Hot spot zooming

[DOCa Cola]

posted on October 19th, 2011, 4:34 pm

Last edited by DOCa Cola on October 19th, 2011, 6:34 pm, edited 2 times in total.

If you have played the RTS game Supreme Commander which was released in 2007, you for sure have noticed that it featured a at the time new of it's kind method to allow navigation on the map dubbed "strategic zoom". It allows to zoom out very far that your battlefield is only being shown as minimap representation of the map and get back to a certain point of interest quickly. While we don't think such a feature exactly would fit a more 'classic' RTS game like Star Trek Armada which usually have a lot less units on the battlefield at a time compared to Supreme Commander it still can serve as inspiration to improve the now one decade old usability of the game we are developing for.

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posted on October 19th, 2011, 4:37 pm

awesome sounds much easier.

also i havent listened to fo music in a while, but is that new music?

posted on October 19th, 2011, 5:32 pm

Very nice feature to add! I love that feature in Supreme Commander!

posted on October 19th, 2011, 5:45 pm

A nice tweak, doca. It's good to see that our devs take looks into other games to adapt useful features.

posted on October 19th, 2011, 5:53 pm

THATTT COOL
i have played Supreme Commander and SupCom Forged Alliance
( and some times if I in the mood for that xD )

thats a very nice idea but
do you ask it also to Chris? xD about copy rights ? xD or is that not a need?
and how it works al this
if you like that strategic zoom add in the FO
if you yourself have written the code language for that than you must not ask on the author?
and if you hmmm let's say copy past, than is that ask on the author of you can use it?
how ??

but I love you Doca <3
thats something that I will play more FO

posted on October 19th, 2011, 5:53 pm

I'm impressed! I have always liked that kind of navigation in RTS games. Will definitely add a difference to the game!

posted on October 19th, 2011, 5:54 pm

Awesome!!  :woot:  That works just like zooming in gimp.  This will make it a lot easier to take pictures and vids.

Thanks Devs.

posted on October 19th, 2011, 5:57 pm

I like the zoom, but i hope it'll be optional since i prefer to play gods eye view.

posted on October 19th, 2011, 7:34 pm

Interesting, well done

posted on October 19th, 2011, 8:11 pm

Nice work guys, very nice. =D

I like the zoom, but i hope it'll be optional since i prefer to play gods eye view.

You'll still be able to play it in gods eye view without it being optional; it won't zoom in automatically by itself or anything. It's just that when you do choose to zoom in, it'll zoom to where the mouse is, instead of the centre of the screen.

posted on October 19th, 2011, 9:28 pm

Awesome!!  :woot:  That works just like zooming in gimp.  

Yeah, I thought the same. ... 

posted on October 19th, 2011, 9:35 pm

Looks awesome!

does it also work when you have a large fleet cluttered together? Cause i can imagine that it is difficult to zoom in on the right ship

posted on October 19th, 2011, 9:39 pm

This is great indeed, very usefull. But how about when selecting a ship and switch to 3d view, the camera view switches to it also. Atm, it selects the ship or station in the middle of the display. Would that be possible too? That, combined with this scroll feature, would be best for a rts game like our loved Flops. True? ( i know its possible, Doca )  :blush:

posted on October 19th, 2011, 9:42 pm

does it also work when you have a large fleet cluttered together? Cause i can imagine that it is difficult to zoom in on the right ship

you zoom in on where your mouse at, even if there is empty space. it doesn't 'lock' on a vessel. so yes, that should be no problem at all 

But how about when selecting a ship and switch to 3d view, the camera view switches to it also. Atm, it selects the ship or station in the middle of the display. Would that be possible too?

sounds like a good idea 

posted on October 19th, 2011, 10:10 pm

Very cool!