I am torn on this issue. I played MOO3 for a little while and the 3D map made me think differently and took me some time to adjust it in each session. If you have a 3D map you need to be able to rotate the map in order to understand it. While I think it has strategic and replay value, it would also be very time consuming to play (good or bad depending on your desire at the time).My thought would be to add it as a map style. So maybe an expansion that took the existing maps and made them available as 3D options. I could also see this dragging out Multiplayer unless turns are timed or someother restriction to keep the game flowing.



As for trade, I completely don't understand it. I assume its because I always seem to be at war and really never get to use diplomacy to setup trade. The AI's seem too agressive and as soon as we have touching borders I know war is coming soon. So trade to me seems kind of pointless because of it. Granted a human player might be a little different but really this game seems to be all about aggression and little about diplomacy.

planetcore wrote:
I know that 3d can become a headache and I would probably agree that ES will stay 2d i just think it could feel a lot less flat if the wormholes jumped further than a starlane, and you had a travel range to deal with.

I like 2d better as well, where a 3d map can be disorienting to me. This is a very challenging design decision, in how do you graphically represent a living and changing galaxy?

Sounds like a feature for Endless Space II.

I've noticed today a strange thing, that maybe can answer your question.



Y="0" Z="-20.4761">



In every single node, from the descriptor of the galaxy, system or planet, there is a Y variable,all set to 0 obiviously, but if you are not going to use it, why save it?



From my personal point of view, this is a feature that maybe will be implemented in the future, and i don't really think that is only for modding.



Obviously i can see all wrong, but who knows, if not the programmers



Sorry for my bad english,



Rodomar705

Rodomar705 wrote:
I've noticed today a strange thing, that maybe can answer your question.



Y="0" Z="-20.4761">



In every single node, from the descriptor of the galaxy, system or planet, there is a Y variable,all set to 0 obiviously, but if you are not going to use it, why save it?



From my personal point of view, this is a feature that maybe will be implemented in the future, and i don't really think that is only for modding.



Obviously i can see all wrong, but who knows, if not the programmers



Sorry for my bad english,



Rodomar705

Hmm... strange to have variables for 3D and only use 2 of them.

But it could be part of the engine. I think it is part of the Unity 3D engine in wich this game

is developed.

I would prefer 2D map. 3D map would be perhaps a little too complicated and messy to control. Trying to organize your defences in every direction would be a pain

I remember looking at eve online. I freaked out about the infinite amount of emptiness. Have you've ever been on a boat? It's horrible.

Virus wrote:
Hmm... strange to have variables for 3D and only use 2 of them.

But it could be part of the engine. I think it is part of the Unity 3D engine in wich this game

is developed.

Yes, you're right, the Unity 3D Engine is 3D only (used it in my spare time, so i know what i'm talking about), but they've can hardcoded the y to be always 0 inside the code, it's kinda nonsense for me (basic programmer ) save an additional value, for both speed (XML Parsing) and saving memory (tecnically nothing, but useless anyway), if you are going to don't use it. The only think remained is that they have prepared that part of code for a future use. IMHO, obviously.



We need a programmer that explain that for us



Rodomar705

personaly i dont care =X 3d might look nice but it doesnt really add anything in terms of gameplay ... but saying that for some ppl it just looking niice would be an improvement ... then again 2d has its own advantage being of being simple and easy to work with



as long as eaither doesnt ditract from the game or cause unnessasary lagging then really i dun care =3 the game would be good eaither way to me ,,, im just glad they didnt scimp on the back ground image of the map =3 lorez map would have sucked =X

I put don't care since the current system is good but it would be nice if someone could do a 3D map well.

Rodomar705 wrote:
... The only think remained is that they have prepared that part of code for a future use. IMHO, obviously.

We need a programmer that explain that for us ...

You are right on the money.



If you have a game design to be 3D, its always better to not hard code away any potentially useful variables.

In layman's terms, better to have it and not need it then to need it and not have it.



Through my experience with outsourced contracts, there are a good number businesses that don't know what they want for websites and applications. It is hell when the analysis and design have been agreed upon, only to have the client change their minds half-way through implementation. Altering any design elements at this point generally results in much trudging through code, or takes less time to just start from scratch.

So, I tend to code in generic features that are generally used in a specific industry--even if these features are not exposed in the final product.



