Here again we have a case of multiple uses for a single term.

I remember when the first console game came out with what they called 3D. It wasn't a 3 dimensional picture where your eyes could see in a distance vs near manner like when you look at real scenery through a window (as in binocular vision), but you could move the camera to view the subject of focus from different angles, allowing you to see all sides of the subject. I was perplexed at the time why anyone would call that "3D". I had to adjust my thinking some.

However, the topic of the original post for this thread is about the difference between 3D maps (i.e., galaxies that have 3 dimensions -- North/South, East/West, and Up/Down) and flat maps (North/South and East/West -- no Up/Down).

I think a game with a 3 dimensional galaxy is desirable and could have a great "WOW" factor for sales, but the math to support it well would be nasty, very cumbersome. PCs today just aren't designed to make computations on three coordinates quickly enough to give the performance we need for games. We may need another huge leap in personal computer hardware technology before we could produce 3D maps large enough with enough performance to make games with 3D maps enjoyable to play.

i think the above avg gaming rig of today wouldent have too much trouble handling a 3d map and calculating it quickly i just dont see the benefit of a 3d map vs the hassle of programming for it and displaying the information usefully

Luckily for those of us who do see the benefit, some game developers saw it, too.

There's genres where there is a benefit. This isn't really one of them. A 3d map with unrestricted movement is going to have absolutely gigantic amounts of empty space.

If you solve that problem by putting in restricted movement (aka: phase lanes, jump gates), then you haven't really accomplished anything except being able to tick a box saying you have a 3d map. You could flatten that into a 2d map and the gameplay would be identical.

There are definitely some 'configurations' that are only possible in 3D. For example modelling a dense 'core' galaxy, with the outer parts ofthe galaxy being less dense.

The main issues are that as humans we are actually pretty bad at visualizing in 3D. We don't even like verticality, which is why the upper shelf in retail is called a 'retail death sentence'. Or why popular toys and candy is always lower, eye level with children.

Nothing we do actually forces us to think in 3D which is why generally speaking 3D maps are very very confusing

The queston is really does adding this additional dimension in the strategic view, add enough depth to the gameplay, and can you convey that information in a clear way to the player.

Im just back from giving Star Ruler a spin and yeah it does have an interesting seemingly unbound 3D map.  But for god's sake that game is cray cray. The learning curve is pretty crazy and just playing the tutorial felt tedious.  I was laughing my ass out loud at how ridiculously over detailed some aspects of the game are. Honestly I did not get the hang of it, its kind of too much.  Also I have weird graphical glitches and the Camera navigation is really weird, or I did not get the hang of it maybe. 

Implementing such a 3d map in a game like GalCiv would presents its whole set of Challenges.  Like influence sphere would now be like big couloured bubbles, So would be the Starbase radius sphere. How trippy and confusing would that look? And how would sector units would be displayed? Like some ubiquitous 3d beehive pattern? Or maybe just get rid of the units and have the whole thing vectorial? Maybe that would work but all this being said it would be very different, not sure it would feel like GalCiv anymore.

You could still display that in 2d, but you'd either need specialized viewing tools to make it easy to sift through, or it'd be pretty indecipherable. Fundamentally, if your only travel is between planets along phase lanes, the entire game map is just a set of nodes & edges and can be handled with graph theory.

A 3d version of Galciv's open movement would be a totally different animal.

Somewhat off-topic, but I found this changing for me after playing a bunch of Assassin's Creed.  My perceptions of public spaces especially.  It strikes me as one of those categories of games where 3D can really play a part. 

But I can't figure out how to apply that to GC3.

I never realized how much sensory overload a 3D map could cause. This changes my mind completely.

PLEASE!!!! NO TO 3D MAPS!!!!

I think such a configuration could be imitated well enough in a 2D map. I realize it wouldn't be exactly the same, but 3D isn't necessary to simulate essentially the same feel.

I agree--you could create some kind of hybrid viewing method, but it would be, as you said, indecipherable.

I think 3D maps would fall into that category of being more realistic at the expense of fun and function.

