AI War II - Far Zoom First Look

[Draco18s]

Got it.  I'm running ten million miles a minute for now

Fast enough to get to Alpha Centauri in just under 12 hours!

[Stormking]

    The map certainly reminds me a lot of Sins of a Solar Empire. Hope that will yet change!


What do you mean in terms of that?  You want it to change in what way?  I haven't played Sins since literally 2008 or so, and I didn't particularly care for it, so I'm very out of date with it.

a) size. I know it's supposed to be smaller, but I hope it won't feel too claustrophobic. Will show during beta I guess.

b) wormhole placement. couldn't find anything in the design doc where they are. I know them being in the right direction, but if they're all at the outer edge, I think that will get boring quicker than the original. Heck, even them all being in the exact right direction might get old too quick, so I wouldn't want to lock that in just yet.

[Vyndicu]

a) size. I know it's supposed to be smaller, but I hope it won't feel too claustrophobic. Will show during beta I guess.

b) wormhole placement. couldn't find anything in the design doc where they are. I know them being in the right direction, but if they're all at the outer edge, I think that will get boring quicker than the original. Heck, even them all being in the exact right direction might get old too quick, so I wouldn't want to lock that in just yet.

I would actually prefer that the wormhole show up at the solar system edge instead of what we had in AI War Classic where wormhole could and will show up anywhere.

I had some map on Fallen Spire where the wormhole was so "close to each other" that I could not use it as a defense choke-hold at all.

Although if the wormhole exit were fairly close to each other (given how solar system are generated unlikely) we still have the same problem. I will certainly look out for this in beta.

[chemical_art]

To that video:

<3

[Misery]

My initial thoughts upon seeing this:  1, the ships sure look cool when zoomed in.  It'll be interesting to see what they look like during a fight.   But then also, 2.  The scale when zoomed out absolutely bugs me.   It goes instantly from looking like you have tons of ships, to looking like you have, like, 5 or so.  It's like the whole "massive scale" aspect just completely breaks down upon going towards full zoom out. 

A bit negative-sounding, yes, but... just being honest as always.

[jenya]

me too remembered about Sins of a Solar Empire, spent long hours in that game a few years ago. This overhead view, 2D plane, planet, circle around and a direction to outside. I guess the similarity is unavoidable because of space theme, please check this video as an example, at 0:18

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DCv4Hq0mlM

[jenya]

please be aware that Unity has a floating point limit (it uses floats for physics, not doubles) which affects scene sizes unless sectoring is used:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Unity3D/comments/1x9qdf/is_there_any_real_way_to_extend_unitys_floating

[PokerChen]

2.  The scale when zoomed out absolutely bugs me.   It goes instantly from looking like you have tons of ships, to looking like you have, like, 5 or so.  It's like the whole "massive scale" aspect just completely breaks down upon going towards full zoom out. 

It's worth waiting for a combat mockup, I think. In the Total War series, where units are strictly ordered into formations, a large battle can still be seen in sufficient details to retain massive-ness, although individual soldiers might be only a few pixels. There should be room to play with here by retaining a couple of polygon's worth of speck+exhaust.
One of the devices other sci-fi use is to have larger explosions of strike craft that can be seen in far zoom, which allows player to mentally fill in details that are not explicitly visible - this would also help.

[Vyndicu]

In total war, you have way too much discrete control over your unit's formation. You can control how wide down to number of men on the frontline. That may not translate very well into a game like this.

Although I do see where you are coming from.