Endless Space's development process is similar to doing contract work in that end user's are heavily involved in development. This means a generic in-game galaxy map is already well equiped resulting in reworking of just the generator to have non-flat galaxies.

I think the 2d map is quite good. In real space stars are of course not quite flatly aligned next to one another but, when looking at real galaxies from afar they do look more or less flat, so bearing in mind that it should be both realistic and playable (I think 3d would confuse many people and cause some headaches across the board), it's probably best to stick to 2d...

I prefer a 2D map because I don't want to spend endless amounts of time trying to get a good perspective on the map.. And I don't see a 2D-3D switch happening. While it's true what planetcore said (that pathfinding isn't anymore trouble as the algorithm works on a graph anyway) you will get into trouble with the warp tech since that gives you a fully-connected graph (every node is connected with every other node). You can image how you might have trouble not warping distance representation if you wanted to reduce the dimensionality from 3 to 2.

That would be very confusing. I'd rather the devs work on other issues.

You can just view the 2d version of the map as being an approximation of a "top"-down view of the real 3d map without much fuss; the Milky Way is, what? About 1% as tall as it is wide? Sure makes a big difference on the local scale, true, but considering how few stars our "galaxies" have I think we can overlook the lack of realism. I do believe our heads and/or computers would explode if we tried to have anywhere near as many stars as a real galaxy, by the way.

Yeah, I like Ascendancy too but god wrangling the map around was a pain. A fully 3D map would be kind of neat in ES, but I'm not sure that it'd add anything to the game that would be worth the headache of managing it.

Star Ruler has 3D Star maps and it can get horribly confusing, I don't like it.

planetcore wrote:
Galaxy dynamics and trade feel like they are missing from the game still to me. Hopefully they add better trade before release. And it would be sweet if major events like black holes, super nova, wondering stars, showed up on the map!

+1

I voted 2d map for gameplay, makes it more simplisic and easier to manage, but giving the player the abiliity to possiblly see the map in a 3d way would be nice but not needed. Of course currently at the system level looks like just a star and planets list, not an actualy system, think MOO style would be more prefered at the system level to me.

Yeah, i agree

Even though i like 3D starMaps

i dont like the Clutter Feeling

2D starMaps are much better to keep Clutters Away

While depth on the galaxy map would be cool, it wouldn't realistically be that thick. The Milky Way is only 1k LYs thick and 100+k LY across.

Rotating the map would be nice. But I do like the visual style of an all-flat-map. Sword of the stars did a fully 3d map, and it ended up being as much of a headache to players as it was ever tactically useful. Since Endless Space is trying to tread a middle-ground between accessibility and depth, I think flat-maps are fine.

I am not fond of 3D maps. The simplicity of 2D maps lends itself better to planning out my actions and watching what other empires are doing.

I felt the same way. Although, on one hand, it keeps a 'cluttered' map down, and is probably simpler to do, I also would hope for a more layered look. It would help the galaxy feel more alive, as many other threads help suggest.



I hate using examples of other games, but Spore's galaxy map was its best feature. It felt really broad and varied. The galaxy map here feels very static, and even though I usually play as huge, 8-armed spiral maps, it doesn't feel like I'm really traversing anything.







That ^ would be ideal for when we zoom out. And the stars get more dense as we approach the galactic bulge/core. They have varied layers, and we can spin/rotate the galaxy.



And, when we zoom out of the galaxy in ES, it's a little murky. It has a vague, starry background. I would love clear blackness punctuated by different galaxies and galaxy types.



I think if we could toggle between an aesthetic 3D view/movement and a more strategic 2D environment, this would be a perfect balance. But there are inherent problems in a 4X game with a 3D map.

It's all cool thinking about how fun the game would be if it were 3D, then if it's 3D you think about how much more fun and accessible the game would be if it were flat.

Considering the fact that we're headed for a Beta where the AI has been designed to pathfind and strategize on a 2D map, I'd like to see a challenging AI on this current design before making something more complicated for the AI to handle.



And yes, I know other 4X space games have used 3D maps. But it's a question of how they're designing the AI, from scratch. I want to see it working well on this style of map first. Save a full 3D map for ES2, if we get there.

I know that 3d can become a headache and I would probably agree that ES will stay 2d i just think it could feel a lot less flat if the wormholes jumped further than a starlane, and you had a travel range to deal with.

3-D starmaps are cool inside your head. But they lose coolness as soon as they appear on a flat 2-D monitor. Then they become a management nightmare, trying to figure out which star is farther away or above or below, let alone actually selecting them.