This particular line of thought (galaxy configurations) got me thinking though, did GalCiv II have any structured galaxies? I always have played random galaxies.

Would there be any value to having randomized galaxies within particular models, like elliptical, spiral, and irregular? Though I'm not sure it would be incredibly difficult to implement a loose "galaxy structure" element to randomizing galaxies, I'm not sure this adds value.

Galactic Civilizations II had three types of galaxies; "Scattered"- Where all the stars are more-or-less randomly placed and evenly distributed. "Loose Clusters"- Where the stars form into distinct 'clumps' with small 'trickles' of stars connecting each group. And "Tight Clusters"- Where every star barring a few outliers, are concentrated into 'islands' completely divorced from other groups by a large area. The distinctiveness of the three options scaled with the map size; immense maps with the three different setups were completely different, whereas tiny maps were indistinguishable from each other.

Thanks ParagonRenegade. I was aware of the three options you mention, but wasn't sure if there were other more static forms/shapes for galaxies that I was somehow unaware of.

Although I'm not new to Galactic Civilizations, I've not been very involved in the online community for GalCiv II, so I wasn't sure if there was some mod that everyone had (or if I had just somehow missed a standard feature) that further affected galaxy configuration.

Now I feel like such a dumbass for misreading your question. lol

No worries--I appreciated your response nonetheless.

Don't "realize" stuff before you try them out. Try Sword of the Stars 1 (really cheap, a phenomenal game with expansions) and you may find 3D is not as indecipherable as some people here claim. It is more than worth it.

SotS 1 doesn't have much clutter on the map though. One planet for each star system (or one star, if you haven't explored the system yet), and a couple icons around it (for fleets in the system, Hiver gates, starbases, asteroid monitors, etc.), one icon for fleets, a few icons for certain random encounters (like a silicoid queen on the way to the next system), nodelines. That's pretty much it. The movement of your fleets is also very restricted. The only time you're able to move to certain points between star systems is, if you want to intercept another fleet (which isn't even possible for some races).

GalCiv, on the other hand, has much more. Star systems are fully shown on the map (one star with up to five planets). Then there are asteroid fields, anomalies, and galactic resources. The devs have also confirmed dual-stars, black holes, and nebulas. Your ships can move anywhere on the map, and you can build your starbases anywhere too. Not to mention your rally points. Seriously, that's a huge amount of sensory input compared to SotS.

Finally though, what would a 3D map add to GalCiv? What would make it worth it to add it, this late in development?

While i Really liked the SotS 3D maps and found that orientating in them was pretty easy i have to Agree with Gaunathor that the "Go everywhere you like" is too huge a hurdle both in Control asspects as in Visualitation asspects to make it work on Current Controll and Display Techniques.

You would need a proper "3D"-Mouse of a kind and a real 3D Vision to make it even remotely feasable in my opinion. And 3D Vision has to go beyond "Steroscopic" Pictures that we have on 3D Monitors and with Occolusrift but has to support natural Eye focus and so on to be really a help for most people.

With the 3D-Mouse - a Gauntlet could maybe do this but those are not more then prototypes and ideas to date, afaik .

I think this bad boy is ready for a comeback.

Exactly! Not having everything on the map is the key. Generalization is what makes a map usable, otherwise you are restricted to gameplay elements that you can stuff on the map without making it completely unreadable.

Well, you can stop a fleet in the middle of nowhere any time you want. Just give it a move order to itself. Which can be useful when you want your fleet strategically placed to cover more systems.

It is possible for all races, as all races can travel STL (press a shift + click location). Naturally, it is far less useful for those who travel through the nodes or teleport.

Having everything on the map can just be bad generalization and information layering, resulting in less content than what could be. Naturally, it may also be a demand of the game features.

This is not a debate whether GalCiv should use 3D map - at least I don't think it is. If I did, it would be a very short debate (as in, it will not!).

I thought we were debating what we think is or could be better in general and why...

Sorry for the large wall of text, you can read my conclusion at the end, but if you wish to see why I concluded that you need to read this nice wall of text.

