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ExtraNoise posted:More work on the Modern Age Mod minimap: (Now I really wanna see the main map with a similar style, but I suspect that would be quite a challenge to make look good.)
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Jul 22, 2013 08:56
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I'm pretty sure maps are supposed to be flat.
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Jul 22, 2013 09:46
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Little Abigail posted:I'm pretty sure maps are supposed to be flat.
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Jul 22, 2013 10:47
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Paradox makes their maps like that so it's pretty irrelevant. Most people don't care that much even if they know the scale is wrong.
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Jul 22, 2013 10:56
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RagnarokAngel posted:Paradox makes their maps like that so it's pretty irrelevant. Most people don't care that much even if they know the scale is wrong. He means the circular lines, not the projection.
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Jul 22, 2013 11:02
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RagnarokAngel posted:Paradox makes their maps like that so it's pretty irrelevant. Most people don't care that much even if they know the scale is wrong. Actually, what he's got there is a perfectly legitimate coordinate system for a globe. He's basically treating a point in the mid-Atlanic as 90o "latitude" with lines of "longitude" (for a lack of better terms) radiating from it just like we normally do with the North Pole. Of course, he's superimposing this on a completely different projection which is all kinds of wrong, but the idea of the circles and radiating lines is a legitimate way of representing a globe on a flat plane.
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Jul 22, 2013 11:07
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Do you think Paradox games will ever start modeling the world as an actual globe? I think that would be cool but I bet someone is going to point out a really obvious problem with it (other than the technical difficulty). Are distances distorted by turning the world into a plane? I always wondered this when I was watching my max colonial range increase.
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Jul 22, 2013 11:21
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fuf posted:Do you think Paradox games will ever start modeling the world as an actual globe? I think that would be cool but I bet someone is going to point out a really obvious problem with it (other than the technical difficulty). I sure hope we don't. What would it add except a worse interface?
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Jul 22, 2013 11:23
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Wiz posted:I sure hope we don't. What would it add except a worse interface? Grognard Cred. Because of the worse interface.
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Jul 22, 2013 11:30
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Wiz posted:I sure hope we don't. What would it add except a worse interface? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAyzVA8Z9xI You take that back 
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Jul 22, 2013 11:34
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Wiz posted:I sure hope we don't. What would it add except a worse interface? Now, I don't think a globe view would be needed before WW2 really, since the amount of things going on up there is pretty limited, and even WW2 could probably do without it. For the Cold War and forward though, I think it would actually add to the game*, plus it would be much easier to make it really flow with the overall look of the interface. In a game like EU though, all I really want is for the spherical world to be there for calculations, even if the map itself is completely flat. *If you zoom in as close as one usually does in these games, the sphere starts looking pretty flat. A Buttery Pastry fucked around with this message at 11:54 on Jul 22, 2013 |
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Jul 22, 2013 11:52
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Wiz posted:I sure hope we don't. What would it add except a worse interface? This. The only situation I can imagine where it would be worth doing would be a cold war game with a lot of stuff going on at the poles for some reason or similar.
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Jul 22, 2013 12:40
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If anything a WW2 setting would benefit from a globe map more than anything else, Cold War included, since the arctic convoys were an absolutely critical element of the OTL war: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_convoys_of_World_War_II But Wiz is right in that the interface would be much less usable, and I can't imagine it being worth that cost. In a hypothetical reality where trackballs had won over mice and touchpads a globe projection would probably be great (hold a button to spin the ball like it were the globe), but we don't live in that reality and our flat pointing devices favour a flat map. Plus if necessary you could still simulate the whole thing on a traditional Pdox map by making Arctic sea zones really large and really quick to cross - although I'm not sure how you'd communicate this fact to the players. NihilCredo fucked around with this message at 12:45 on Jul 22, 2013 |
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Jul 22, 2013 12:43
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Some sort of weird SciFi setting involving orbital space combat and boreholes through the Earth could probably use a globe interface but otherwise seems like a lot of work for nothing.
