Something like this.... (20,000 polygons give or take a few hundred)

SWEET! That looks great. Add some blue and purple tones and it would be awesome! I can really see Sins being the defacto space sim engine with little effort on the part of the developers.

Man all it would/should take is for one of the IP holding houses for [any major sci-fi franchise name here] to see stuff like this and an officially licensed game should be in the bag. It could prove to be a very lucrative side business model for IC.

Someone should send some screenies or even video to JMS via his site/forums and get his opinion and maybe support for an official B5 product.

yeah a compas would be very handy

u could make a 3d ball type compass in te bottom left corner under the empire tree or in the top right or something, or where u see the picture when u have a ship selected, when u have nothin selected it could show the compass instead of the picture it shows now or something.

A compass in space...where there's no north, south, east, or west.... :NOTSURE: 

bah, there is no reason WHY longitudinal zero should be where it is, but that doesn't mean that we dont have longitude

that said, i dont care, as long as you can turn the thing OFF

Gyro baby!!! The "N" direction should be based off of the players homeworld orientation at the start of the game or simply enough the Homeworld could be the North point.

... so you have a constantly rotating north that doesnt match up with anyone elses?

Sure and if people are allied then there should be a needle added for each player (in that players color) that orients itself their homeworld. Additionally if the devs really wanted to get elegant they could make an option to turn of different players.

... i hope to god you are either kidding or drunk...

or u orient the compas to the solar system currently being viewed, giving it a standard north, south, east and west the same for each player, like u could link the compas to the sun and make all north's point to eachother.

like if there are 4 solar systems, make te sides pointing to the middle the north and the side pointing outward south, this way each solar system can have its own "gravitational field/direction" and u get no confusions about whats north and whats west.

this way in in a multi star game the north is actually the middle of the playing field, but you wont really notice since u only use the compass inside the systems, on the star level u could just name the stars to attack from since there wont be more than five or something.

what about systems of war where theres a star in the exact middle of the map?

that is waht i was thinking of though, just not so complex, just have a set point for all players and stars that is an arbitrary north and stick with that, no need to get all techy about it

Go play Homeworld! (I can't believe I'm saying that... that game sucks) In Homeworld 2, if you go to the sensors screen and look around, you'll see that theres a "compass" showing from 0 degrees, to 90 degrees, to 180, to 270, back to 0 (aka 360). Works really well, gives an orientation the players can use.

Copy it slavishly, or not so slavishly.



I'm in agreement there... even for spartan that was, how to put it... wierd?

Man you guys are no fun. Someone thinks of a way to over complicate something while making it look pretty or dare I say sexy at the same time with inherent possible extreme data overload for mere mortals and you all rain on the parade.

[Takes ball and goes home]

the sun has a field of its own, holding the planets, and even the milkyway is held together by one force or another and has a top and bottom.

a compas merely indicates the + and - side of the "donut" as this is how these fields usualy look if u'd make em visible (though the center is very small, otherise u'd flote of the poles).

east and west are actualy relative and actualy show if u will go clockwise or couterclockwise to the rotation of the field (left or right).

now since the planets dont rotate around the system and the starsystems dont rotate around eachother, it shouldn't be to hard to make an arrow that always points to the middle of the map.

http://www.eve-files.com/media/12/Ship_Chart_4096_With_Big_Names.jpg

Hihi, this should be enough

Anyway, a nice design: http://www.digitalreality.hu/files/games/shots/upload/solon/solon_001.jpg

The Eve chart looks very cool. If those things are to scale. Some of those ships seem like they are bigger then many asteroids and bordering on the side of small moons.

space whale anyone?

You could sipmlify the compass and make a universal left, right, up and down.

Only if it has a giant Compass the Space Ponnies are using to control magnets!

you realize that a compass is a nonuniform structure right, it couldnt possibly be used in space. it only appears linearly uniform because its on an extremely discrete scale

Still its a start

your better off with arbitrary star positions.

I mentioned this in another thread, but it might make more sense to be discussed here - I'm feeling that maybe there needs to be a mini-map introduced somehow...

majik anyone?