hey guys,

haven't played this one for some time now and came back to check out the newest nightly build. the new galaxy map is great so far. but for me, navigation got very complicated now.

i think we need a good navigation system that shows the shortest (and optional safest) route from one system to another depending on our hyperspace range. it should take the fuel amount and the therefore the necessity to refuel in certain systems into consideration. of course it should not make things to easy...

i think it would be great if you could choose starting point and destination an you would get like 3 possible routes with different attributes like "time needed" "amount of danger" "number of refuels" "number of jumps" or so.

just an idea... 😉

The best place to get a feature request noticed is on the issues tracker.

great work on converting it to a proper map. However, as it is, the controls this seem unintuitive. the arrow keys should be used for in and out - as if you were driving a FPS in 3d space. so essentially the motion should be locked to the camera perspective

up arrow - "dolly" camera forwards / zoom in

down arrow - back

left - left

right - right

pg up - up

pg dn - down.

alternatively, additionally... the mouse controls are good, but could be improved by allowing tracking up/down, left/right by holding in the scroll button or another button or key... Like this you could easily move around in that 3d space without having to touch the keyboard.

In my opinion, requiring buttons like pgup and pgdown is unsatisfactory; not all machines have these on their keyboards—for instance, many Apple computers. It's a bit of a quibble because I'm sure these keys are going to be remappable (right?), but ensuring that the default controls work with everybody seems like a basic courtesy to me.

Since you are already using w/a/s/d(/q/e?) to rotate the view, it would be most intuitive to use i/j/k/l/u/o for moving the camera, maintaining consistency with manual engine controls.

Edit:

i.e.

i/k: "in" or "forward" / "out" or "back"

j/l: left/right

u/o: up/down

Basic courtesy? Its not like there was a deliberate choice to screw people with hardware that we're not familiar with. Don't attribute to malice what can be attributed to stupidity.

It doesn't use Q/E to rotate, just W/A/S/D.

I don't quite see that I/J/K/L/U/O would be intuitive for moving the map, but I don't find them particularly intuitive for flight either. My inclination is to move PgUp/PgDown to I/K and keep the arrows as they are. I will discuss a change for alpha 14 with the team as soon as I can. I don't want to release it if it doesn't work for some not-insignificant group of users (ie Mac users), but neither do I like making changes during freeze.

As you say, all keys will eventually be re-mappable, but the issue still remains because we have to choose sensible (and documentable) defaults.

You might have something there. Maybe the PgUp/PgDown debate becomes moot if you had forward/back/left/right on the arrows and then you rotate with W/A/S/D (or the mouse) to adjust your orientation.

I was thinking about something like that with a left click, similar to what a touch/swipe interface might be like. I didn't have time/inclination to work on it though.

I expect we'll adjust this a bit for alpha 15 based on some usage experience.

So when I look at the new 3d map, then I know why at that time at Frontier and FFE this concept was rejected (it was also planned). It has no usability and much too cluttered. There helps a search function any more. Think about it. It's not always about finding a target. It's also about exploring everything. Well now many systems by the broad representation of 3d are not at first visible. Name me one advantage of this new star map, the reason is that they will now into the game. Says not now, "it is more realistic!" Sometimes they just such a reason is too thin

One advantage: It's a thing of beauty.

Most stars aren't visible on the 2D map either, until you started to scroll around. In fact, almost all of them are invisible in both maps.

If you'd like to provide specific examples and use cases where usability has decreased over the previous version we'd be very interested to hear it.

This project is "Pioneer Space Simulator". The "Simulator" bit is our justification for realism. Realism isn't always the most important thing, and must be balanced against fun (we're still a game). It is important for this project though.

yes true but only in the old map had to serve only two axes. There was no one star "escape"

If you'd like to provide specific examples and use cases where usability has decreased over the previous version we'd be very interested to hear it.

I've already written

Hey RobN I can understand that you defend your game project, and rightly so. Nevertheless, I pray you to reconsider the Starmap.

You haven't given me anything to reconsider. Give me something and I'll think about it.

Argh, so sorry, I worded that part terribly (not great in a first post). I didn't intend to say that the devs were deliberately screwing users without these keys; all I intended with the "basic courtesy" comment was specifically to answer the counterargument that bad default keys didn't matter if they could be remapped. I really didn't mean to accuse anyone of ill intent, so apologies if it sounded that way.

I agree that there's nothing inherently intuitive about i/j/k/l/u/o. I think the main advantage of using these keys for map movement will come from the fact that they are the same as those used for flight. Also, if you are going to move pgup/pgdown to i/k, then maybe you might as well move the rest of the keys over so that we can move in three dimensions without having to move our hand back and forth between two locations or use two hands.

But we're getting into personal preferences here, and I wasn't aware that you had entered a freeze for alpha14, so I'll stop bickering, now that the pg keys issue has been acknowledged. Thanks again for your consideration.

I am moving now in a huge ball 3d, but only a small area is visible. There is a difference if I have a 3d surface that I explore or a huge cloud in the places you do not remember can intuitively, even if I have a search function. In addition, it is not immediately apparent at first glance whether the system is in range or not. I must always turn first.

And I apologise too. I'm quite tired this evening, and got a bit testy. It was a particularly poor response to a first post.

Thanks for taking the time to write about your thoughts. Issue #480 has been created so we don't lose track of it, even if it took a minor rant to get there. I hope you're not put off from contributing in the future 🙂

If the label is bright, it is in range. The colour tells you whether there's a starport there.

Also, each star has a leg, which shows you how far from the grid it is. This works exactly the same way as the scanner does, and has done since Elite was released in 1982. With a little practise, you can see exactly where every star is, and how far away it is, without moving the map at all.

Hmm, I hope that I can practice soon ...

RobN, we need the alpha 14th .. : o)

Coming this Friday 🙂

Hands up everybody who grabbed a recent nightly and just activated "smug mode"? (-:

Do you really honestly believe that?

When Tomm first posted some shots and pushed the code to the 3d galaxy, I was completely amazed.. I loved it. There are many reasons why its an improvement.

We love exploration, this is one of the reason we now have over 1000 times the number of stars we had before... thats right Pioneer is now magnitudes.. literally massive magnitudes bigger than it was before.

Also you don't lose any range when viewing stars, IIRC the visible range was always 2 sectors as it is now, although I could be mistaken its ages since I played with the boring 2d galaxy 😉 But with 3d you also get 2 sectors up and down as well.

I'll name several for you 😉

* Its more realistic. (Ha I said it)

* Its more fun.

* You can actually get lost.

* Pioneer is fucking massive now.

* It is beautiful, although I think we can get it looking nicer. (Although I have plans which will frighten the other devs 😉 )

* Another realism thing, but it means we can have a more realistic distribution of stars and still find all the star-types within a person's life-time.

* There's a search function. Those wishing to play a game of 'where's wally' or spot the tiny detail among thousands can still do so if they choose to 😉

* Did I meantion how bloody cool this is? We're space fans we're supposed to love shit like this!

Hmm..

S2odan goes out and buys a lovely new Mac. He then finds out to his horror that the mouse only has one button. He is then absolutely disgusted and appalled at the use of the right mouse button in other people's games. "How unfair" He yells, "How inconsiderate" he says. S20dan should have bought himself a better mouse 😉

For now you can either not use those keys, or use a program to simulate those key presses. Rest assured that in the furutre all keys will be remappable.