Blog - 2.7 Billion Pixels canâ€™t be wrongâ€¦

Legend · Post by **Legend** » Oct 31 2006

Here's a new development blog by George. Enjoy, then come back here to comment/discuss.
http://www.supremeruler.com/blogs/?p=9

Feltan · Post by **Feltan** » Oct 31 2006

That sounds like a lot of work, and I hope it is worth it for you.

For me, the level of detail with regard to terrain in 2010 was just fine -- I wouldn't have asked for more in 2020 if you had asked.

I think there is more interest in functionality and game mechanics, at least based on what you see in the forums.

Of course, no one wants to argue against a better map nor more detail in its presentation. I am sure it will look wonderful. I just hope it doesn't make the download too fat, nor slow processing time for more "essential" activities.

Regards,
Feltan

Post by **George Geczy** » Oct 31 2006

There's a couple of reasons that a higher rez map is important for SR2020...

1) With all the playing being effectively on the 'world map', it was important to bring the world level resolution up from SR2010. In the 2010 maps, a number of smaller maps had good resolution for the imagery, but the world map reslution was relatively poor. This made it hard to see mountainous / hilly terrain, coastal features, etc.

2) One goal for SR2020 is 'looks better'... might not be important from a gameplay standpoint, but this factor is important for a lot of players (and potential players). I recall some discussions in other wargame-type forums where I asked people "what's more important, eye candy or gameplay"? They would almost always answer gameplay, but then a bunch of them would play the SR2010 demo and post "it doesn't look all that great".

We're pretty confident that we can make the higher rez maps run without too much of a performance impact - the minimum specs for SR2020 are higher than 2010, but that's as much because of the increased world map size as it is the imagery.

The unanswered question, as mentioned in the blog, is what impact it will have on the game size - we're going to try to keep this down, and possibly even experiment with JPEG or other photo-compression on the imagery, so that the digital download version won't be huge.

-- George.

BigStone · Post by **BigStone** » Oct 31 2006

Do you have perhaps some pic's already ....

And imho i think it's good to see that the Goats are putting some more efforts in the "eye & ear candies"....
(But not to much please.....

)

red · Post by **red** » Oct 31 2006

So are you painting only one map for the entire game? I assume there's a better limit for regions--is it something gigantic like 256 or 512? I wonder if you won't make all regions as their smallest-possible unit and then combine them for scenarios--ton of work saved, right? That'd be nice for modders...

tkobo · Post by **tkobo** » Oct 31 2006

That would be soooooo great.

I do find it hard to believe that the game would run well though with hundreds of regions.

Im all for improving the graphics IF it makes gameplay better .But "eye candy" for the sake of "eye candy" is to me a major waste of dev time.

red · Post by **red** » Oct 31 2006

Oh, this is definitely contrary to saving space, but if possible it would be nice to have a wave texture kept on or put on the oceans. The current navy-blue blob is not so pretty.

What's the km per hex and how is distortion working out?

Post by **George Geczy** » Nov 01 2006

The km per hex has been set at (drum roll!) 16 km.

The World Map size in hexes is 1850 by 760 hexes.

For those that did some math and compared this to the size of the world, you'll notice we don't quite match - unfortunately, I once again have to lament that we live on a round, and not cylindrical, world.

On the map imagery, distances are most accurate on the Tropic latitudes (ie Tropic of Capricorn, Tropic of Cancer), and will be shorter than reality at the equator, and longer than reality at northern and southern latitudes. In addition, the World map is more of a "Robinson Projection" than it was before, giving a larger "slant" to northern and southern coastlines, especially when compared with a traditional 'flat' wall map of the world. This keeps the land distances as close to reality as we can get without going crazy. Ocean distances were given less importance, and in general the oceans will appear a bit smaller than in reality.

No pics yet, sorry

red · Post by **red** » Nov 01 2006

Will upgrades now carry over?

Legend · Post by **Legend** » Nov 01 2006

red wrote:Will upgrades now carry over?

That's the idea. IF... the campaign calls for carry over... there could be time between scenarios or other things happen in the story.

For the most part if the campaign includes moving upwards to higher levels you will see carry over. How do you like now?

ainsworth74 · Post by **ainsworth74** » Nov 01 2006

Legend wrote:How do you like now?

I like alot!

tkobo · Post by **tkobo** » Nov 01 2006

Whats the max amount of regions on the map ?

Post by **Balthagor** » Nov 01 2006

No comment yet.

Legend was going to post "more than one" but I thought that might get him lynched...

ainsworth74 · Post by **ainsworth74** » Nov 02 2006

Balthagor wrote:Legend was going to post "more than one" but I thought that might get him lynched...

No mearly bansihed to the deepest darkest slimest scarest pit I could find, and then being lynched

Legend · Post by **Legend** » Nov 02 2006

tkobo wrote:Whats the max amount of regions on the map ?

We haven't officially decided yet. We have to run performance tests and configure a few things...etc. We do plan to support more players than 2010 (with 16 human players max). We just need to see how everything pans out. It comes down to system resources. When we have made a final decision we'll let you all know.