Sorry I ment when the ecliptic crosses the equator (= when the sun is in the equatorial plane of Earth).
Planets are on the same plane, except for Pluto which many don't count as a planet. Comets and other weird things aren't.

Earth's rotational plane is always ~23 degrees off the orbital plane. That doesn't change with regard to the solar calendar. The earth tilts, but the tilt stays fixed. So during the part of the year when the tilt brings the north pole closest to the sun, the northern hemisphere experiences summer because it's getting more direct sunlight. At the same time, the southern hemisphere experiences winter. Six months later, the earth has moved around to the other side of the sun, but is still tilting the same direction, so now the south pole is closer to the sun. Equinox comes twice a year when the earth passes from one pole being closer to the other one being closer.

There are a lot of cool things that could be done with a 3D space game. That not everyone has full 3D skills should not be reason to limit to 2D. Making the game a astonomical simulator is probably a bad idea, though. Gameplay should come first in designing games.


- Sirian

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If a 2D surface, like the one used now, was extruded to create a cube, then as long as no two systems shared similiar X,Y coordinates while having differing Z axis values then a 3D galaxy shouldn't be that hard to deal with visually.

If systems do begin to cover(block)over each other, then the whole rotation to find the hidden ones on the Z axis gets rather dodgey.

Most circular galaxies are relatively "flat", making a 2D representation perfectly acceptable for a PC game -- especially considering that it must be viewed on a 2D video monitor.

If you *really* wanted to add 3D to a space game in a realistic way, it would be in tactical ship combat.

IMO, i think a 3D map would be fine in a space strategy of a smaller scale. if the game was like a star trek show where you only command one ship, and you go around exploring things, i think a 3D map would be great, but when you have to deal with so many ships as in galciv, i think its not very practical.

i like this idea however.
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The concept is fun to play with but in real life I see no "z" comming.

As said "remember KISS" and most people think in 2d hence game boards like chess, checkers etc are 2d spuares.

~SDC~

Hi again everybody,
I must say, I thoughly enjoyed the many responses to my post. And yes I totally agree that there should never be any sacrifice of AI just to do some "cool" "wis bang" graphic thing. But more and more 3d "IS" entering into other less obviously volume oriented games where once terrain maps were all flat now they have hills, valleys, etc., building have different floors etc., even in flight sims you can now "nap of the earth" fly and who needs 3d terrain in a flight sim eh! ....(see a trend) I also agree that on a galactic scale; a galaxy may be bigger in one plane, but the size of even a gigantic 28 x 28 map couldn't possibly be hoping to represent more than just a tiny "corner" neighbor hood of a spiral arm. The whole point is that I like a game to challenge me, give me something to think about, learn with etc. And with all the new interfaces available to move rotate zoom, otherwise conventional 2d games. It would be nice to see alittle more "depth" in a 4X to play around in.

KtK: You can complain, but think of the wasted screen space if there was nothing "in the corners."

I agree that while 3D would be more realistic it would be much less playable, and the interface would inevitably be awkward. [I'd use the scroll wheel for the Z axis with an alternate like shift for those without scroll wheels...but then you'd have to use something else to zoom.]

One way to display the Z position would be to display the Z-coordinate next to each ship...which is a PITA if there are ships lined up vertically. Then you'd need an icon to warn the player this is happening. If we were only controlling one ship you could use something like the TCAS display on aircraft, with a +10 or -5 to show relative "altitude" . . . but useless for multiple ships on multiple levels. I suppose you could display this relative to the currently-selected ship, but that would confuse the heck out of ME. -- HtL

Nope, he's right. Let's lobby for round screens.

I'd hate whatever interface was used for 3D because it would inevitably be different from what I use everyday at work, so I would always middel-click + left click to rotate, and middle click + left click then unleft-click to pan. Now people use mice with 2 buttons. Can't get CATIA controls in a game. Pity.

"Nope, he's right. Let's lobby for round screens."

And then we can work in cylindrical coordinates rather than Cartesian?

nope, they settled on 2d, so polar coordinates for all!

I was thinking the same thing.

An interface that lets you select and move items in 3d space is not to difficult to get a grip on. Firstly everything remains graphically represented, so if you see a ship planet,starbase etc, you point and click, ie, you don't need to know it co-ordinates (people gave up on text based games a long long time ago). Secondly, and this may be the part that may scare our non 3d supporting people, is to select "vacant" location you just need an intereface that shows the x&y , x&z and y&z planes as three grids "alla" empty cube. You then select your required new location by pointing to and clicking on one of the grid planes, and then by lets say holding down a mouse button, move your selected location up or down, in or out, or left or right to project your the co-ordinate into 3d space, release the mouse button and your there.

Not for everyone.

Yes, selecting vacant locations is the hard part. What you're saying is that, in order to reach a destination (currently 1 click), I'll have to 1)select the good plane, 2)click the location, 3)move up/down till I'm happy. That's at least 3 times more complex and annoying if I've got 10 ships to move. The amount of moving the mouse over to the correct UI panel, the amount of space used to display the information properly and the number of clicks are really annoying with such a proposal.

The 3d interface on "imperium" was a doddle. Yes I once sent ships off to the far corner of the galaxy thinking the star was near by, but I only made that mistake once.

The things people are objecting about as far as 3d interfaces go are not really valid in themselves but only as they apply to GalCiv. It would be impossible to make a 3d version of GalCiv with a nice Imperium style interface, without drastically altering the way some things in the game work. Basically you would be making a whole new game.

You would have to think about the way the 3d works and then fit the game content into that enviroment. To keep it simple you just wouldn't ever select empty space. Or, you could have grid points show up on the rotatable galaxy map, and click to them. Or you could have points of interest, that may contain anomalies and resources. So you would have a choice, click to star system, click to grid, or click to poi, all using the same interface. A true galaxy would of course be a double spiral with a spherical blob in the middle, at least our galaxy would, so you wouldn't need as much height as width and length.

To sum up, I'm happy with GalCiv the way it is, but I would like to see a decent 3d turn based stategy game at some point in the future. I know it can be done because Imperium was bloody good and kept me occupied for hours...

Zeds dead baby! Zeds dead . . .