The Dev's who have played Supreme Commander and SupCom-FA will get what I mean.

[eldergamer]

This has to do with zooming in and out on areas in Zomboid. You can already zoom out pretty far in the 29.4 version of Zomboid. I suggest taking it to the next logical step and let the gamer zoom all the way out. Like in Supreme Commander and Supreme Commander Forged Alliance. If you've ever played Supreme Commander you know just the kind of zoom I'm talking about. As you zoom out the detailed items change to primitive dots. You can still see the lay of the land but the further you zoom out the more items become primitives. I think this could really work for Zomboid. You can pull way out into the air. When I say way out I mean from ground level to orbit. Normally that might put a heavy burden on the CPU and GPU but because details turn to primitives the further you move out the burden stays the same across the board. This would be a great way for us to zoom around the map without breaking the immersion. You wouldn't be seeing any live goings on outside your field of vision. It would be more like someones memories of the geography.

 

Or you could add something like a GPS or tablet or mobile phone. Even if the world ended the satellites wouldn't just drop out of the sky. You could still use GPS with preloaded maps on them. They are not reliant on a persistent online connection. This would however break the immersion a bit having to stop and look at a screen. It would be a good use for batteries.

 

Just a thought

 

Eldergamer

 

 

 

 

[Ewok]

I think there are plans to introduce maps into the game - but they will be real world items, rather than 'game mechanics'. I think the zooming out in the way suggested would break aspects of realism.

 

I also think there are some technical limitations not related to the 'detail' element. From observing previous discussions about the technical aspects, I believe only a certain area of the game is loaded at any one time - so anything outside a certain radius of a player simply doesn't 'exist' at that time.

 

If I'm wrong then I'm sure someone will pop by and correct me.

[KyousukeAzai]

I do like the idea of you being able to see the map, but rather than a zoom, maybe craft or find a map of the area would be much better (tourist guides and such for town layouts), on top of which I'm pretty sure the game would EXPLODE if you had it render the whole map, you can see roughly one street length around you, and the map is several square miles with forests, farms and 2 towns (which a lot of people don't realize), so rendering it all at once, I can imagine the game would instantly freeze.

[eldergamer]

Ewok and KyousukeAzai, You both are probably right. I was just throwing it out there because I've seen it done before but since the engine for Zomboid was developed in house I'm not really sure what it's capabilities are? As for breaking the immersion I'm not sure because the way I worded it was that areas you see are like a memory not live. It would be shadowed to represent that you know of the area but not whats currently going on there. Something as simple as a screen shot from altitude would work. Nothing live or that would require calculation or tracking. Just a capture at altitude.

 

What do you think?

[King jjwpenguin]

How about sing a drone to scout unexplored areas. I don't know how it would work but having a drone with a camera could be used to search and attract zombies would be nice.

[zomboyd]

I like the idea of maps, especially if you could make notes on it.  It should be an item that you can find and you have to carry it around in your inventory.

 

On a side note, GPS would be useless after a few days as it has to be constantly calibrated to take into account that time passes at a different rate for satellites orbiting the Earth than on the ground due to relativity. Which I think is pretty cool