In MOO3, I wound up using the Flatten Galaxy mod thing to eliminate the z axis, and it was so much easier to understand. Short distances were short. Long distances were long. Great, really like that.

Zenicetus wrote:
Considering the fact that we're headed for a Beta where the AI has been designed to pathfind and strategize on a 2D map, I'd like to see a challenging AI on this current design before making something more complicated for the AI to handle.



And yes, I know other 4X space games have used 3D maps. But it's a question of how they're designing the AI, from scratch. I want to see it working well on this style of map first. Save a full 3D map for ES2, if we get there.

I'm a math major the pathfinding algorithm is the same graph theory problem no matter if the map is 2d or 3d. Not to say its easy to do a smart pathfinding algorithm even in 2d! just look at civ5, but the math behind it doesn't get any harder because the map is in 3d.



What does make the AI in Endless Space an interesting thing to think about is warp travel removes the starlane constraint, which means the AI can send the ships to any star system. So now instead of a 2-6 possible paths per star(node) it has as many as there are stars. When we just had starlanes its probably just doing a greedy algorithm to choose paths. Who knows how its handling warp travel?



Part of the reason for the really annoying wormhole path glitch is probably that the pathfinding is greedy and wormholes get a zero(or really low) weight even though it takes more turns of travel time to use the wormhole than just the starlane, but the algorithm just did an edge weight calculation, instead of using travel time in turns.

I know games in the 4x genre uses flat maps because its simple and easy to do, but I loved how Ascendancy's 3d star map worked. It changes how you think about the whole attack and defence of your empire. Personally I would prefer a 3d star map to the non-star-lane travel option currently in the game. However its not the only way to fix the flat feeling of the map in ES I know MOO2 was flat but it felt less flat than ES because of how wormholes and the tech level travel distance restrictions worked.



Is it just me who feels a little disappointed that my 4x game map is still flat!



What does everyone else think? If nothing else I'd like to be able to at least rotate/spin the map.

Astra wrote:
I felt the same way. Although, on one hand, it keeps a 'cluttered' map down, and is probably simpler to do, I also would hope for a more layered look. It would help the galaxy feel more alive, as many other threads help suggest.



I hate using examples of other games, but Spore's galaxy map was its best feature. It felt really broad and varied. The galaxy map here feels very static, and even though I usually play as huge, 8-armed spiral maps, it doesn't feel like I'm really traversing anything.







That ^ would be ideal for when we zoom out. And the stars get more dense as we approach the galactic bulge/core. They have varied layers, and we can spin/rotate the galaxy.



And, when we zoom out of the galaxy in ES, it's a little murky. It has a vague, starry background. I would love clear blackness punctuated by different galaxies and galaxy types.



I think if we could toggle between an aesthetic 3D view/movement and a more strategic 2D environment, this would be a perfect balance. But there are inherent problems in a 4X game with a 3D map.

i liked their planetary trade feature which was directional arrows and small npc ships moving in and out of those systems. would be nice to get some sort of indicator where trade is taking place in ES.



Also a 3d toggle would be nice but the map as it is its pretty well done.

Actually I take back what I just said pathfinding is likely goal orriented in ES so even with warp travel it just finds any path from A to B and does a path optimization algorithm. This is significantly less work than evaluating all possible paths.

Mechanos wrote:
i liked their planetary trade feature which was directional arrows and small npc ships moving in and out of those systems. would be nice to get some sort of indicator where trade is taking place in ES.



Also a 3d toggle would be nice but the map as it is its pretty well done.

Exactly. It helped make things feel more dynamic and alive.



I realize it'd just be icing on the cake with no real value necessarily (and I shouldn't really expect any changes like that at this point in the game) -- but it'd be a nice idea!

Galaxy dynamics and trade feel like they are missing from the game still to me. Hopefully they add better trade before release. And it would be sweet if major events like black holes, super nova, wondering stars, showed up on the map!

planetcore wrote:
Galaxy dynamics and trade feel like they are missing from the game still to me. Hopefully they add better trade before release. And it would be sweet if major events like black holes, super nova, wondering stars, showed up on the map!

I can't stress this enough.

Trade does need an upgrade pretty badly. I spent 3 hours in a match before I realized I had 3 trade routes open with another faction.

I know in the actual space stars are not one the same plane as far as vertical but for purposes of a game I prefer 2d.