The biggest problem of 3D maps it’s the memory usage. Yeah, right? With 2 Tb in disc and 16gb in ram, how my pc can't hold a 3D map? Well, your computer is not the only one that uses memory, you also use memory. It is easier to remember where is Webber II in a 2D space rather than in a 3D one, even from an "overall perspective" (it is on the up-right corner [2D], rather than it is in the up-right-down corner [3D]). 2D and 3D has the same problem of memory usage but, 3D scale too quickly.

(For sake of a nice argument, reducing into a 1D for the sake of saving memory is logical but not fun, right?)

Other problem with 3D maps is the orientation, in order to have a good 3D game (of this kind) you must have a "rotate" function; if you don’t add one, you are completely lost since some solar systems could become inaccessible because of visual obstruction (3D nature), now add the complexity of a 3D map with rotation and memory usage and you end with a headache (kind of). In order for a 3D map to work you must implement some kind of safe guards like a button that fix your view in order to have a better (standard) orientation. Since in a 2D map is hard for an object to block another object you don’t need rotation or a fix button (you might have it, but is not a must if well programed).

Navigation is not a big issue in a 3D map once you have figurate your position and your destination. Now strategically speaking, defend a 3D section is a headache: you need more ships (just to defend a space), you need to cover the front, back, left, right, up, and down of a planet or system (instead of just the first 4) or, do what everyone does, just defend the planet per se (put a ship per planet). That was easy, but wait, what if I have to intercept some enemy ship before they arrive and destroy my defences? Well, I have to do the same as I do in a 2D map, just with more distance due to the 3D nature (and more ship to cover that extra space). Want a quick fix? Warp lanes, space lanes or some restriction that allow you to protect something with fewer ships.

Tactical advantages: you can assault someone from above or bellow, increasing your tactical options. The only downside of this: if the game dictates that the damage is calculates as equally, no matter where the bullet comes from, that tactical advantage is greatly reduced. If you not calculate the damage that way, well, why should I bother with a normal ship with a lot of flaws? Instead, I’ll design a spherical ship with a more balanced defence and attack than a “normal” one (and there is not wind that interferes with my movement and speed due to friction) and reduce that “tactical advantage”.

And let not touch the beauty of seeing your control sphere in a 2D and the problems that that would be in a 3D, especially in a “bird view”.

3D advantages? First, a 3D map is amazing and beautiful in more than one way. 2D can’t be that beautiful (even more than a 2D with 3D incorporated as in galciv2). The complexity of the galaxies you can make in a 3D is awesome. In a holographic room a 3D map would be, well, just orgasmic. If very, very, very well implemented the tactical options would be greater than in a 2D, but you can increase the tactical options in 2D maps as well in many ways.

In conclusion, 2D maps are a simplify version of a 3D map. That simplification reduce the cost in ourselves and increase our effectiveness overall, making the game faster (that is slow as it is), our decision better and focuses our attention into “more important maters”. There are some good 3D games, but there are more 2D games out there (per capita)

This has basically been said time and time again, but...

Look at it very straightforwardly. What do you gain from 3D maps in a game like this, and what are the costs?

You gain the ability to move things in a fully 3D environment. You gain the ability to turn and pan the camera in all directions and on all axes.

And... that's really it. Any combat effects this would have are negligible, since that happens in a separate system, so tactically it's not adding anything. Also, due to the way movement works in GalCiv games, you'd be replacing tiles/hexes with cubes/polyhedrons. Yes, you could simplify things dramatically by converting all the star-systems into single stars with all planets a 1 turn move away from each other "inside" the star. Yes, you could make all the starbases exist as add-ons that only exist in a graphical display whenever you click on a planet or star. Yes, you could do these things, but why? What do you gain from that? You're losing quite a bit - the ability to differentiate between planets of a star at a glance, the ability to turn some planets into fortresses and leave less valuable ones lightly guarded without penalizing the former for losses in battle, the ability to fine-tune individual modules and parts of a starbase as it's built...

At some point, you need to ask yourself if the reason you want to add a fully 3D map system to the game... is for the sake of a fully 3D map system, and not for how it'd improve things.

