Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Upgradecap]

Now that I've begun work on a secret little modding project of mine that is... well, secret so far, it has always bugged me exactly how small the planets in combat appear in relation to on the camapign. It really (well, to me atleast) destroyed a little sense of scale there. So, i had this idea of stretching and scaling-up the planet sizes to properly match what they actually are, on the combat screen, at times even filling the screen as a static background. It would then actually give the players a sense of scale, and tiny-ness, because i somehow don't think a ~400m big paragon should appear equally large as a few thousand kilometer big planet.



tl;dr stretch and scale-up planets in combat to better resemble planets.


Whaddya think?

[ValkyriaL]

A planet is a whole lot bigger than a few thousand kilometers, but i get the point, and i'd like that to be changed, or have the planets appear further away.

[Alex]

If you look at the patch notes, you'll see that planets in the campaign no appear as part of the background, with a bit of parallax. (Before, they didn't appear in the campaign at all.)

[Gothars]

If you look at the patch notes, you'll see that planets in the campaign no appear as part of the background, with a bit of parallax. (Before, they didn't appear in the campaign at all.)

But they are still quite tiny, aren't they?


@Upgradecap: I'd love it.

[K-64]

If you look at the patch notes, you'll see that planets in the campaign no appear as part of the background, with a bit of parallax. (Before, they didn't appear in the campaign at all.)

But they are still quite tiny, aren't they?


@Upgradecap: I'd love it.

Well, the size of planets in the campaign map is far too big to be realistic. I'm guessing they're the size they are so that they're actually easily visible

[Aethelric]

Realistic in reference to what?

I think they're a decent size in reference to ships (probably on the smaller side).  The sun is unrealistically small, and obviously true astronomically scale has been reduced significantly. I don't think making each system reference true to scale for the size of the bodies and the distance between them would result in better or more fun gameplay.

[K-64]

In reference to the solar system itself. At those sizes, chances are the system map would have to be hundreds, if not thousands times bigger for the scale to be "right". Though this would make it stupidly annoying to travel about the place if it took like 50 (real life) days to get anywhere.

[Flare]

Speed of travel can just be scaled up, I'm more worried about seeing everything when it's a thousand times smaller than what it is now. If I want to play a game where symbols represent everything, I'd star ruler or AI war.

I just assumes the disproportional sizes is just the in-game strategic map used by people to make it easier for people to see stuff.

[Alex]

But they are still quite tiny, aren't they?

Not really - fighting near a gas giant can make it take up most of your screen (1000 pixel diameter maximum). Basically, about as big as they can get without the textures looking pixelated.

Also, it's now OK for them to be relatively small compared to ships because, being part of the background, they're conceptually pretty far away. Whereas if they're an object in the foreground as they are in missions now, they are rather apparently too small.

I just assumes the disproportional sizes is just the in-game strategic map used by people to make it easier for people to see stuff.

Yeah, that sounds like a really good way to look at it.

A realistic scale is one of those things that, while in theory nice, just isn't going to happen for practical reasons.

[Flare]

Yeah, that sounds like a really good way to look at it.

A realistic scale is one of those things that, while in theory nice, just isn't going to happen for practical reasons.

It'd be nice if we get some indication of that.

[Upgradecap]

I wasn't suggesting that the planet sizes be realistic in the campaign guys - just that the in-combat background planets be stretched and increased in size to better match the ship sizes, as the size ratio is seen on the campaign map. I suppose alex is right though - stretching the planets too far would mean that the textures would be far too pixelated to be looking anything but ugly.