A minimap?

Heresy!

yeah theres a button to see things at that scale.

.... OK, impressive: You have successfully completed the endeavor of exceeding my extremely potent skills at disjointing unnecessarily complex formulations to reduce their components to meaningful nature. Please say that again -- more simply?

Hes saying that because a compass is meant to deal with only 4 directions it couldn't possibly be used in space. for in space you would at least need 2 more directions, or shall we say a Z-axis.

However, he is being very narrowminded, a compass isn't restricted by four directions, it can have many many more.

You know I don't want to go back to Homeworld(great Ponie Gods smite me), but they did have a coordinate plane(a rough one), that could be a nice overlay idea.

Yeah, well, given that my primary description was "directional reference" instead of "compass", you'd think he'd understand the latter is just the label most people would use

We won't be adding a compass or a mini-map.

Well then, that stops our arguement.

I was worried for a second that a compass might actually be added. Thanks Yarlen.

how about a sextant ?

meh, octants are better

nope

no

wrong

uh uh

no, what I mean is that a compass has two forms of direction, (we're going to go ahead and ignore its overlayed circular nature for now) one of which is absolutist while the other is referential, and in turn one is dual-cardinal while the other is a simple loop. note: if you continue going "north" you, at some point, end up going "south" before you can go north again, whereas east and west are simply means of localized directioning.
its a weird definition I know, but its simple enough.

one can overlay another directional reference to the compass, "up" and "down", however now you're getting even more complex. determining "up" and "down" now becomes a matter of centripetal relativity.

the best way to think of a compass is as a description of motion relative to a vector facing an arbitrary direction labeled "north", if you move toward the direction of the vector you are moving "north", opposite you move "south". East and west are descriptions of motion counter and clockwise respectively, and finally "up" and "down" would be description of distance from the vector base. the problem with space is ultimately its references, from where does this vector originate? in which direction is it facing? as was suggested before you *could* use the local star, but then between systems you have more problems. it shouldnt come as a surprise to anyone that the compass is based on a vector, seeing as thats exactly how an electromagnetic field is described.

Schem's trying to act smart again

must be his new year resolution

naw, my last two year's resolutions, "act stupid" ran out this year

truth be told you could describe the whole circular motion of the galaxy as a vector and use that for the game, but beyond the galactic level there is no determiner, and its hardly fun to arbitrarily say "thats the center of the galaxy!"

Seeing as it's all relative, and you are fighting on a simplified flat plain as the ability to move in the extra dimension was destroyed in the great war of 4072. How about we have a compass that points to 0 degrees on a wheel of 360?

Schod, you are quite correct that any such directional reference would be an artificial distinction created solely for the improvement of communication in terms of relative direction by providing an artificial absolute direction with no external meaning to it but the direction itself.

Its still doable, just label a direction "0" and go from there to "360"! Homeworld had it, and it was a good idea there, as its a good idea here.

i believe i used this example before, but anyone ever heard of zero longitude?

This was meant as an edit, but Eets got in the way:

Oh, and btw: at least one of your "wrongs" was dead wrong, because my primary referent -- what I was asking for -- was directional reference, so unless your trying to say that I didn't say what I meant to say (as, clearly, I was) your just being your usual annoying self.

Grow up already!

Edit: Oh, and eets is right -- what I'm asking for is the spacial equivalent to zero longitude, simply an agreed-upon referent displayed in game to help with spacial co-ordination.

Any kind of compass bearing marker - which I agree should be there for the sake of ease of coordination between cooperating players - should be a constant independant marker. The 0 to 360 idea is a good one. I would add that such a marker should be a toggle, with the default setting being off: players then maintain power over what could be considered clutter.

On the other hand, is the playfield in Sins static? In other words, you can`t rotate the playfield can you? If not, we don`t really need a compass marker... just use left, right, up, and down(!).

Here is another idea. A toggle not of a compass marker but of a vector graphic navigation grid, so that players could call out a grid reference ("A6") and meet someone there; this would reduce the need to carefully comb through planetary names. Such a grid would replace a compass marker.

I seriously doubt you told your ally "the fleet at degree 0" because its far too vague, distances would also be nescessary. Even still its not a complete "compass" form of differentiation.

of course I am

but still, your original statement was qualified by "like a compass" which invalidates it.

taking things a little too personally much?

again its simply too vague, you would need distances from the origin to determine exact locations.

nope

this idea fits much better, its absolute and doesnt deal with unnescessary polar coordinate systems (which are analogous to compasses only on extremely discrete scales)

shoddy, you, with all your ego, should know that humans would automatically look at a map of the known universe and point to Earth as the center of it. Same for the Advent, and as to the Vaz, Earth is their ultimate goal of destruction ^.^

Earth???? pfft. Everyone knows the universe revolves around Coruscant.



Really, though, Is the "compass" (aka directional reference) really necessary? Sure, you could say "point it at the star" but why bother when the star is so clearly visible, thus already an easy to use and identify as a reference. I haven't really seen people flooding into the forums screaming "I'm lost! I can't find me homeworld!"

As far as I'm concerned, a "compass" is just another piece of UI that just isn't needed. And I really get sick of RTS's and TBS's taking 1/3 of my shiny new LCD real estate for a drab and non-scalable UI.

So when Yarlen said


I said

Good thing I'm in no way asking for positional as opposed to directional communication.

Right at the moment, planet names / pings make for great positional communication, but there is a huge difference between that and directional information.

Um, of course you can rotate the playfield... Don't even tell me you play with the default angle, its a great cinegraphic angel but impossible to play from. First thing I always do is switch it to a top-down 90 degrees view.

That'd be stupid, since it would vary depending on where you're taking the "too the star" reading from.

Guys, have any of you (with the exception of Schod, who I know has played team games in the past -- and ticked me off by trying to tell me to take the right when that had no relevence to my PoV) tried to play team games in the past?

By human nature, when trying to co-ordinate defenses and offenses, you find yourself wanting a directional referent so you could say your focusing on the southern edge of the battlefield, or your fortifications along the east will hold fine, but the north are iffy... Yes, you can use planet names / pings but that takes longer, you could use play colors but that doesn't work very well, but you can only use directions if you've agreed upon a referent in game, which is harder than it sounds.

some sort of derectional / grid reference would be good and in my oppinion a grid one would be better because you can then just say that the higher numbers/letters are one direction and the lower ones are the other simple directional nav as well as meaning that you can do positional as well as directional instructions and all it would have to be is a grid in the background that pops up in galaxy veiw of course it would have to be togleable