Moridin920 fucked around with this message at 12:56 on Jul 22, 2013 |
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Jul 22, 2013 12:46
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fuf posted:Do you think Paradox games will ever start modeling the world as an actual globe? I think that would be cool but I bet someone is going to point out a really obvious problem with it (other than the technical difficulty). There will always be some distortion when turning a three dimensional surface into a two dimensional one. With the latitude/longitude system we use for our globe North/South directions are fairly consistent, but on any rectangular map projection (like the Mercator projection, a common one) there will be stretching in the east/West direction. Most rectangular ones will set the Equator to be the line with no distortion, but when you do that the farther you go from the Equator the bigger the distortion. This is why Greenland looks bigger than South America on the Mercator Projection. There are many, many ways of trying to minimize this distortion: some do it by splitting the map into pieces, some do it by bending things so that the distances are preserved but the shape is distorted. You can read more than you probably wanted to know about it all here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_projection. So far as these games's maps go, programming in a globe may be more of a pain in the rear end than it's worth, especially since the level of detail in the map increases as yo zoom in. As A Buttery Pastry said, the globe looks closer to flat the closer to get to it, so I don't think the CK2 map would warrant a curved map even if it were easy to do. EU and Vicky could probably get away with rectangular maps like they have now since very little goes on the extreme North and South. You could take East/West stretching into account by reducing the time necessary to travel between provinces and sea zones according to how far from the Equator they are. I don't know enough about flight and missile capabilities during WWII to say whether the Arctic route from Europe to North America was at all practical then, but afterward it would definitely make a strategic difference when talking about ICBMs and whatnot. A globe as opposed to a rectangular projection can make a huge difference when the shortest route from Washington to Moscow is over the Arctic.
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Jul 22, 2013 12:48
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Dinosaur Universalis. You need a globe in order to show plate tectonic movements.
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Jul 22, 2013 12:50
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Paradox just uploaded a new teaser trailer for... something on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHsOUrhhKmY I am hoping that it's some sort of a Dark Age/Age of Migration thing 
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Jul 22, 2013 13:28
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It says Paradox Interactive in the corner, not Paradox Development Studio. Then again, shouldn't there be the developer's name as well if it were just a PI published game?
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Jul 22, 2013 13:47
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NihilCredo posted:But Wiz is right in that the interface would be much less usable, and I can't imagine it being worth that cost. In a hypothetical reality where trackballs had won over mice and touchpads a globe projection would probably be great (hold a button to spin the ball like it were the globe), but we don't live in that reality and our flat pointing devices favour a flat map. *For a Cold War game. In any other, limiting the movement to touching the Poles would be enough. Actually, I kinda feel like making a mock-up of this, just to see what it would look like. NihilCredo posted:Plus if necessary you could still simulate the whole thing on a traditional Pdox map by making Arctic sea zones really large and really quick to cross - although I'm not sure how you'd communicate this fact to the players. Durokar posted:Paradox just uploaded a new teaser trailer for... something on YouTube.
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Jul 22, 2013 13:58
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The only interface problem I can think of with a globe is that you can't zoom out all the way and see the whole world.
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Jul 22, 2013 15:01
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Making the map a sphere would be completely pointless anyway, because of the way the map actually works. Army positions aren't stored in map coordinates (although the position of the figures on the display is). Instead there's a database of province adjacencies that says "Toulouse is adjacent to Carcassonne, and there's a distance of X units between them." Changing the map to a globe would be purely cosmetic.
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Jul 22, 2013 15:07
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fuf posted:The only interface problem I can think of with a globe is that you can't zoom out all the way and see the whole world. Fister Roboto posted:Making the map a sphere would be completely pointless anyway, because of the way the map actually works. Army positions aren't stored in map coordinates (although the position of the figures on the display is). Instead there's a database of province adjacencies that says "Toulouse is adjacent to Carcassonne, and there's a distance of X units between them." Changing the map to a globe would be purely cosmetic.
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Jul 22, 2013 15:25
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A Buttery Pastry posted:You can't really do that in any of the games anyway, can you? Admittedly a globe would be more constrained, but I'm not sure how big a deal it would be. Speaking of which, it would be cool to have a button that takes a 'mega-resolution' screen shot of the entire map, so you don't have to stitch it together in photshop and have funny seems because of the 3d projection. Like you press ctrl-F12 or something and it renders the entire map out at some resolution you can set in an .ini file, like 12,000x6000 or something. EDIT: I do kinda like the idea of a 'real' globe, but the benefits aren't really worth the fuss and bother. Maybe if Paradox does a space game. Like a EU style game set in our near future solar system, where you can colonize the planets and send fleets back and forth and such.
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Jul 22, 2013 15:32
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Fister Roboto posted:Making the map a sphere would be completely pointless anyway, because of the way the map actually works. Army positions aren't stored in map coordinates (although the position of the figures on the display is). Instead there's a database of province adjacencies that says "Toulouse is adjacent to Carcassonne, and there's a distance of X units between them." Changing the map to a globe would be purely cosmetic. That said, it would be possible* to apply some distance scaling based on latitude to make larger provinces in the northern and southern extremities functionally smaller**, and that might actually be an interesting idea.*** * This would fall apart for provinces that had substantial north-south geography. ** This might need to be tweaked a bit to make the east-west scaling more aggressive than the north-south scaling based on province dimensions. *** This would probably be confusing.
