UFO:Alien Invasion
Development => Artwork => Topic started by: eleazar on January 28, 2008, 02:51:12 am
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Rather than attempting a photographic view of the earth from orbit, i think it would be more useful (and more interesting) to create an view such as a commander might use to plan global strategy, such as the roughly done attached image.
The various national blocks each have their own color with slightly glowing borders, and population centers are indicated by white dots. I think it looks more appropriately science-fictiony, while also being more useful.
I can more carefully produce such a texture at double the resolution of the current one if desired. Currently the game crashes for me if i give it a 4096x 2048 texture, but there may be a way to avoid that.
[attachment deleted by admin]
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Rather than attempting a photographic view of the earth from orbit, i think it would be more useful (and more interesting) to create an view such as a commander might use to plan global strategy, such as the roughly done attached image.
The various national blocks each have their own color with slightly glowing borders, and population centers are indicated by white dots. I think it looks more appropriately science-fictiony, while also being more useful.
I can more carefully produce such a texture at double the resolution of the current one if desired. Currently the game crashes for me if i give it a 4096x 2048 texture, but there may be a way to avoid that.
Rather than replacing the geoscape texture, we would like to use semi-transparent overlays to allow the player to get a more informative map. I.E. political overlay (what you've done here), radar overlay, aircraft range overlay, alien activity overlay, etc. etc.
All of these would be activated by the click of a button on the geoscape interface.
If we have all the graphics for these options, I'm sure the coders would be persuaded to include them in version 2.3. ;)
Regards,
Winter
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Ok, here's a semi-transparent national boundary overlay. It doesn't quite match the one included in 2.2
[attachment deleted by admin]
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Also attached is a matching higher res version of the controlling image: "map_earth_nations". I've added a color to indicate the polar ice caps incase anyone ever wants to distinguish between that and open sea.
[attachment deleted by admin]
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You don't seem to realize that we don't have any polar ice caps (well, Antarctica is still there). In 2084, they've melted.
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You don't seem to realize that we don't have any polar ice caps (well, Antarctica is still there). In 2084, they've melted.
Are you being serious?
I didn't see that in the backstory.
If you are going to include Al Gore's fairy-tale as part of UFO:AI, then shouldn't it bring doom (or at least some devastation) to mankind?
At least it would impact that state of the world in other ways that simply melting the caps. Presumably the sea-level would change, and therefore the coast-line
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Just erase the polar caps.
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Actually Antarctica in general is gaining ice instead of melting (more snowfall due to warmer ocean surface in tropical regions) and on average it is cooling. Even if Al Gore and some of the IPCC "scientists" (most are political activists and appointed by governments) will make their most exaggerated warming theories come true there is no way of the polar caps to melt until 2084. This will take hundreds if not thousands of years from now. That's fact, no matter what you might think about human caused CO2 emissions and their influence. And no one serious can doubt that by any means even if we would have 10
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Sigh. I really don't want to have this discussion. All I know is that all of our textures and area layers have consistently omitted any polar ice. I don't mind if anyone has a problem with that, but I don't want to have conflicting textures.
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OK, please, lets table the discussion on the reality of Global Warming. I shouldn't have made flame-ish comments about Gore. It's not especially relevant weather Global Warming is real-- most of us would think the Alien Invasion is unlikely, but don't complain about that.
My concern is plausible consistency within UFO:AI sci-fi future-- especially since in my limited knowledge this project is trying to be relatively realistic in technology etc.
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All I know is that all of our textures and area layers have consistently omitted any polar ice.
Actually your night view of the earth includes the northern polar ice, but none around Antarctica. (visible without the geoscape) It's mostly under the semi-transparent box that displays new messages.
...I don't mind if anyone has a problem with that...
I don't know how to interpret that.
...but I don't want to have conflicting textures.
Of course. Implicit in this conversation is the willingness and ability of myself to provide new textures (at higher res if UFO:AI can handle them.)
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Actually your night view of the earth includes the northern polar ice, but none around Antarctica. (visible without the geoscape) It's mostly under the semi-transparent box that displays new messages.
Strange that nobody noticed that before. That needs to be fixed. Can you file a bug report about it?
I don't know how to interpret that.
I just meant that it's okay if people want to argue that the ice should still be there, for whatever reason. I have no opinion on the whole climate issue, so I'm fine either way. As long as all the maps agree on it.
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there we go
[attachment deleted by admin]
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there we go
Nifty :)
Can you use the 4096x2048 texture, or did you have to shrink it?
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i scaled it down to 2048x1024 - but maybe we can also find higher res globe textures and scale them internally down when the gamers video card can't handle it (the code it there)
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Looks nice to me. So you remember the Dune 1 PC game? Reminds me of that.
Do you decide to change the style of the country names?
I would prefer them to be transparent, bigger, bold, coloured (maybe also attached as fixed on the globe) to let it look more like a political map globe of our times.
This would also prevent the country names to interfere with the base names:
http://www.snapdrive.net/qs/18c8f5d7a367 (http://www.snapdrive.net/qs/18c8f5d7a367)
http://www.snapdrive.net/qs/640544fdad53 (http://www.snapdrive.net/qs/640544fdad53)
I'm sorry for my off topic harassment earlier but I really like it most realistic nad I'm strongly opposed to the Church of Manmade Global Warming (CMGW). :D
No excuse, just an explanation.
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...but maybe we can also find higher res globe textures...
I've already found some.
At the moment, i'm trying to find a good pair of day/night images that match properly.
Looks nice to me. So you remember the Dune 1 PC game?
No i don't. My youth had mostly Amiga games, and then later Mac.
Do you decide to change the style of the country names?
I would prefer them to be transparent, bigger, bold, coloured (maybe also attached as fixed on the globe) to let it look more like a political map globe of our times.
This would also prevent the country names to interfere with the base names:
The overlap is a problem, but attaching words to the globe is not the answer. It would not be translatable in that form.
It would help if the labels were a different color-- for instance a yellow for the nation names would help distinguish the two if they overlap. Using a different font would also be good.
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Well I think I first played it on an Amiga 500, but could be wrong. :)
You are right about the translation. I didn't think of that.
I think the country names are already in background which is good. Different colours and fonts would be nice as well as different fontsizes and transparency for all text types. The problem is to see all kinds of texts at any scope level of the (3d) geoscope.
Using a political worldmap with less colour mixtures will help a better overview.
Maybe the relation of icon colours and backgrounds/globe textures should be reconsidered (yellow base icon and yellow country background will look ugly).
I'm sure you will find a good compromise. ;)
Keep on the good work.
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There are people that they argue that the ice should still be there.I think its on climate,.
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