doctorfrog's thread of bad ideas

[doctorfrog]

Mantis: http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=13721

Snippet: "We once had a ship [on the solar system screen], and now it's gone. I'd like to bring it back, since it was the only thing "connecting" me to the screen. Even if you want to do away with the "meaning" of the ship moving (and time passing while movement occurs), having the ship on there at least provides me a metaphor with which I can relate to the game."

Gauging community support for this.

Before: I'm a ship, moving through space. I'm visiting planets, moving from place to place, like a busy bee.
Now: I'm... where am I? I'm just clicking a map now. Am I looking at a readout on my ship? Am I giving movement orders? Am I teleporting through space instantaneously, or engaging in some kind of telepresence? What's connecting me to this screen?

[nas1m]

I think this already has been addressed?

From the .852 patch notes:

Now when you move to a different spot on the metamap it briefly animates a ship hopping from point to point for visual feedback. The movement itself is still instant, this is just an animation.
Thanks to Cyborg for inspiring this change.

Or is this not what you are after?

[doctorfrog]

Jeez this game development moves fast.

I just updated tonight, and have been playing 851. Guess my Steam account didn't get the memo yet.

[nas1m]

No, it's simply not out yet .

[doctorfrog]

New feature idea: ships on the main map leave behind faint "stains" or colored contrails. The effect is cumulative, so that heavy traffic moving from one planet to another leaves a brighter, heavier stain. Stains fade over time, so that they reflect relatively recent history.

The result is certainly pretty, but also communicates the following useful information:
- displays a "heatmap" of kinds of activity are occurring in between planets, indicating their relations (obviously valuable stuff): piracy migration, warships, trade, immigration, disease, diplomatic overtures, etc.
- visually indicates recent ship movement if you didn't immediately catch it
- visually indicates a planet population's recent memory of an attack or diplomatic overture by another planet
- this information is viewable immediately on the main screen, without going to an interstitial screen (but should be able to toggle off, or available only from holding a key down)

Issues:
- overlapping trails can cause just useless strands of white, so you may need to separate the trails into "lanes," resulting in broad rainbows leaping from planet to planet
- no doubt this is complicated to pull off
- likely to be difficult to immediately understand (but what isn't)

[x4000]

New feature idea: ships on the main map leave behind faint "stains" or colored contrails. The effect is cumulative, so that heavy traffic moving from one planet to another leaves a brighter, heavier stain. Stains fade over time, so that they reflect relatively recent history.

The result is certainly pretty, but also communicates the following useful information:
- displays a "heatmap" of kinds of activity are occurring in between planets, indicating their relations (obviously valuable stuff): piracy migration, warships, trade, immigration, disease, diplomatic overtures, etc.
- visually indicates recent ship movement if you didn't immediately catch it
- visually indicates a planet population's recent memory of an attack or diplomatic overture by another planet
- this information is viewable immediately on the main screen, without going to an interstitial screen (but should be able to toggle off, or available only from holding a key down)

Issues:
- overlapping trails can cause just useless strands of white, so you may need to separate the trails into "lanes," resulting in broad rainbows leaping from planet to planet
- no doubt this is complicated to pull off
- likely to be difficult to immediately understand (but what isn't)

Dealbreaker issue: it would eat your GPU.

[PokerChen]

 Heat maps would indeed be nice, although even us academics would have difficulty running a high-resolution version live as suggested without dedicated hardware. Plenty of research projects bump into this kind of network complexity, and the easiest way to visualise them isn't always doable.

 A simplified node-edge version would be smallest impact if you just wanted "general activity at planet / between planets" without sorting them into all the sub-categories listed. It could still look pretty - ~10 planets + all connections aren't that many connections in total. Easier to handle than storing particles at each position on the ant-trail grid.

[doctorfrog]

Heat maps would indeed be nice, although even us academics would have difficulty running a high-resolution version live as suggested without dedicated hardware. Plenty of research projects bump into this kind of network complexity, and the easiest way to visualise them isn't always doable.

 A simplified node-edge version would be smallest impact if you just wanted "general activity at planet / between planets" without sorting them into all the sub-categories listed. It could still look pretty - ~10 planets + all connections aren't that many connections in total. Easier to handle than storing particles at each position on the ant-trail grid.

I'm not sure I understand you correctly, but what I was thinking was that, the game would keep track of, for example, how many warships streamed from one planet to another. Just the number. Then have one "streak" with a level of intensity based on that number. The number decays over time, and so does the streak. So it's not so much persisting the effect of each ship, as it is just representing them based on a number. Seems like it would take a load off processing. (IANAP)

I assume that the cool factor + practical use of a heatmap is probably not worth the effort (it may well be a novelty that will quickly be switched off), but I can't help but think of ways to support the  idea.