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Jul 22, 2013 15:33
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A Buttery Pastry posted:Hmm, it looks cool overall, but what are those circles supposed to be? Radar? The way you've drawn them, the world is literally a flat plane, instead of a sphere. Maybe I'm the only person that's annoyed by stuff like that but, I think you should look into making it make more sense. Maybe add a bit more pop to the outlines as well? It's just intended for effect. I could tone it down a little, but I do like something being there. Making something that makes sense is tough because the world is already distorted quite a bit from actual proportions.
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Jul 22, 2013 16:06
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Well, if I'm wrong and province distances are actually based on province position, then making the map into a sphere would increase the game's workload significantly. Cartesian coordinates and vectors are a hell of a lot easier to calculate than spherical surface coordinates and great circle paths.
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Jul 22, 2013 16:21
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A Buttery Pastry posted:You can't really do that in any of the games anyway, can you? 
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Jul 22, 2013 16:29
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A Buttery Pastry posted:That's the cache right? The one that's calculated based on the map? The formula for calculating that is half the discussion we're having. (Specifically whether it acknowledges that the map is purely a representation of the world, or if it calculates distances as if the map itself is the world.) You could do proper spherical distance from a flat map. Run the projection equations backwards (EU4 is the Miller Cylindrical, right?), then use the great-circle distance formula. So it's, uh,    which looks scary, but you'd only have to do it once for every pair of adjacent provinces, so about... 4,500 times? Which is nothing, really. I dunno, maybe that's already how they calculate distance. Fister Roboto posted:Well, if I'm wrong and province distances are actually based on province position, then making the map into a sphere would increase the game's workload significantly. Cartesian coordinates and vectors are a hell of a lot easier to calculate than spherical surface coordinates and great circle paths. Distances are cached. The game doesn't have to recalculate them every time something wants to move.
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Jul 22, 2013 16:46
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ExtraNoise posted:It's just intended for effect. I could tone it down a little, but I do like something being there. Making something that makes sense is tough because the world is already distorted quite a bit from actual proportions. Not the whole world, the Poles are still missing.  (You got me, hadn't considered that the resolution of the game changed how much you can see.) Autonomous Monster posted:You could do proper spherical distance from a flat map. Run the projection equations backwards (EU4 is the Miller Cylindrical, right?), then use the great-circle distance formula. So it's, uh,
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Jul 22, 2013 17:01
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Part Seven of Quill18's England game is up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXuJsqrVwD4 As much as I like these, they're making the next three weeks seem like an eternity. 
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Jul 22, 2013 17:49
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Haha, it's not three wee- loving hell it's three weeks. 
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Jul 22, 2013 18:01
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Autonomous Monster posted:Distances are cached. The game doesn't have to recalculate them every time something wants to move. That's what I thought. Still, making the map spherical would add nothing but  immersion
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Jul 22, 2013 18:04
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Fister Roboto posted:That's what I thought. Still, making the map spherical would add nothing but In regards to a Cold War game, though, it would be useful for gameplay, since flying bombers and firing missiles over the Arctic was one of the plans/fears of a Cold-War-goes-Hot scenario, and why there were Nike missile sites in places like Detroit.
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Jul 22, 2013 18:11
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Fister Roboto posted:That's what I thought. Still, making the map spherical would add nothing but
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Jul 22, 2013 18:28
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WeaponGradeSadness posted:Part Seven of Quill18's England game is up:
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Jul 22, 2013 18:31
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A Buttery Pastry posted:Or are you trying to say that the spherical map would not have any advantages over a flat map that takes this into account? That's exactly what I'm saying. A spherical map would needlessly complicate things, since you only move units from province to province.
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Jul 22, 2013 18:38
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A spherical map would be important for a Cold War game because otherwise you run into problems such as southern continents being overpowered in Defcon.
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Jul 22, 2013 18:57
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What they need to do is just prevent players from zooming out far enough to see the flaws of the projection. That would prevent all this  .
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Jul 22, 2013 19:00
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Fister Roboto posted:That's exactly what I'm saying. A spherical map would needlessly complicate things, since you only move units from province to province. the advent of ICBMs, long-range bombers and submarines would benefit from it in terms of gameplay I think, and the setting would probably also enable a graphical style that fit a globe better. It would be a pretty un-Paradoxy look though. Puella Magissima posted:What they need to do is just prevent players from zooming out far enough to see the flaws of the projection. That would prevent all this
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Jul 22, 2013 19:05
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Vodos posted:Oh my, he actually gave his AI allies provinces for helping him, how Canadian! He could have totally gotten Antwerp instead, or made France release a country. On the other hand, he seemed to not at all see Scotland's massive pretender rebels as a problem, which considering his plan to diplo-annex Scotland, would have been higher priority .
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Jul 22, 2013 19:21
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