I like Sword of the Stars, but really, when you think about it, it's not a 4X game. There's no technological victory. The trade and diplomacy systems are barely functional, if that. Fine-tuning your planets boils down to sliding bars to determine mining rates, population limits, and other abstract concepts. The only things you can build are ships, starbases that give your ships and economy bonuses, and satellites that protect your planets so they can build more ships... the big draw of the game is the real time combat, where weapons fire actual projectiles and ships have mass and inertia.

3D works great for that game, as you can manually command your ships to move in certain ways in combat, maneuvering your most armored sections into the line of fire to protect the weaker sections. But... it only adds to the tactical section. I've never seen a strategic map in that game where 3D made a huge impact. And the multiplayer games I've played have typically been on the flattest map types.

AI War's another good game. That one has zero 3D anywhere in it. It's still beloved by its fans for its unusual, roguelike approach to RTS gaming, where the goal isn't to conquer the whole galaxy but instead to make scalpel-like direct cuts at the AIs themselves, neutralizing the threats without drawing too much attention. And even that isn't guaranteed to work. That game works just fine in 2D, accomplishing its goals marvelously.

So, in summary, I don't think that GalCiv or its relatives would gain anything from 3D. At least, not yet. Save that for Homeworld and Star Wolves and other games that make good use of all three axes in real time.

I'm not even going into 2D-3D debate, it has been chewed to death. But what you have written about SotS is a sign of complete lack of knowledge of the game. I don't know which one you mean SotS1 or SotS2, but if it is no. 2, the game was never actually finished and I haven't played it. No 1. on the other hand is a superb 4x strategy game with strategic elements I'd love to see in GC - like different ways of travel, a randomized tech tree and so forth.

I was also damn glad I did not need to build a factory (or five) on each planet, I wouldn't be able to stand such tedious micromanagement on the scale SotS operates with. Perhaps some more influence over the colonies would be welcome, but a bit less is by far better than a lot more. Most people wanting some sort of planetary managers in GC, too, just shows that a player in general wants specialization, not individual buildings. If there is no planetary managers mechanics in GC3, I will not even try the game. I don't have the time...

EDIT: Remembered that it has a planetary manager, so I guess I'll find the time.

It is certainly possible to make a 3D star map Ascendency had that; but does it practically add much to the game other than more complex 3D rotation and pathing?

The official explanation in GC2 was that the play got a sort of space emperor’s flattened tactical view of the universe.

Having experienced 3D star maps like in the old game Ascendency and 2D star maps I can honestly say that for a strategy game I’m pretty neutral on the subject I don’t see going to a 3D map as a change worth investing in.

For a game like Elite: Dangerous though where you pilot a ship I think a 3D star map more important for realism.

But then again I don’t mind if they decide to go 3D just think there are other features they could spend the time on.

A couple of points;

(1) it doesn't have to add more space given the same memory constraints it just means the same space is spread over 3 rather than 2 dimensions. with the same amount of objects in in fact since you have to store a 3rd position variable for every object it would actually reduce the number of objects you could represent with a given amount of memory slightly.

(2) A 3D starmap still has to be represented on a 2D screen this often means that a star that looks close ca in fact be very distant and you have to rotate the map to find out.

(3) The map of stars planets and ships, etc in GC3 are very much not drawn to scale if they where we would see vast empty spaces big stars and tiny pin prick planets, ships being like virus sized particals.So making it 3D would not make it realistic given that. The explaination that it is a strategic map with important bodies shown enlarged and space between stars reduced is a good one. I believe this is in GC lore and also that hyper drives are quicker away from mass e.g. solar bodies so space between star systems are tacticly scaled down.

The reason this is expensive to implement is that their current engine creates, holds and displays maps in 2D (well a 3D projection of a 2D plain anyway). That's a fundemental change to the engine you are requesting and will take resources better spent elsewhere.

Additionally there are a number of design issues around displaying a truly 3D map in a 2D projection and avoiding issues with perspective without requiring constant annoying map rotation by the user.