Geoff the Medio wrote:eleazar wrote:The smaller fleet icons will be placed according to the same rules, but of-course with smaller boxes.
You haven't provided many rules, really...
1) First fleet is on 45 degree angle and at the closest edge of the system - OK.
2) The other boxes are stacked up against the first box and the system circle - Too vague.
What about different zoom levels? Now that the fleet icons only appear in several discrete sizes, the relative sizes of the fleet icons and the system circle will be different at different zooms, so that packing arrangement isn't always usable, and so a more general set of rules for positioning is needed.
OK, i'll try again with less reliance on pictures and more on words. The following is for the upper-right staying-in-system ships. Flip "left" and "right" for leaving ships.
We have the first one down right? The second box position is immediately to the left of the first, and displaced vertically (away from the star) just enough to avoid intersecting the system ring. Similarly the third position is immediately below the first box, and displaced to the right (away from the star) just enough to avoid the system ring.
Any other columns of boxes on the upper left (if there's room for more) are similarly butted up against the previous column horizontally, and displaced away from the stars center so it avoids overlapping the system ring. Any additional rows on the lower-right similarly butt up against the underside of the previous row and the system ring.
If you want to be fancy you could use a box the actual size of the non-transparent part of the icon, instead of treating all icons of a given filesize as if they filled up the pixel dimensions of their file. This would save a good bit of space since some fleet icons are a lot shorter, but may make fitting the icons together too complicated.
Geoff the Medio wrote:eleazar wrote:It is clear how you would add more than 17 fleets if (shudder) that was necessary, right?
Not really... It's not clear at all how to generalize this for different relative sizes of icons and system ring.
In short, you choose the valid, empty position which is closest to the center of the star measuring from the center of the potential box. Often you'll have two nearly equal options, In the previous example, I arbitrarily chose the one on the left, but now that i actually measure it, due to the unequal sizes of the ship icon, the lower right extremity should be chosen before the the upper left, since it is actually a bit closer. This is fixed in the current post's example.
Also, we'll need a limit on how far away from the star the fleets can pile up, when using the tiny fleet icons, because even a modest number of fleets can cover near-by stars. At level 5 there room for just 1 icon per corner. I haven't yet figured out how many additional fleets can legitimately fit in at each zoom level. Once we start using the small, differentiated fleet icons (at level 9 or 10 there should be enough room that only a very rare congregation of fleets will cause trouble with adjacent stars, so i've only made a multi-fleet icon for the tiny size.
Geoff the Medio wrote:eleazar wrote:there will be no fleet in box "8" unless there are at least 8 empires.
So are the different icons for different types of fleets never used on the map then?
I don't follow.
At the lower zooms, approximately 5-8, the tiny, generic fleet icons are used. At the higher levels the icons which roughly indicate the size of fleet and the type of ship are used. I'm not sure if that addresses the question.
Geoff the Medio wrote:I'd like to reconsider showing icons for each fleet when at very close in zooms. I doubt having 17 or more fleets at one system will be a common occurance, even with multiple empires' fleets being included.
If you want to code it in as an experiment, go ahead. That will make answering the question of weather it is a good idea easier. I think it's more likely that it won't work out. In addition to the problem of room, it could be confusing to sometimes click on an icon and bring up a particular fleet, and sometimes find it to be an aggregation of fleets.