Overland Map Changes

I really like this look of the map.

Only thing I really miss now is a animation where the character get the map and hold it just before you will see the map.

 

Just a note on "Fog of War". People envision two different things when talking about this. The first is the fog all over the map that disappears for good once an area is explored, the other is the entire map is shown but obscured/shaded and only an area around the player actually shows the details of the map.

The first is what was shown in the trailer for SotA: SotA clip - 1st Fog of War type

The second is best seen in strategy games like Total annihilation where you can see the entire map but interesting areas and enemy units only reveal themselves as you come into range and become obscured again when you have left that area. Shown in the first few seconds here: 2nd Fog of War type

The game in the second clip actually employs both types. When you begin, you need to explore to map to learn the lay of the land and reveal the map. Once this is done the map always shows but is 'shadowed' and no activity, enemy units, building, etc will show unless you come near to them.

The second type would allow for random encounters, caves, interesting landmarks,small towns, etc that are not shown until coming within range of the element in question. Of course this is better on a larger scale map than the one we have now and both types of 'Fog of War' can be applied if desired or none. I only show the two because I always see people arguing this point but no one ever clarifies which type they are talking about.

 

Totally OT but I emphatically prefer the main view depicted in that vid: more distant/higher 3rd person view...with NPC dialog in a more stylistic font floating bottom center (with NO relation to chat), with what looks like point and click response choices. What happened to all THAT? LOL. But I digress.

 

It's a cheap way of moving from one box filled with artificial barriers to another.

 

Thank you for bringing this up ... a cartography skill ... where "marks" on the map become "static" and present would work well with the second "fog of war" - "limited vision" ....which is my preference

A cartography skill - could provide a "larger view window" or it can show the map in its entirety ...

 

That sounds good to me..

 

I'd prefer cartography to just create another map you reference, and the game map to have range of vision.. so the player could get lost and then reference the map to get un-lost.

 

All for that as well

 

I'm resigned to the fact that the map is staying. I just hope that they will abandon the paper pop up 2D look. Anything is better than that.

Make the map skinnable, and we can create a alternate tileset that we don't hate.

(We = people with artistic talent, not saying I can create a tileset). It would be cool to create different tilesets in different themes. Like an old school Ultima one.

Look at what South Park Stick of Truth did with Canada. That was cool!
http://leviathyn.com/opinion/2014/03/28/five-ways-south-park-stick-truth-best-licensed-game-ever/

 

You want this?

 

Yes. I was trying not to hot link it as some website admins get pissed off, but yes. That would look much better than paper pop ups.

 

It does not look bad - its really old school - you don't think they would take more flak for something like this though?

-- on a side note - why do website admins get mad about linking and image from their site?

 

South Park was paying an homage to the old school games by making Canada look like an old school game. And because Canada is terribly backwards! ;-)

RE hotlinking: Some admins don't like it because they have to pay for the traffic the image causes while no one actually visits the page so they don't get any revenue from ad clicks or whatever their monitization strategy is. It is also called leeching. Some people deploy some code that prevents the hot linking or displays an alternate image.
I guess if you attribute the image and provide a link to the page, it is mostly ok.

 

Don't give up! Fight! We have to stand united to show the devs that the old 3D overland view was way better than the pop up map! If many here on the forums don't like it, much more outside of the forums won't like it, too. Fight alongside us. We will never give up, for we are legion!

 

It was a 3d overland map.

 

Here is another great looking 3D overland map, detailed and stylistic:

 

As many times as someone shows a RTS game screenshot and then asks to have our over world map done like that I will say

We don't have the funds to make 2 games !

That game does look nice tho.

 

Right now it is two games:
A third person RPG and a Shove-a-flag-around-on-a-pop-up-book-cloth-map-boardgame.
So the boardgame could at least look really great with realistic and lush, living 3D environments and many animals roaming around etc.

 

I know it sounds extreme, but I agree. Given the choice between what we have now and an 8 or 16 bit top-down view with a little animated avatar, I would choose the latter.

 

I was thinking it wouldn't be that hard to reuse some of the models and shrink them down to go on the map...it would significantly lower the amount of work to get them in. For instance trees. It doesn't take much to shrink them.

I wonder if they tried this.