FreeOrion

Well, if all we want to do is cover the stuff inside the system ring (the star texture and the info ring(s)) and starlanes, I think that's pretty easy to accomplish with a shader. The texture-based approach would be a real pain. It would look fine most of the time, but making it look right all of the time would be a lot of work.

EDIT: Using a texture that is a solid color, or a more continuous image than a checkerboard or alternating lines, would make the texture-based approach a bit easier to get right.
EDIT: It would also be possible to make an old-tv-style snowy-interference pattern with a shader that would look really nice. The texture-based approach can't do anything dynamic, of course.

Is there something obvious I'm missing with the stencil and wrapped texture on a sufficiently large quad method? When could that fail? There are no texture coordinate issues with the edges of the circle.


Snowy patterns are fine, but I don't think we should be doing anything time varying that large on the map. It could be rather distracting...

The issue is that if your original texture has lines 8 pixels thick, when you apply it to the system ring, the 8 pixels will turn into something more or less than 8 pixels unless the area you cover with the texture is exactly the height of the original texture. So, to keep the interference lines looking the same at all zoom levels, you need to change the texture coordinates. Calculating the exact texture coordinates you need is nontrivial, since GL doesn't guarantee pixel perfection. The net result would probably be that the lines you paint will usually be 8 pixels, but will sometimes be crisp and sometimes fuzzy, or sometimes 7 or 9 pixels.

If we can't specify a quad 8x6 thick with texture coordinates going from 0.0 to 6.0 and be sure to get perfect tiling 48 pixels thick, then we could render 6 columns of 8 pixel thick quads that are each the exact size of the texture.

* I don't think we'll want to do anything animated.

* A "snowy" noise texture works for close zooms but doesn't work well at lower zoom levels. It has an indistinct, "muddy" effect that most of the solid color effects i tried had.

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BTW the should also be used when the player mouses over a system he hasn't explored yet, because he can't pull up the sidebar when he hasn't found out what is there.

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Also some of the things discussed in this thread have a direct application outside of the galaxy map.

* For instance the Bold/Italic/Underline type that indicates Capitol/Homeworld/Shipyard should also be used in the sidebar for the planets, and other places planet/system names are listed.

* Fog of war can be applied over the sidebar planets to help reinforce that the system is currently unobserved.

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I like the idea of smoothly dropping-off the map's alpha the further you get from a fleet or planet containing a ships or satellites with long-range sensors. Since alpha can be at most 1, the blobs would merge into each other nicely showing your fog of war.

The algorithm would be straightforward: at each pixel, roll through the list of sensors and take the alpha value as the strongest sensor's signal (which is a smooth function of sensor distance; I can recommend a few function if interested).

Sensor technology advances would then simply amount to changing the characteristic radius of the sensor.

Once in place, a second step could be to have a grayscale-rendered version of the map with all the last-known information and a colorful version rendered with up-to-date info blended together, with up-to-date info strongest near sensors and out-of-date info strongest away from sensors.

Just a thought. I hope this wasn't buried in the thread already. I did read through most of it. I'm also a coder and was thinking about looking at freeorion's code

Regards,
Jack

Sounds good in theory until you ask yourself questions like, "how do you travel to stars beyond scanner range, if there is nothing visible to click on?"

A lot of information is contained in color, especially the empire colors which show who owns what. Obscuring all color info would be unnecessarily annoying.


I've been over similar ideas a couple times with mock-ups, and found it unworkable for these and other reasons. Of course i could have missed something. If you think this can really work you'll need to make mockups to show that the idea has potential.



Welcome!
We can always use more coders.

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Oof those are good points.

I can see two solutions to not seeing where you're going. One option is to use the alpha mask to draw everything BUT the stars and paths (i.e. fleets star info etc...), then draw the stars and (optionally) paths on top (maybe use a weaker alpha mask to dim the ones out of range with a 20% floor) and keep them selectable. Star types and distances can be mapped out with just telescopes after all.

Alternatively, instead of clicking stars to travel, we could click the path (which would still be visible in the total-blackout scenario).

You're absolutely right about grayscale.

Maybe I'll make a mockup if I find some time...

Yeah, but stars and lanes are the only really solid, consistent thing on the map. The background stars and gas are too dim and/or irregular to be much use in gauging where your range of vision actually ends, where it is at 50% etc.

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hmm. Could alpha-blend to a medium gray or a lighter background color for regions you can't see.

Give it a try, create a mockup.

Theoretically.

There's the potential ugliness issue, and issued of contrast.

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Done, on sidepanel and map.