying the fleet's actual size (or sensor profile?) at a glance.
it would be nice if there was some kind of hoverover function that could show more detailed information (assuming that information is currently available) like the fleet's name, faction, current action ("pursuing your fleet") and maybe even individual ships.
« Last Edit: November 25, 2016, 03:53:10 PM by Sy »
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Alex

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Re: Cartography
« Reply #12 on: November 25, 2016, 04:11:08 PM »

Alex I see a pattern of having over world abilities have visibility redux as passive costs, which works for early game when you're a bug scurrying neath the boots of the mighty, and falls off the "exclusively works against you" side of things in midgame when there's also lots of stuff trying to avoid you but the late game has a problem of making what used to be a constantly relevant mechanic fall to the wayside once a player is big enough that visibility itself ceases to be a concern.
My question is this: what are your thoughts on the viability of implementing a submechanic into the visibility loop where not even trying to avoid excess visibility to an enemy you engage gives them a passive edhe, for example giving a boost to the amount of ships an enemy can deploy from the sides if a round, to give some vague slap on the wrist to players who persistently hard-burn blindly into fleets who aren't running dark (and therefor have a lot of info on you) who you never had any info on prior to engaging?

Regarding the late game, it's got other issues (largely stemming from player power levels and/or the selection of opponents), so I'm not really concerned about this. I suspect that it'll stop being a problem as the other issues are resolved.


1) i like the target selection menu in general, but i think radial menus are much more suited for quick button down -> move mouse -> release button actions than drop-downs. if there are three options, the default can be centered on the cursor as it is now, and the other two could be selected through quick swings to the left or right (or top or bottom). since that requires a lot less precision than selecting a small button with definite position and dimensions, it can be done quicker once the player knows where each action is -- especially if the radial options only require a direction of mouse movement from wherever the cursor is initially, regardless of how far the cursor moves (past a very small area in the center to give some leeway for selecting the default option).
having the small drop-down buttons right below the cursor already allows for quick selection, but a radial menu would be even quicker. and since this is something we'll probably be doing often and frequently, a small difference could still have a noticeable quality-of-life impact, i think.
and as a bonus, i think a radial menu with shiny icons instead of text would also just look nicer. ^^

Yeah, I get what you're saying 100%. The problem is radial menus lend themselves a lot better to icons than they do to text, especially if you need a "default action" button in the middle, as text is wider than it is tall. Icons are ok, but definitely diminish at-a-glance readability. And then you're limited in the total number of options, it gets more awkward to cancel out of the selection, you're dealing with irregularly-shaped selection areas, they take more space (and are thus more awkward to use near the edge of the screen), etc.

From past experience, I'm just extremely not a fan of radial menus. They're one of those things that sound great in theory and then, just ugh. Their best case, as you note, is a tiny bit better than a normal menu. But the assorted issues that come up not only mean the "best case" isn't likely to happen in all but the most constrained of environments, but that it isn't worth the trouble even if it did.

Not saying it couldn't be done, just that I'm very averse to doing it :)

2) are there any map changes/additions regarding fleets? specifically, identifying any fleet through the map screen requires to click on it, thereby canceiling whatever travel destination you had set. in dangerous territory, this can lead to lots of clicking and cancelling just to take a quick look at any fleets that appear on your sensors, even if most of them are easily dismissed as posing no threat just by looking at their names. and the size of a fleet's icon doesn't feel particularly accurate in displaying the fleet's actual size (or sensor profile?) at a glance.
it would be nice if there was some kind of hoverover function that could show more detailed information (assuming that information is currently available) like the fleet's name, faction, current action ("pursuing your fleet") and maybe even individual ships.

Oh, yeah, forgot to mention! One of the QoL improvements is the map supports tooltips; I've got a TODO item here to implement them for fleets and maybe a few other things.
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Sy

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Re: Cartography
« Reply #13 on: November 25, 2016, 04:46:06 PM »

Not saying it couldn't be done, just that I'm very averse to doing it :)
personally, i've always quite liked radial menus (except in cases where they require several clicks to select anything and/or have to display 10+ selection areas ^^), and preferred them over other options in the few cases where i got to choose myself (WoW UI addons come to mind). but seems you've got good reasons for not using them. :]

just out of curiosity: i'm surprised you're saying icons diminish at-a-glance readability, isn't it generally the other way round? at least once a player already has a rough idea what the different options are for, and only needs something that makes it easy to quickly execute the intended action.
probably also personal preference to some degree though, since different people process information more easily in different forms.

Oh, yeah, forgot to mention! One of the QoL improvements is the map supports tooltips; I've got a TODO item here to implement them for fleets and maybe a few other things.
oh, nice! \o/

off the top of my head, one "other thing" that i think would be nice is having hyperspace jumppoints display nearby objects, in the same way they do now in normal campaign view.
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Alex

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Re: Cartography
« Reply #14 on: November 25, 2016, 05:15:13 PM »

just out of curiosity: i'm surprised you're saying icons diminish at-a-glance readability, isn't it generally the other way round? at least once a player already has a rough idea what the different options are for, and only needs something that makes it easy to quickly execute the intended action.
probably also personal preference to some degree though, since different people process information more easily in different forms.

I meant for someone's first time encountering it, yeah. But once you know "select 2nd option to do X", you don't even need the icon at that point, really. And if you *do* need to look because maybe you got confused for a minute and don't remember which option is which, having text instead of an icon is again superior, unless it's a whole lot of text. For bonus points, text is also recognizable as a shape, especially when it's short, so you don't always have to engage the "reading" part of the brain.

So the icons are rarely actually useful, at least IMO. Most of the time they're a UI concession - there isn't enough space to lay things out with text, or it would look too busy if you did, so you put in icons because you need *something* there and it can't be text, not because icons are particularly great. On the bright side, they can look very nice.

I don't want to make too general of a statement, though. For certain things, icons do a very good job. For example, the back/forward/reload/home browser buttons, that works well because you know what these actions are going to be going in, and the icons are very clean and symbolic. But for things that are more complex and/or novel, I think it works progressively less well.

It's also a function of what else is being used. I think a mix of both works best - too much text everywhere, and it's too busy. Too many icons, and it's too arcane. But now I'm getting way off on a tangent :)


off the top of my head, one "other thing" that i think would be nice is having hyperspace jumppoints display nearby objects, in the same way they do now in normal campaign view.

That actually feels like it's more information than should not be available from the map vs actually going there, and in any case, the hyperspace map doesn't have jump-points on it in the first place.
« Last Edit: November 25, 2016, 06:33:51 PM by Alex »
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