FreeOrion

Enough people were posting on how good the planetary map looked, and their various ideas, in a thread that wasn't the appropriate place. So I've created this one so you can post your ideas.

Please feel free to repost from the other thread if you want it in the appropriate place. This is the place to discuss the map, offer new artwork, write suggestions, etc, relating to the artwork.

Here's a screenshot of the galaxy map as it currently looks:

Looks fantastic.

I have a few questions:

(1) Are the stars in the background hand drawn by someone or grabbed from a real picture?

(2) Are the nebulae just 'window dressing', or will they have a role in game (at some point in the future)? If the latter, how will you create them for each galaxy map?

(3) Who did your planets? - they are great.

Maybe nebulae could affect sensors/ECM/ECCM/cloak/etc., and btw I still think random comet's or whatever should streak by in the backround. It would look awesome!

This is the first I've seen this with the sidebar and the nebulas.....wow, it looks great! I can't wait till I get this move over with so I can start contributing again!

_________________
FreeOrion Programmer

And we look forward to getting you back

I have revised my pervious post to reflect only galaxy map.

-As for the comet streak, instead of making it subtle, we can do that too, but make one particular comet obvious to indicate that an hour real time has gone by to help players keep track of real time.
-Fog of war? Sensor?
-I like the layers as artists might change the interface appearance when significant achievement is made like in moo1

As I stated before, it looks great--better than all other x games I seen--like way better.

_________________

Wow, just did a fresh rebuild... looks... just great

@skdiw:
ehm, skdiw, some of your "suggestions" doesn't deal with the galaxy map, therefore they are offtopic.

"I didn't hear any replys regarding my ideas so I'm posting again" - and that allows you to spam? Most of your points have their own topic, feel free to use them (and brainstorming/game design doesn't mean "everything that get named here will be implemented like you want it"). Geez, everytime I read your posts I get upset, Im still trying to find the reason for it, maybe it's just your writing style... or is it just your behaviour like you are one of the chef designers?

[edit]
oh, and I found some mistakes in your posts lately, and I have just found a nice quotation: "it's hard to follow you skdiw [replaced just a name] with spelling errors".

_________________
zaba zaba zud zud

Point taken. You are right and wrong. It is partly becuase of my personality and also becuase I'm busy recently so I just copy/paste as I didn't have time to revise as I gloss through the thread. I double posted because I don't want this to get passed unless it is what we really want. My intention is best for FO.

I'll edit right now and kill the UI, fleet and side panel stuff.

Anyone is free to pm me.

_________________

That might work for a fun time indicator. Would have to see how it works though, might look bad



There won't be fog of war in the sense of invisible systems or deep space items to find. There will be in the sense that you won't be able to see what's orbiting systems far enough away. I don't believe the issue of radars/sensors has been talked about yet though, but I could be wrong. Either way, it won't be in 0.1.



I think it looks astounding too, but even now there's room for improvement

looking good!

- Purely an eye-candy question, but do the planets spin?
- Would it be better to use bars as well as numbers to represent the planet values (lightbulb, population, mining etc.)?
- As of now the area next to the planets look kind of empty... (probably because you intend to add in more things?)

edit: spelling.

Maybe the empty space above the combo boxes (where buildings are) could have a picture of the building, that would be cool.

Also does the sidebar stay fixed as you move around the galaxy map when zoomed right in.

Comets would be cool, to make the map more lively. Maybe comets could even hit your planets.

looks great. The only change I would make would be to have the information around the planet be verticle instead of wrapping around the planet. I think it would be easier to read at a glance.

Looks Great

Wondering if we should start thinking about the aprearace of StarLanes, how they look or glow.

Start putting fleet Icons on the map (just pasting at the least) to start getting size/color and other cosmetic issues desided.

I think we need to focus on having easily accesable System summary information because I suspect many functions will be organized at the system level and we will want to have that information easiy accessible.

Oh and I like the Spinning planet Idea too!

_________________
Fear is the Mind Killer - Frank Herbert -Dune

Personally, I think it looks better wrapped because it is more interesting.

As for the empty space on the side panel, I was thinking of useful information like planetary specials or classification... as oppose some eye candy.

It's all good

_________________

Re: Spinning planets: I don't see this in our future. We currently have some rather nice but 2d images, and there's not another view of any of the planets to which to rotate.

Re: Arced text layout: This is not really up for debate; this is part of the interface design as it was passed.

Re: Fleet icons: This is next. Some groundwork code needs to be laid down first, though, so it won't be that immediately available. Fleet icons will look like they do in Burndaddy's mockup.

Re: Starlane appearance: Even though there are no starlanes in v0.1, I was going to do the starlane generation and display sometime before the release of v0.1, so stay tuned for that as well. I'm planning to reproduce the super-cool starlanes from Burndaddy's mockup as closely as possible.