Geoscape

[altugi]

What other features do you plan to implement on the Main Screen? As far as I know you can
-build bases
-see locations of alien incidents
-assign vehicles to carry squads to a certain location on the map
-change clock speed

Are there already implemented further features on this screen? which we dont know from beta?

[BTAxis]

Well, you can scroll and zoom the map. Though you might not count those as features.

[altugi]

where do/will UFO interceptions happen? Different screen?...

[altugi]

Well, you can scroll and zoom the map. Though you might not count those as features.

BTAxis,

you mean the world map, right? Is scrolling and zooming part of or a step in performing a certain action, for example is it useful while you assign a vehicle to a location, or is it rather a "nice" feature for now? I haven't noticed such a feature in my beta0.12 and heaven knows why.

[BTAxis]

Well, it's not really totally useful for anything so far, though I did notice a mission event icon can end up underneath a base icon (see this), in which case you need to zoom up a bit so you can select it more easily. Other than that, it's not even nice, as the world map is rather low-res (I know for a fact that the NASA images were originally a lot bigger, though. I have a high-res version of the nighttime map myself). Zooming up doesn't give you more detail. But then, we can hardly expact Google Earth here, so it's no big deal.

[GIJOE317]

where do/will UFO interceptions happen? Different screen?...

I did do a mission that a dog fight was involved.
I won the fight, but no wreckage was to be investigated.
All it said was craft defeated, and the ship returned home.
There were no options as to what style of fight or even what
kind of UFO it was.

[JPierre]

Sorry to resurrect this many years old topic, but I guessed it was better that start a new one with the same Title.
I was wondering about some improvements on the geoscape, and if they wouldn't be too difficult to do.

I- Geoscape map quality: It's quite low, I don't expect Google Earth resolution, as mentioned before, but how about being able to see some not so small islands a little better?

II- Islands: The ability of building bases on islands and having aliens making their own there. That would create more hiding places for alien bases, and help humans patrol oceans a little better. It could even allow reducing the radar watch area, way too big to me. It doesn't seem too complex, but I may be wrong.
Which islands to be chosen? Some options: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_islands_by_area

III- More political factions: I don't know if it would turn the game more complicated, but it would certainly offer some more game strategy options. Having more nations, you can choose who to please and who to ignore. Each nation would have something to offer (Rich and low populated parts of Europe offer some technicians [If they end up having skill levels like in X-Com Apocalypse, they wouldn't be many, but would be skilled], almost no soldiers or workers but a fair amount of money. Civil war-like regions of South America, Africa and Asia could offer many unskilled soldiers, and so on). Nations would be harder to please, and almost impossible to have them all happy, forcing you to choose your strategy carefully.

IV- Complex borders: There could be some simple lines in the map showing the political boundaries, to help you plan better on how to please an specific nation. Also, having a little bit more complex boundaries could difficult the pleasing mission in valuable nations (Ex: Some Scandinavia-like nation would posses Greenland, Svalbard [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard], Iceland and possibly a further away island or colony; some Andean Union nation would be thin and long, and so on, in order to make the defense more challenging.

V- Show the bigger cities around the globe, and each nations capital (simple squares, circles and dots would do the trick). They would functions as the human nations analog of a base. Basically, if an ufo attacks one of the cities, the map will be a random, medium or big, city map with more civilians and more nation happiness variation potential than a an attack on some random small rural not map-listed village, especially in case of being a national capital.

I tried to make low work hours cost suggestions, but my non-existent programming skill may have made that objective fail. Well, I hope you can provide me with good critics and/or suggestions.

[BTAxis]

V. I've suggested to Kracken before, and I'm still hoping to see it happen someday.

The rest, well, you've got to understand that the earth's texture is one image. The higher the detail, the bigger the image, and at some point it just won't fit into RAM/VRAM anymore. Google Earth works with loading local high-res images. That's not something we can do. I think the current geoscape texture is fairly detailed, and it doesn't need to be any bigger.

About borders, see base/pics/geoscape/map_nations.tga. You can edit it to achieve different borders if you like.

[JPierre]

Mmm.. In that case I would think in a simpler map, not a photo. That way you could have much more detail.

What are your thoughts on points II, III and IV?

[BTAxis]

II and III aren't going to happen. I've already told you about IV.

[JPierre]

 

[SharkD]

My main concern with the Geoscape is the controls. I preferred the camera controls of the stable version to the current development version. They're less like X-COM, but make more sense when using the 2D globe map. Maybe change the controls based on whether the Geoscape is 2D or 3D?

Also, I'm not sure the focusing commands are all that great. I know you can press the spacebar to cycle through all the objects, but it's kind of hit-or-miss.