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Line-based road minimap


Milkdromeda

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There’s been some suggestions about how there’s a big problem with the way driving is. You can be going up a road and then bam you crash into a car, or a 90 degree angle turn you didn’t see and suddenly you’ve crashed into the trees. There have been some suggestions to mitigate this, like the cruise control one, or making the turns on roads much more gradual, and both of them are reasonable.

 

Here’s an idea I had off the top of my head though, that I figured was a very Zomboid-esque way of handling the situation. When I first saw trailers for the game I was put off by the isometric perspective because like Third Person it felt a little unimpressive having a view of everything like that, and I thought seeing zombies behind me would be a little cheaty. But when I got in and found they used the fog of war (that’s what I think it’s called) I was impressed, they managed to retain the degree of realism in what your character could see without having to totally change everything by substituting it with another mechanic. I think doing that here may be beneficial. While you drive you have a very rough line map, kind of like the one you have in something like GTA except much less detailed, which shows you all the obstacles and turns you’d probably see within your character’s view. This map isn’t to be confused with an actual map like the ones you find ingame, but rather a rough one that gives a map depiction of what your character can see up ahead on the road and around them.

 

I think the other ideas suggested by other people on how to handle the problem tackled here also have their value and are certainly worth considering. But with that, let me know what you think.

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Not to be harsh, but  please make sure you read this before posting: 

 

Though i do wish mini maps were on the table, or just one large map item, kinda like ark, that you draw as you explore(and maps you find autocomplete parts of it)

On 7/26/2013 at 12:00 PM, Rathlord said:

 

 

The Big No's!

These are a list of things that are either vehemently opposed by the majority of the community, confirmed "no's" by the dev team, or impossible within the game as it is. I'm going to try to make this completely unbiased, but if you disagree with anything posted feel free to mention it. The most important ones are highlighted in red. If you take nothing else from this thread, please pay attention to these.

~cut for smallre quote~

 

        Mini Maps

~cut for smaller quote~

 

 

[

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If you guys have read what I’m suggesting I’m not really talking about a conventional minimap. My use of the world minimap here is really pushing the term to its limits. But “minimalistic line-based map- like depiction of immediate surroundings for roads,” probably wouldn’t have made for a good title. 

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I would also object the minimap. But there's definately a need for an item "Roadmap", with complete game area but minimum of details - only roads, town contours and maybe icons for gas stations, motels and restaurants. Now I use a printed screenshot of online map for marking looted areas, it feels little cheaty but I think is necessary.

Edited by WrittenInBlood
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  • 1 month later...

This problem was solved in 1997. Automatically zoom out and shunt the camera view ahead of the car when you're driving, distance proportional to how fast you're going. All we need to be able to see at any given moment is our stopping distance. No minimaps needed, and besides, having played with minimap mods to give me a heads up for sudden corners, I can tell you it creates as many problems as it solves when you have to take your eyes off the road in order to see where you're going.

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Indeed the game already does that. The problem is that the larger the field of view grows, the larger must be the bandwidth to accommodate the amount of map streamed as the car speeds through. This scaling is order n^2 so it's a big issue for multiplayer. The current solution is that car speeds are limited by this , and it's not enough.

I wonder if they could "grey out " and just stream the sides of the road when you are driving fast, kinda simulating the fact that you don't have the time to watch every detail and need to focus on the street and its immediate surroundings.

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